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This paper describes the application of CAE tools in the design optimization of a DCT and driveline system of a passenger vehicle, with emphasis on NVH performance. The multi-body dynamics simulation tools are employed for driveline system analysis. The MBD model consists of the engine, transmission, clutch, drive shafts, tires and vehicle. The wheel slip effects are considered in the calculation of shuffle frequencies. In the analysis of gear whine, the transmission housing, gears and shafts are modeled by detailed 3-D finite element models, so that the mesh stiffness of the gears and the housing support stiffness are described more accurately. The calculated velocity spectra of the housing are presented. The prediction of gear rattle in the transmission is carried out. The loose gear acceleration index and the averaged impact power of free gears are calculated to assess the rattle generation potential and the level of rattle severity.

In order to predict more accurately the cracking failure of cylinder head during the durability test of turbocharged engine in the development, a comprehensive evaluation method of cylinder head durability is established. In this method, both high cycle and low cycle fatigue performance are calculated to provide failure assessment. The method is then applied to investigate the root cause of cracking of cylinder head and assess design optimizations. Multidisciplinary approach is adopted to optimize high cycle fatigue and low cycle fatigue performance simultaneously to achieve the best comprehensive performance. In this paper, the details of the method development are described. First, the high cycle and low cycle fatigue properties of cylinder head material were measured at different temperature condition, and the fatigue life and high temperature creep properties of materials under thermo-mechanical fatigue cycle were also tested.

The hydraulic retarder is the most stabilized auxiliary braking system [1-2] of heavy-duty vehicles. When the hydraulic retarder is working during auxiliary braking, all of the braking energy is transferred into the thermal energy of the transmission medium of the working wheel. Theoretically, the residual heat-sinking capability of the engine could be used to cool down the transmission medium of the hydraulic retarder, in order to ensure the proper functioning of the hydraulic retarder. Never the less, the hydraulic retarder is always placed at the tailing head of the gearbox, far from the engine, long cooling circuits, which increases the risky leakage risk of the transmission medium. What's more, the development trend of heavy load and high speed vehicle directs the significant increase in the thermal load of the hydraulic retarder, which even higher than the engine power.

In order to improve the anti-disturbance performance of engine-load and the effect on speed control for the diesel engine, the paper presents the fuzzy-PID speed control strategy in the architecture of torque-based control. The engine-load estimation algorithm is designed based on the mean-value-model and crankshaft dynamics model, and the estimation precision is validated by engine test in both steady and dynamic conditions. Through the experiment verification of the diesel engine, the fuzzy-PID control strategy based on load estimation can significantly improve the anti-disturbance performance of engine-load in the speed control.

The ever-growing concern to reduce the impact of transportation systems on environment has pushed automotive industry towards fuel-efficient and sustainable solutions. While several approaches have been used to improve fuel efficiency, the light-weighting of automobile components has proven broadly effective. A substantial effort is devoted to lightweighting body-in-white which contributes ~35% of total weight of vehicle. Closure systems, however, have been often overlooked. Closure systems are extremely important as they account for ~ 50% of structural mass and have a very diverse range of requirements, including crash safety, durability, strength, fit, finish, NVH, and weather sealing. To this end, a carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite door is being designed for an OEM’s mid-size SUV, that enables 42.5% weight reduction. In this work, several novel composite door assembly designs were developed by using an integrated design, analysis and optimization approach.

The drivability plays an important role for marketability and competitiveness of passenger car in meeting some customer requirements, which directly affects the driving experience and the desire of purchasing. In this paper, a framework of objective drivability evaluation with multi-source information fusion for passenger car is proposed. At first, according to vehicle powertrain system and optimization theory, certain vehicle performances, which are closely related to objective drivability are analyzed, including vehicle longitudinal acceleration, vehicle speed, engine torque, engine speed, gear position, accelerator pedal, brake signal and voltage signal. Then, combined with the evaluation criterion of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), mean error (ME), root mean squared error (RMSE) and signal smoothness (SS), a de-noising method is developed for the drivability evaluation information.

For one of the advanced sensing technologies for the autonomous driving, we have been working on the new vision system. It focuses on detecting the small object at far ranges. It enables to detour a vehicle by avoiding small object. This system is based on the high-resolution mono-camera with narrow FOV and the algorithms for object-detection and lane-detection. Since we have already proposed the system for the traffic cones, we proceed to a new algorithm for an unknown object with arbitrary shape. It can detect the object and estimate its range by using the information on the lane even though the shape and dimension of the object are unknown. Here the system architecture and how the algorithm to detect the object and estimate its range are described. The algorithm is at first validated by a computer-generated image. And then it is applied to real images. For the cones, the accuracy was +/- 4 [m] for the ranges between 50 and 150 [m].

Semi-active suspension has been widely applied in commercial vehicle suspension in order to get good riding comfortableness. Fuzzy logic control (FLC) has been widely applied in the field of kinetic control because control rule of FLC is easy to understand. But the gain of fuzzy rules and adjustment of membership functions usually depend on experts' experiences and repeated experiments, thus the fuzzy rules and membership functions has strong subjectivity, also are easily affected by environment of experiments, so the main problem of fuzzy logic controller design is selection and optimization of fuzzy rules and membership functions. Genetic Algorithms (GA) is the algorithm that searches the optimal solution through simulating natural evolutionary process and is one of the evolution algorithms which have most extensive impact.

Hydraulic retarder is one of main auxiliary braking devices of the vehicle. When the vehicle is braking, a great pressure from high-speed fluid is received by hydraulic retarder blades. It is difficult to predict rational hydraulic retarder strength, owing to the complexity of the internal flow of oil. An optimal calculation way of hydraulic retarder strength is proposed based on CFD and FEA, concluding a reasonable result. The 3-D model of hydraulic retarder is built in the general CAD software. The model of fluid passage is extracted, according to the condition when the whole flow passage is filled with oil, and imported to CFD software. The inner flow field of hydraulic retarder is analyzed and the hydraulic surface pressure distribution of the hydraulic retarder blade is obtained at the highest rotary speed of turbine wheel.

Hydraulic retarder has been widely applied on military vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles because of it could provide great brake torque and has lasting working time [1]. In order to reduce driver's frequent actions in braking process and prevent hydraulic retarder system from overheating, it is need to apply constant braking torque control, this control target has a strict requirement to hydraulic control system design. Many parameters often require repeated test to determine, which increases the R&D cost and extends the research cycle. This paper tries to find a time-efficient research method of hydraulic retarder control system through studying on a heavy military vehicle hydraulic retarder system. Hydraulic retarder model is set up through test data. The hydraulic control system is built based on AMESim. Controller model is set up based on PID control. The whole vehicle brake model is built based on MATLAB/Simulink.

Road simulation experiment in laboratory is a most important method to enhance the design quality of vehicle products. Presently, two main control techniques for road simulation—remote parameter control (RPC) and minimum variance adaptive control—are both defective: the former becomes an open-loop control after generating the drive signals, however the latter is essentially a kind of gradual control. To realize the closed-loop control and increase the control quality, this article brings forward a PID open-closed loop control method. Firstly taking the original road simulator as a group to identify, a nonlinear autoregressive moving average (NARMA) model was built with the dynamic neural network. Subsequently, this plant model was used to build the open-closed loop control system mentioned above. In the closed-loop a discrete PID controller was introduced to stabilize the system, while a P-type iterative learning control (ILC) was adopted to increase the control quality.

On road simulation, both the traditional iterative method based on frequency response function (FRF) and adaptive control method based on the CARMA model are realized by using linear model to identify the target test system. However the real test system is very complicated because of various nonlinear factors. Linear models approximately describe the system only in a small range. Therefore, system simulation methods can not be used to validate the developed control algorithm and the uncertainty of test accordingly increases. As mentioned above, this paper presents a model to identify the nonlinear test system using NARMA dynamic neural network and discusses how to make the model parameters in detail. Using the test input-output series data, this network was trained by Levenberg-Marquardt method. Results of verification simulation show the validation of the nonlinear model.

This paper presents a 3-D CFD modelling of flow and heterogeneous reactions in catalytic converters. The pressure and velocity fields in the catalytic converters are calculated by the state of the art modelling technique for the flow resistance of catalyst substrate. A surface reaction model is applied to predict the performance of a three-way Pt/Rh catalyst. A reaction mechanism with detailed catalytic surface reactions for the 3-way catalyst is applied. The novelty of this approach is the use of a surface chemistry solver coupled with a 3-D CFD code in the entire computational domain of the catalyst substrate that allows flow distribution for complex configurations to be accounted for. The concentrations of the gas species and the site species are obtained. A comparison between the simulation results and the experimental data of a three-way catalyst was made.

The remarkable evolution of steel technology in recent years has resulted in the development of new High Strength Steels (HSS) that are increasingly used in today's automobiles. The advanced performance of these grades in ductility and rapid hardening characteristics provides an opportunity to stamp complex geometries with in-panel material strengths far exceeding those of conventional high strength grades of steel. This provides an opportunity to improve an automotive body's performance in crash, durability and strength while reducing the overall weight of the vehicle. An improved understanding of the forming characteristics of these advanced HSS and accurate prediction of the material processing strain will allow vehicle designers to fully explore the opportunities of increased yield, strain hardening, formability and strength and the potential this creates to reduce mass and improve the performance of the automotive body.

In designing an automobile seat, it is important to minimize the fatigue experienced by the driver resulting from long-term sitting. In this study eight healthy male subjects participated in two group experiments that were A-group and B-group. Acupoints combined with magnetism stimuli were put on to the subjects for reducing postural fatigue in B-group during the simulated driving. The surface electromyography (sEMG) of muscle activity at L4/L5 as well as subjective self-reporting on fatigue were recorded and tested. Analyzing and comparing the EMG median frequency and the subjective evaluations between two groups a conclusion that acupoints combined with magnetism stimuli could reduce the driver postural fatigue was drawn.

CFD simulations have been conducted to study Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion in a single-cylinder poppet valve Direct-Injection 2-stroke gasoline engine using the Ricardo engine CFD code VECTIS. Multi-domain, multi-cycle simulations were performed to determine the trapped conditions, in particular the high residual gas content and charge distribution. The HCCI ignition and combustion were modelled using the Livengood-Wu ignition integral combined with the Ricardo Two-Zone Flamelet combustion model. Good agreements have been achieved between simulation and engine test data. The ignition points and in-cylinder pressures were predicted with good accuracy. The paper demonstrates that in 2-stroke engine operation the in-cylinder charge inhomogeneity is significant. The multi-domain, multi-cycle CFD simulation is an effective approach to study the charge inhomogeneity and its effect on HCCI engine combustion.

Automotive Front Lighting System(AFS) can receive the steering signal and the vehicular speed signal to adjust the position of headlamps automatically. AFS will provide drivers more information of front road to protect drivers safe when driving at night. AFS works when there is a steering signal input. However, drivers often need the front road's information before they turn the steering wheel when vehicles are going to go through a sharp corner, AFS will not work in such a situation. This paper studied how to optimize the working time of AFS based on GIS (Geographic Information System) and GPS(Geographic Information System) to solve the problem. This paper analyzed the process of the vehicle is about to go through a corner. Low beams and high beams were discussed respectively.

In this paper a new pressure control method of a modified accumulator-type Electro-hydraulic Braking System (EHB) is proposed. The system is composed of a hydraulic motor pump, an accumulator, an integrated master cylinder, a pedal feel simulator, valves and pipelines. Two pressurizing modes are switched between by-motor and by-accumulator to adapt different pressure boost demands. A differentiator filtering raw sensor signal and calculating pedal speed is designed. By using the pedal feel simulator, the relationship between wheel pressures and brake force is decoupled. The relationships among pedal displacement, pedal force and wheel pressure are calibrated by experiments. A model-based PI controller with predictor is designed to lower the influences caused by delay. Moreover, a self-tuning regulator is introduced to deal with the parameter’s time-varying caused by temperature, brake pads wearing and delay variation.

Vehicle hydraulic retarders are applied in heavy-duty trucks and buses as an auxiliary braking device. In traditional cooling systems of hydraulic retarders, the working fluid is introduced into the heat exchanger to transfer heat to the cooling liquid in circulation, whose heat is then dissipated by the engine cooling system. This prevents the waste heat of the working fluid from being used effectively. In hydraulic retarder cooling system based on the Organic Rankine Cycle, the organic working fluid first transfers heat with the hydraulic retarder working fluid in Rankine cycle, and then outputs power through expansion machine. It can both reduce heat load of the engine cooling system, and enhance thermal stability of the hydraulic retarder while recovering and utilizing braking energy. First of all, according to the target vehicle model, hydraulic retarder cooling system model based on Rankine cycle is established.

With the continuous increasing requirements of commercial vehicle weight and speed on highway transportation, conventional friction brake is difficult to meet the braking performance. To ensure the driving safety of the vehicle in the hilly region, the eddy current retarder (ECR) has been widely used due to its fast response, lower prices and convenient installation. ECR brakes the vehicle through the electromagnetic force generated by the current, and converted vehicle mechanical energy into heat through magnetic field. Air cooling structure is often used in the traditional ECR and cooling performance is limited, which causes low braking torque, thermal recession, and low reliability and so on. The water jacket has been equipped outside the eddy current region in this study, and the electric ECR is cooled through the water circulating in the circuit, which prolongs its working time.