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The potential impact of real world accident scenarios on fuel cell vehicles equipped with a compressed hydrogen storage system is analyzed from a component point of view. Even though hydrogen compressed gas tanks can sustain very high loads, in this study a simplification is made. It is investigated to what extent different real world accident scenarios with conventional vehicles have caused deformation of the vehicle in the area where a hydrogen tank would have been integrated in a fuel cell vehicle. The study is based on accident data from the GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study) database. Deformation matrices for each passenger car in the database are defined over a deformation grid largely independent of vehicle type and shape. The matrices are combined to statistically analyze the occurrence of deformations in selected regions of a vehicle.

The AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture (AUTOSAR) Development Partnership has published early 2008 the specifications Release 3.0 [1], with a prime focus on the overall architecture, basic software, run time environment, communication stacks and methodology. Heavy developments have taken place in the OEM and supplier community to deliver AUTOSAR loaded cars on the streets starting 2008 [2]. The 2008 achievements have been: Improving the specifications in order to secure the exploitation for body, chassis and powertrain applications Adding major features: safety related functionalities, OBD II and Telematics application interfaces.

The objective of this paper is to explore the influence of freestream turbulence on heat transfer processes to passenger cars in climatic wind tunnels. This will include a consideration of different flow zones on the vehicles. It will be shown up to which value of the turbulence intensity the influence on the heat transfer to the passenger compartment remains insignificant. The effects of freestream turbulence on the design and operation of climatic wind tunnels are discussed. The upper limit for the turbulence intensity can be regarded as a sizing quantity to be used in planning and operating vehicle-climatic wind tunnels in the future.

A strong local initiative in Campinas - Brazil is studying how to be more effective in the improvement of road safety in order to align to other worldwide initiatives with similar goals. This paper describes the Brazilian initiative’s approach to the challenge of being aligned with iGLAD (Initiative for the Global Harmonization of Accident Data, starting as a project in 2011 and collecting data since 2007) on the delivery of its first set of accident cases from 2016. The Brazilian source of data started as a pilot project collecting local data with the aim of extending it within the next years to a larger region. In fact, a consistent method for the development of strategies and measures to prevent accidents and mitigate injury severity comes from accident database analysis.

Besides the innovative work in the commercial vehicles sector, where there is an ever growing competition, lighter, more comfortable, safer, and more robust products are also being developed through optimization of design parameters of currently available systems. This study explains the possible effects of changing the design parameters of leaf springs on a vehicle's driving dynamics, which has a significant effect on the total weight of the vehicle. These effects include the vehicle's suspension specifications and the suspension system's interaction with the steering system. A virtual vehicle model is analyzed under the loads gathered in road tests, to measure the stress levels on the spring layers and the movement of the leaf spring depending on the limits determined by the vehicle manufacturer. Furthermore, the conformity of the movement of the front axles in connection with the leaf spring with the steering system is also analyzed.

Reduction of nitrogen oxides in Diesel exhaust gas is a challenging task. This paper reports results from an extensive study using Pt-based catalysts involving synthetic gas activity testing (SCAT), engine bench testing and tests on passenger cars. Preliminary SCAT work highlighted the importance of Pt-dispersion, and both SCAT and bench engine testing yielded comparable NOx conversions under steady state conditions at high HC:NOx ratios. On passenger cars in the European cycle without secondary fuel injection NOx conversion was lower than obtained in the steady state tests. Better conversion was obtained in the FTP cycle, where secondary injection was employed. Higher HC:NOx, ratios and more favourable temperature conditions which were present in the exhaust contributed to this higher conversion.

The addition of oxygen-containing components into gasoline exerts a sustained influence on the cold start and warm-up performance of vehicles. The influences are shown on the basis of test results with motor vehicles. The cold start performance of vehicles with an alternative fuel such as methanol is very strongly dependent on the composition of a properly tailored fuel. This fuel should contain light boiling components for the best performance. Results from methanol fuelled vehicles under cold climate conditions are shown here. The warm-up conditions of an 1.3 l-engine starting at -10°C were researched. The additional fuel required under these conditions for heating all the components of the egine including the coolant and lubricant was calculated after the basic measurement of their temperature rise. The additional fuel required due to the higher friction was investigated by motoring the engine.

Volkswagen has built a simulation model of the EA 111 Motors assembly line. It was an important model to study the plant capacity increasing. The study was made in two phases: 500 motors/day and then 1.200motors/day. Using this model, the company could run different scenarios quickly and identify the bottlenecks in the system. So, they could take better decisions in this capacity planning study avoiding future problems in this assembly line.

Diesel exhaust gas contains low molecular aliphatic carbonyl compounds and strongly smelling organic acids, which are known to have an irritant influence on eyes, nose and mucous membranes. Thus, diesel exhaust aftertreatment has to be considered more critically than that of gasoline engines, with respect to the formation of undesired by-products. The results presented here have been carried out as research work sponsored by the German Research Association for Internal Combustion Engines (FVV). The main objective of the three year project was to evaluate the behaviour of current and future catalyst technology on the one hand (oxidation catalyst, CRT system, SCR process), and regulated and certain selected non-regulated exhaust gas emission components and exhaust gas odour on the other hand.