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This paper describes the joint development by Tenneco and Pi Shurlok of a complete diesel engine aftertreatment system for controlling particulate matter emissions. The system consists of a DOC, DPF, sensors, controller and an exhaust fuel injection system to allow active DPF regeneration. The mechanical components were designed for flow uniformity, low backpressure and component durability. The overall package is intended as a complete PM control system solution for OEMs, which does not require any significant additions to the OEM's engine control strategies and minimizes integration complexity. Thus, to make it easier to adapt to different engine platforms, ranging from small off-road vehicle engines to large locomotive engines, model-based control algorithms were developed in preference to map-based controls.

Ti-alloy sheet is a high-modulus elastic-plastic material, about which the resilience in the cold-forming process is quite difficult to control. As a matter of fact, the procedure of cold-forming is composed of many cases such as tensile case and bending case. An expression of ultimate radius for bending-curvature is obtained based on tri-parameters elastic-plastic constitutive model. By classifying the cold-forming process, some typical cases of cold-forming are presented in this paper, and analytical solutions with a high precision of resilience for high-modulus elastic-plastic material such as Ti-alloy sheet under the different typical cases are obtained in this paper. The accurate analytical solutions of resilience for high-modulus elastic-plastic material presented in this paper will contribute to cold-forming process both in the mould-designing and optimizing of cold-forming procedure.

To accurately and efficiently predict the temperature fields inside a lithium-ion battery is key technology for the enhancement of battery thermal management and the improvement of battery performances. The dimensional analysis method is applied to derive similarity criterions and the similarity coefficients of battery interior temperature fields, based on the governing partial differential equations describing the three dimensional transient temperature field. To verify the correctness of similarity criterions and the similarity coefficients, 3D finite element models of battery temperature field are established with a prototype and scale model, on the assumption that the battery cell has single-layer structure and multi-layers structure separately. The simulation results show that the similarity criterions and the similarity coefficients are correct.

Durability/reliability design of products, such as auto exhaust systems, is essentially based on the observation of test data and the accurate interpretation of these data. Therefore, test planning and related data analysis are critical to successful engineering designs. To facilitate engineering applications, testing and data analysis methods have been standardized over the last decades by several standard bodies such as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). However, over the last few years, several effective testing and data analysis methods have been developed, and the existing standard procedures need to be updated to incorporate the new observations, knowledge, and consensus. In this paper, the common practices and the standard test planning and data analysis procedures are reviewed first. Subsequently, the recent development in accelerated testing, equilibrium based data fitting, design curve construction, and Bayesian statistical data analysis is presented.

Strength and fatigue life prediction is very difficult for stamped structural steel parts because the manufacturing process alters the localized material properties. Traditional tensile tests cannot be used to obtain material properties due to size limitations. Because of this, FEA predictions are most often “directional” at best. In this paper an improved prediction methodology is suggested. With a material library developed from standard homogenous test specimens, or even textbook material property tables, localized strength and plastic strain numbers can be inferred from localized hardness tests(1). The new method, using standard ABAQUS static analysis (not commercial fatigue analysis software with many unknowns), is shown to be very accurate. This paper compares the new process FEA strength and fatigue life predictions to laboratory test results using statistical confidence intervals.

Vehicle exhaust components and systems under fatigue loading often show multiple failure modes, which should be treated, at least theoretically, with rigorous advanced bi-modal and multi-modal statistical theories and approaches. These advanced methods are usually applied to mission-critical engineering applications such as nuclear and aerospace, in which large amounts of test data are often available. In the automotive industry, however, the sample size adopted in the product validation is usually small, thus the bi-modal and multi-modal phenomena cannot be distinguished with certainty.

In the Big Data era, the capability in statistical and probabilistic data characterization, data pattern identification, data modeling and analysis is critical to understand the data, to find the trends in the data, and to make better use of the data. In this paper the fundamental probability concepts and several commonly used probabilistic distribution functions, such as the Weibull for spectrum events and the Pareto for extreme/rare events, are described first. An event quadrant is subsequently established based on the commonality/rarity and impact/effect of the probabilistic events. Level of measurement, which is the key for quantitative measurement of the data, is also discussed based on the framework of probability. The damage density function, which is a measure of the relative damage contribution of each constituent is proposed. The new measure demonstrates its capability in distinguishing between the extreme/rare events and the spectrum events.

Downsizing gasoline direct injection engine with turbo boost technology is the main trend for gasoline engine. However, with engine downsizing and ever increasing of power output, a new abnormal phenomenon, known as pre-ignition or super knock, occurs in turbocharged engines. Pre-ignition will cause very high in-cylinder pressure and high oscillations. In some circumstances, one cycle of severe pre-ignition may damage the piston or spark plug, which has a severe influence on engine performance and service life. So pre-ignition has raised lots of attention in both industry and academic society. More and more studies reveal that the auto-ignition of lubricants is the potential source for pre-ignition. The auto-ignition characteristics of different lubricants are studied. This paper focuses on the ignition delay of different lubricants in Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere (CATA) combustion system.

Torque Vectoring Control for distributed drive electric vehicle is studied. A handling improvement algorithm for normal cornering maneuvers is proposed based on state variable feedback control: Yaw rate feedback together with steer angle feedforward is employed to improve transient response and steady gain of the yaw rate, respectively. According to the feedback coefficient's influence on the transient response, an optimization function is proposed to obtain optimum feedback coefficients under different speeds. After maximum feedforward coefficients under different speeds are obtained from the constraint of the motor exterior characteristic, final feedforward coefficients are calculated according to an optimal steering characteristic. A torque distribution algorithm is presented to help the driver to speed up during the direct yaw moment control.

Although Hydrostatic Transmission System (HTS) had been used in many places, such as machine tools, agriculture machinery, construction machinery, and vehicles, it had not been used in good performance. Twenty years ago many people began to design new hydrostatic transmission with higher efficiency. Hydrostatic Energy Storage Transmission System (HESTS) is one of new hydrostatic transmission system with higher efficiency. HESTS is more fit for being used in vehicle that is always running in undulating ground or starting and braking frequently. Construction of vehicular HESTS was analyzed, mathematical model of vehicular HESTS was established. The needed control strategies of vehicular HESTS were analyzed because there are many variables would be controlled in the new transmission system.

Diesel burners introduce combustion of diesel fuel to raise exhaust gas temperature to Diesel Oxidization Catalyst (DOC) light-off or Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) regeneration conditions, thereby eliminating the need of engine measures such as post-injections. Such diesel combustion requirement nevertheless poses challenges to burner development especially in combustion control and risk mitigation of DPF material failure. In particular, burner design must satisfy good soot distribution and heat distribution at DPF front face after meeting minimum requirements of ignition, heat release, and backpressure. In burner development, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models have been developed based on commercial codes for burner thermal and flow management with capability of predicting comprehensive physical and chemical phenomena including turbulence induced mixing, fuel injection, fuel droplet transport, diesel combustion, radiation, conjugate heat transfer and etc.

This paper presents the simulation of in-cylinder stratified mixture formation, spray motion, combustion and emissions in a four-stroke and four valves direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine with a pent-roof combustion chamber by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The Extended Coherent Flame Combustion Model (ECFM), implemented in the AVL-Fire codes, was employed. The key parameters of spray characteristics related to computing settings, such as skew angle, cone angle and flow per pulse width with experimental measurements were compared. The numerical analysis is mainly focused on how the tumble flow ratio and geometry of piston bowls affect the motion of charge/spray in-cylinder, the formation of stratified mixture and the combustion and emissions (NO and CO₂) for the wall-guided stratified-charge spark-ignition DISI engine.

To develop a free-piston engine-alternator integrative power system for Hybrid Electric Vehicles, the key design parameters, such as reciprocating mass of the piston assembly, compression ratio, the ignition timing, the engine fuel consumption rate and power output, are studied based on the simulation. The results show that, the system simulation model of the free piston engine can predict the in-cylinder pressure vs. the piston's displacement being accurate enough as the test results from reported reference. The model can be employed to optimize the design parameters and to predict the fuel economy and power output. It provides the methods and bases for the free piston engine design and predicting the main performance parameters' values.

In this paper the approach of using modal parameters to detect and locate damage of automobile rear axle under experimental condition is explained. This method uses the changes in the curvature mode of the structure as the damage identification indicator to detect and locate damage. The curvature mode and the damage identification indicator are explained, the process of the identification is introduced. The method is demonstrated with a FEM (Finite Element Method) analysis on a plate under different damage conditions. And the indicator is improved with a weighting function. Then EMA (Experimental Modal Analysis) is conducted on a damaged and an undamaged rear axle of a vehicle to get the modal parameters for the damage identification indicator which later identifies and locates the damages, thus validating the introduced method.

Study and design of the lifetime durability of mechanical components in an automotive exhaust system becomes a challenging task today for engineers. During the investigation, both experimental tests and finite element simulations are used for the investigation under dynamic engine excitations. For the dynamic finite element analysis, the experimental system must be simplified as a linear mathematic model and real boundary conditions are idealized. Due to this simplification, the dynamic behavior of the finite element model may strongly deviate from that in operational conditions. To gain insight into the dynamic behavior of exhaust systems from simulations, the finite model must be modified based on experimental results. As known the harmonic response is related to modal shapes and engine loads. Therefore, modifications of the finite element model can be done from these two aspects.

In order to satisfy tightening global emissions regulations, diesel truck manufacturers are striving to meet increasingly stringent Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) reduction standards. The majority of heavy duty diesel trucks have integrated urea SCR NOx abatement strategies. To this end, aftertreatment systems need to be properly engineered to achieve high conversion efficiencies. A EuroV intent urea SCR system is evaluated and failed to meet NOx conversion targets with severe urea deposit formation. Systematic enhancements of the design have been performed to enable it to meet targets, including emission reduction efficiency via improved reagent mixing, evaporation, distribution, back pressure, and removing of urea deposits. Multiple urea mixers, injector mounting positions and various system layouts are developed and evaluated, including both CFD analysis and full scale laboratory tests.

Prediction and analysis of the thermo-mechanical coupling behavior in friction braking system is very important for the design and application of vehicle brakes, such as brake judder, brake squeal, brake wear, brake cracks, brake fade. This paper aims to establish a macro-structural model of the thermo-mechanical dynamics of the ventilated disc brake with asymmetrical outer and inner disc thickness, taking into account the friction-velocity curve of the disc pad couple acquired by testing. On the basis of finite elements analysis of the model, the predictions of the thermo-mechanical responses of the brake disc are presented, including disc transient temperature field and normal stress in radial, circular and axial directions, disc lateral deformation and disc thickness variation. Numerical predictions of the disc surface temperature and later distortion are compared with experimental measurements obtained by thermocouples and non-contact displacement sensors.

Durability life is one of the major concerns in the automotive industry. Road Load Data Acquisition (RLDA) is one of the most important steps to verify exhaust system durability performance. RLDA will not only provide data for system level rig testing drive file development but also for exhaust components validation (computing safety factors). Modal transient FEA can be utilized to simulate either vehicle durability testing or sub-system level rig testing. How to simulate correctly is critical in the simulation. One of the most challenging portions in the full exhaust system simulation is isolator modeling due to its non-linear characteristics. However, we have to use linear modeling to simulate isolator in modal transient analysis, which induces errors.

A probabilistic distribution function roughly consists of two parts: the middle part and the tails. The fatigue life distribution at a stress/load level is often described with two-parameter lognormal or Weibull distribution functions, which are more suitable for modeling the mean (middle) behaviors. The domains of the conventional probabilistic distribution functions are often unbounded, either infinite small (0 for the two-parameter Weibull) or infinite large or both. For most materials in low- and medium-cycle fatigue regimes, the domains of fatigue lives are usually bounded, and the inclusion of the bounds in a probabilistic model is often critical in some applications, such as product validation and life management. In this paper, four- and five-parameter Weibull distribution functions for the probabilistic distributions with bounds are developed. Finally, the applications of these new models in fatigue data analysis and damage assessment are provided and discussed.

To meet EPA Tier IV large diesel engine emission targets, intensive development efforts are necessary to achieve NOx reduction and Particulate Matter (PM) reduction targets [1]. With respect to NOx reduction, liquid urea is typically used as the reagent to react with NOx via SCR catalyst [2]. Regarding to PM reduction, additional heat is required to raise exhaust temperature to reach DPF active / passive regeneration performance window [3]. Typically the heat can be generated by external diesel burners which allow diesel liquid droplets to react directly with oxygen in the exhaust gas [4]. Alternatively the heat can be generated by catalytic burners which enable diesel vapor to react with oxygen via DOC catalyst mostly through surface reactions [5].