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While driving a passenger car, a driver can hear many sorts of sounds inside of the car. Among these sounds, booming and rumbling sounds are classified as the dominant sound characteristics of passenger cars. A sound quality index evaluating the quality of these two sounds objectively is therefore required and is developed by using an artificial neural network (ANN) in the present paper. Throughout this research, the booming sound and rumbling sound were found to effectively relate the loudness, sharpness and roughness. The booming sound qualities and rumbling sound qualities for interior sounds were subjectively evaluated by 21 persons for the target of the ANN. After the ANN was trained, the two outputs of this ANN were used for the booming index and rumbling index, respectively. These outputs were tested in the evaluation of the sound quality of the interior sounds which were measured inside of the sixteen passenger cars.

A new diffusing-oriented spray stratified combustion system for direct injection gasoline engines is proposed in this study. A reflector with multi-impingement wall head attached ahead of multi-hole injector nozzle is used in this system as a strategy of breaking up the fuel spray and directing it in a desired direction to form a perfect atomization and stratification of fuel air mixture. A comparatively rich fuel-air mixture is always formed over a wide range of engine operation conditions in the vicinity of spark plug due to the fuel spray oriented by the special surface shape of impingement wall, and the finely atomized fuel spray is formed in the other areas of combustion chamber due to the impacting of fuel spray against the impingement wall. Therefore, it is possible to achieve stable and fast burn of lean fuel air mixture. The combustion system is preliminary investigated on a single cylinder four-stroke DI gasoline engine which is shifted from a DI diesel engine.

The control of ignition timing in the homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) of n-heptane by port injection of reaction inhibitors were studied in a single cylinder engine. Four suppression additive including methanol, ethanol, iso-propanol, and methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) were used in the experiments. The inhibition effectiveness on HCCI combustion with various additives was compared under the same n-heptane equivalence ratio and total fuel equivalence ratio. The experimental results found that the suppression effectiveness increased in the order: MTBE

A study for improving the resistance to fretting corrosion of SCr 420 pinion gear was conducted. Fretting is the damage to contacting surfaces experiencing slight relative reciprocating sliding motion of low amplitude. Fretting corrosion is the fretting damage to unlubricated contacting surfaces accompanied by corrosion, mostly oxidation that occurs if the fretting occurs in air. Two kinds of conventional heat treatment and a newly designed one suggested for improving the resistance to the fretting corrosion of pinion gear were compared each other to find out what is the main factor for generating fretting corrosion phenomenon. Increased carbon potential at both the heating and diffusing zone and reduced time of tempering was found out to be a solution for improving the resistance to fretting corrosion of forged and heat treated gear steel. On the contrary, modified carbo-nitriding using ammonia gas has been getting worse the fretting corrosion problem.

Mixture preparation is a key contributor to both the combustion and emissions in automotive gasoline engines. The air-fuel ratio near the spark plug may have an effect on combustion characteristics since it is related to early flame development. Therefore, cycle resolved measurements of equivalence ratio near the spark plug is particularly important for better understanding of its contribution on combustion and emissions. This paper describes how we determined the in-cylinder equivalence ratio from the measured hydrocarbon concentration near the spark plug using a Fast Response Flame Ionization Detector (FRFID). The procedures established were then applied to a limited range of engine operating conditions, and the cycle resolved equivalence ratio near the spark plug was determined from the measured hydrocarbon concentration.

Luxury sound is one of the most important sound qualities in a premium passenger car. Previous work has shown that, because of the effects of many different interior sounds, it is difficult to evaluate the luxury sound objectively by using only the A-weighted sound pressure level. In this paper, the characteristics of such sound were first investigated by a systematic approach and a new objective evaluation method for luxury sound-the luxury sound quality index--which was developed by the systematic combination of the seven major interior sound quality indexes based on path analysis. The seven major sounds inside a passenger car were selected by a basic investigation evaluated by the members of a luxury automotive club. Seven major interior sound quality indexes were developed by using sound metrics, which are the psychoacoustic parameters, and the multiple regression method used for the modeling of the correlation between objective and subjective evaluation.

The filtered-x LMS (FX-LMS) algorithm has been applied to the active noise control (ANC) system in an acoustic duct. This algorithm is designed based on the FIR (finite impulse response) filter, but it has a slow convergence problem because of a large number of zero coefficients. In order to improve the convergence performance, the step size of the LMS algorithm was modified from fixed to variable. However, this algorithm is still not suitable for the ANC system of a short acoustic duct since the reference signal is affected by the backward acoustic wave propagated from a secondary source. Therefore, the recursive filtered-u LMS algorithm (FU-LMS) based on infinite impulse response (IIR) is developed by considering the backward acoustic propagation. This algorithm, unfortunately, generally has a stability problem. The stability problem was improved by using an error smoothing filter.

Recently electric and electronic devices in vehicle have been rapidly increasing. Because the dynamic characteristics of these systems are too much complicated, it is getting very difficult to predict the change of electrical energy accurately. Especially, since the lead-acid battery has a fast aging process, managing the electrical energy in vehicle becomes more difficult. This paper shows the electrical energy simulator, which consists of a battery, an alternator and various electrical devices. In particular, proposed aging battery model was implemented using a finite element method (FEM) based on electrochemical approach. And the thermal characteristic of alternator is also focused on getting reliable performance. Finally, we validated the electrical energy simulator including this battery model on the actual conditions in vehicle.

Studies of driving cycles for buses have been published in a number of papers, e.g., the Central Business District (CBD) and New York Bus (NY Bus) driving cycles. Such studies, however, cannot represent the actual driving environment of Seoul because of differences in road conditions and the volume of traffic. Thus, this study presents the development of a driving cycle for the city bus system of Seoul, the capital city of Korea. A representative route is selected by means of a statistical analysis of the city bus routes in Seoul. Experiments are performed to measure velocity, road grade, engine speed, load conditions, gear-shift patterns, and vehicle acceleration in actual Seoul traffic. A simulation model is developed to evaluate a driving cycle on the basis of the measured data obtained. The coupling effect between velocity and acceleration is analyzed, as well as the coupling effect between road grade and vehicle acceleration.

The residual gas in SI engines is one of important factors on emission and performance such as combustion stability. With high residual gas fractions, flame speed and maximum combustion temperature are decreased and there are deeply related with combustion stability, especially at Idle and NOx emission at relatively high engine load. Therefore, there is a need to characterize the residual gas fraction as a function of the engine operating parameters. A model for predicting the residual gas fraction has been formulated in this paper. The model accounts for the contribution due to the back flow of exhaust gas to the cylinder during valve overlap and it includes in-cylinder pressure prediction model during valve overlap. The model is derived from the one dimension flow process during overlap period and a simple ideal cycle model.

In order to replace PVC with TPO as I/P skin layer of invisible PAB, the elongation behavior, vacuum thermoforming, thermal, light resistance and low temperature PAB deployment of TPO were investigated. With the elongation properties; 50cN ↑ melt strength, 300mm/s ↑ breaking speed, 200s ↑ breaking time, TPO was vacuum-formed well like PVC. The thermal and light resistances of TPO were superior to PVC. In terms of low temperature airbag test, PVC was fractured with the brittle behavior during the deployment. TPO, however, showed the ductile fracture. And also when TPO was used for PAB cover, the elongation ratio of TPO was also important criterion for the normal break without any interference to I/P part, outside of PAB. The 300∼500% elongation ratio was most preferable.

Electromagnetic valve (EMV) actuation system is a new technology for the improvement of fuel efficiency and the reduction of emissions in SI engines. It can provide more flexibility in valve event control compared to conventional variable valve actuation devices. However, a more powerful and efficient actuator design is needed for this technology to be applied in mass production engines. This paper presents the effects of design and operating parameters on the thermal, static and dynamic performances of the actuator. The finite element method (FEM) and computer simulation models are used in predicting the solenoid forces, dynamic characteristics and thermal characteristics of the actuator. Effect of design parameters and operating environment on the actuator performance were verified before making prototypes using the analytical models. To verify the accuracy of the simulation model, experimental study is also carried out on a prototype actuator.

Design for six sigma (DFSS) with sigma based robust design will have a major influence on the future design, if it is applied during the conceptual design phase or design change phase. DFSS will result in more improved but less expensive quality products. This paper presents the implementation of DFSS for robust design of a brake judder of heavy-duty trucks. The problem of brake judder is typically caused by quality defects in manufacturing. However this quality problem can't be controlled deterministically and requires a design considering the uncertainty. In this paper sigma based robust design methodology is applied to improve the brake judder quality problem at the last step of DFSS. Results between conventional deterministic optimization and the proposed sigma based robust design are compared. The robust design by DFSS shows that the manufacturing cost may increase as the quality level increase.

A liquid phase LPG injection (LPLi) system has been considered as one of the next generation fuel supply system, since it has a very strong potential to accomplish the higher power, higher efficiency, and lower emission characteristics than the mixer type that is classified as a second generation technology, whereas the LPLi system is classified as a third generation technology. However, when a liquid LPG fuel is injected into the inlet duct of an engine, a large quantity of heat is extracted due to its high latent heat of evaporation. This leads the moisture in the air to freeze around the nozzle exit, which is called icing phenomenon. It may cause damage to the outlet nozzle of an injector or inlet valve seat. In this work, the experimental investigation of the icing phenomenon was carried out. The results showed that humidity of air rather than the temperature of air in the inlet duct mainly controlled the icing process.

The air fuel ratio of current gasoline engine is mostly controlled by various air flow meters. When CVVT (Continuous Variable Valve Timing) device is applied to gasoline engine for higher engine performance, MAP (Manifold Absolute Pressure) sensor can not be applied anymore due to intake valve motion. Therefore HFM (Hot film airflow meter) is used for measuring the intake air flow instead of MAP sensor. Usually HFM has a little sensitivity in flow direction, therefore reverse flow from engine to air cleaner can not be measured. Also, HFM maker request enough straight duct length nearly 10 times of a duct diameter making a fully developed flow. But, most vehicles have no enough space to install such an intake system in engine room. Thus the inserted duct was applied to confirm the stable fully developed flow in air duct. The various duct configurations in front of HFM effect on the sensitivity of HFM.

This paper presents a novel method predicting the variation of sound quality of interior noise depending on the change of the proprieties of absorption materials. At the first, the model predicting the interior noise corresponding to the change of the absorption material in engine room is proposed. Secondly the index to estimate the sound quality of the predicted sound is developed. Thirdly the experimental work has been conducted with seven different materials and validated the newly developed index. Finally, this index is applied for the optimization of absorption material to improve the sound quality of interior noise in a passenger car.

This paper presents the influence of radiated noise from engine surface according to assembly condition between the engine block and oil pan. At the first, the force exciting the main bearing of cylinder block is calculated by using a multi-body dynamics model of the engine crankshaft. Secondly, the modal analysis is processed to obtain the mode contribution and modal participation factors for the FEM of a virtual cylinder block. Thirdly, the radiated noise from a structure is calculated by acoustic-FEM analysis. This structure is assembled by the virtual oil pan with a rigid connection method and a soft connection method. The sandwich panel connection model is used for the soft connection method. The sound radiated from this assemble structure is calculated according to two different connection properties respectively. The sound matrices for two results are compared using an objective method.

As a part of the global efforts to reduce CO2 emission, studies are in progress to derive regulation measures for CO2 emission from heavy-duty vehicles. Thus, identification of emission characteristics of CO2 for heavy-duty vehicle is required and test driving cycle for this would be necessary. Before developing a test driving cycle to identify the emission characteristics of CO2, selection of test subject vehicles and actual road test was carried out. Through this, road drive characteristics per diverse vehicle type and emission levels of CO2 were identified. Correlations between the currently used cycles of each country and the actual road were analyzed and the cycle most similar to the actual road situations was selected among various countries' cycles to verify whether its easy use was possible for the actual tests. The test driving cycle selected after comparison with actual road situations was modified so as to enable actual tests for all heavy-duty vehicles.

TPO (thermoplastic olefin) composite for rear bumper back beams was developed. In this study, the composition of PP (polypropylene), rubber and mineral fillers was optimized to minimize the intrusion and the failure after crash. The optimization of the composition was achieved using the mixture design of experiments. The physical properties of TPO composites with various compositions were investigated and the effect of each material on the crash performance of back beam was studied through CAE (computer-aided engineering). The back beams made of the optimized TPO composite for a subcompact car were prepared for the ECE 42 crash test and the TPO-based back beam showed even better performance than conventional PC/PBT-based counterpart. In addition, the newly developed composite has delivered a 15 ~ 40% cost saving and 4 ~ 10% weight reduction versus conventional PC/PBT and GMT (glass mat-reinforced thermoplastic).

Driveshafts are one of the most important components in power-train system in vehicle as it transfer torque generated from engine to wheels in high speeds. As a driveshaft is in rotating condition vibration problems can be observed by resonance or external force. The generated vibration problems in vehicles cause discomfort to drivers whenever they are driving. To solve these problems, there have been many attempts to control such generated vibration in vehicle. In this study, vibration control system for driveshaft has been proposed to reduce the generated vibration. The smart damper for the system is designed considering to be implemented in driveshaft with quick response and a compact size. The damper is consists of electromagnets so it can response relatively quickly compared to other damping system. When a driveshaft reaches to its natural frequency, vibration control system with the damper is activated to minimize the vibration as it shifts its natural frequency region.