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Hybrid systems have been available for several years now, and offer customers a decrease in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions at an incremental price. Hybrids, in some cases, have offered improved other customer benefits such as reduced noise, vibration and harshness or better acceleration and the satisfaction of increased societal benefit. Sometimes the vehicle utility is compromised by the volume dedicated to energy storage systems. Several hybrid architecture arrangements exist in the market, and offer various levels of hybrid feature. But considering acquisition cost and operating expense, most hybrid vehicles have not offered a direct total cost advantage when compared to non-hybrids. GM's new e-Assist system is highly integrated with the engine and transmission functionality, and takes advantage of the highest value fuel economy enablers available with light electrification.

Virtual testing is a method that simulates lab testing using multi-body dynamic analysis software. The main advantages of this approach include that the design can be evaluated before a prototype is available and virtual testing results can be easily validated by subsequent physical testing. The disadvantage is that accurate specimen models are sometimes hard to obtain since nonlinear components such as tires, bushings, dampers, and engine mounts are hard to model. Therefore, virtual testing accuracy varies significantly. The typical virtual rigs include tire and spindle coupled test rigs for full vehicle tests and multi axis shaker tables for component tests. Hybrid simulation combines physical and virtual components, inputs and constraints to create a composite simulation system. Hybrid simulation enables the hard to model components to be tested in the lab.

Given the fast changing market demands, the growing complexity of features, the shorter time to market, and the design/development constraints, the need for efficient and effective verification and validation methods are becoming critical for vehicle manufacturers and suppliers. One such example is fault-tree analysis. While fault-tree analysis is an important hazard analysis/verification activity, the current process of translating design details (e.g., system level and software level) is manual. Current experience indicates that fault tree analysis involves both creative deductive thinking and more mechanical steps, which typically involve instantiating gates and events in fault trees following fixed patterns. Specifically for software fault tree analysis, a number of the development steps typically involve instantiating fixed patterns of gates and events based upon the structure of the code. In this work, we investigate a methodology to translate software programs to fault trees.

Main topics are the development and the build-up of an 18ton hybrid truck with a parallel hybrid drivetrain. With this truck it is possible to drive up to 3 kilometers in the pure electric driving mode. Presenter Andreas Eglseer, Engineering Center Steyr GmbH & Co. KG

EGR coolers are used in combustion engines to reduce NOx emissions. However, heat transfer in these coolers also results in thermophoresis-temperature-gradient driven motion of suspended particles towards cooler regions-which leads to significant soot deposition. Presenter Meisam Mehravaran

Vehicle electrification is shaping the future of automotive mobility in terms of automotive power and propulsion. The market for New Energy Vehicles (HEV/PHEV/REEV/EV) as well as clean vehicle technologies is expected to grow steadily driven by government regulations mandating increased fuel economy and lower emissions. The fastest growth in this market will be in Asia Pacific, most notably China. The Chinese government has made its intentions clear on how important it considers the development and consumer purchase of hybrid and electric vehicles. The mandate is that by year 2012, vehicle manufacturers produce at least 500,000 units (or 5%) per year of their total output as hybrid and/or electric. All Chinese vehicle manufacturers must have at least one HEV or EV model in the market by the same year. Thus far China has invested over US$3.5 billion to stimulate the production of NEVs and the necessary infrastructure to support them.

Toyota is committed to the development of advanced powertrains to help address concerns with future oil supplies, the impacts of increased carbon dioxide emissions, and air pollution. Towards that end Toyota is planning to bring to market in 2012 a plug-in hybrid vehicle, a short range electric vehicle, a long range electric vehicle and in the 2015 timeframe hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicle. This presentation will focus on our electric vehicle plans and the challenges with bringing electric vehicle to the market. From the 2010 Alt Fuels Study, Toyota has identified that two key barriers for EV adoption are the times to charge the vehicle, and electricity cost. The study finds that the current infrastructure could be sufficient for most driving needs but EV drivers will still need to alter their driving habits slightly.

Trans Tech recently debuted the all-electric eTrans school bus providing a total zero emission school bus. The presentation will demonstrate Smith Electric Vehicles and their history with electric vehicles. The presentation will help ensure that everybody has an idea of what the electric school bus will do and to dispel any rumors about the vehicle. Presenter Brian S. Barrington, Trans Tech. Bus

ECOtality North America, in partnership with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Nissan North America, General Motors, and over 40 government, electric utility, and private organizations, has launched a large-scale demonstration of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This demonstration, called The EV Project, will deploy more than 15,000 level 2 and DC fast chargers in private residence, commercial, and public locations in seven market areas in Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Washington state, and Washington, D.C. The EV Project will also include a total of 5,700 Nissan Leaf battery electric vehicles and 2,600 Chevrolet Volt extended range electric vehicles, operated by consumers and fleets in each of the market areas. This demonstration, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy�s (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Program, represents the largest ever deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.

The System Architecture Virtual Integration (SAVI) program is a collaboration of industry, government, and academic organizations within the Aerospace Vehicle System Institute (AVSI) with the goal of structuring a new integration process that relies on a single-truth architectural framework. The SAVI approach of Integrate, then Build provides a modern distributed development environment which arrests the propagation of requirements errors through the development life cycle. It does so by capturing design assumptions and shared properties of the system design in an authoritative, annotated architectural model. This reference model provides a common, analyzable framework for confirming that system requirements remain complete, consistent, and correct at all levels of system decomposition. Core concepts of SAVI include extensive use of model-based system engineering tools and use of a single-truth reference architectural model.

By introducing the concept of a separation between graphics and logic, interpreted run time architecture, and defined communication protocol, the ARINC 661 standard has addressed many of the concerns that aircraft manufacturers face when creating cockpit avionics displays. However, before kicking off a project based on the standard, it is important to understand all aspects of the standard, as well as the benefits and occasional drawbacks of developing with ARINC 661 in mind. This white paper will first provide an overview of ARINC 661 to clarify its concepts and how these relate to the development process. The paper will also describe the benefits of using a distributed development approach, and will outline practical, real world considerations for implementing an ARINC 661-based solution. Finally, readers will learn how commercial tools can be used to simplify the creation of displays following the standard to speed development and reduce costs.

OBD requirements for aftertreatment system components require monitoring of the individual system components. One such component can be an NH3-SCR catalyst for NOx reduction. An OBD method that has been suggested is to generate positive or negative spikes in the inlet NH3 concentration, and monitor the outlet NOx transient response. A slow response indicates that the catalyst is maintaining its NH3 storage capacity, and therefore it is probably not degraded. A fast response indicates the catalyst has lost NH3 storage capacity, and may be degraded. The purpose of the work performed at Southwest Research Institute was to assess this approach for feasibility, effectiveness and practicality. The presentation will describe the work performed, results obtained, and implications for applying this method in test laboratory and real-world situations. Presenter Gordon J. Bartley, Southwest Research Institute

The aerospace industry has long sought a solution for storing maintenance history information directly on aircraft parts. In 2005 leading airframe manufacturers determined that passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology presented a unique opportunity to address this industry need. Through the efforts of the Air Transport Association (ATA) RFID on Parts Committee and SAE International testing standards and data specifications are in place to support the broad adoption of passive RFID for storing parts history information directly on aircraft parts. The primary focus of the paper will be on the SAE AS-5678 environmental testing standard for passive RFID tags intended for aircraft use. Detail will be provided to help aerospace manufacturers understand their role and responsibilities for current programs and understand how this may impact their parts certification process.

The increasing complexity of aerospace products and programs and the growing competitive pressure is facilitating the aggregation of small, medium and large enterprises of certain geographical regions into more integrated and collaborative entities (clusters). Clusters are by their same nature formed by heterogeneous companies, with huge differences not only in size but also for their core competences: such a diversity is a strength of the cluster, but it also increases its complexity. The purpose of this paper is to describe a benchmarking methodology that can be adopted to assess the performances of companies belonging to a cluster from different perspectives: economics and financials, competitive differentiators, specific know how, business strategies, production and logistic effectiveness, quality of core and supporting processes.