Search Results

In Automotive Lighting, we have spent some time in the last years to discuss on the styling opportunities by introducing LED Light Sources instead of Halogen and/or Xenon bulbs. The appearance and the signature of a given vehicle defined by dedicated lighting equipment were and is still today a very important topic to develop a competitive vehicle. The light performance is under these boundary conditions a question of second priority. This is also valid, because lighting suppliers and car manufacturers achieved in the past decade a lot of improvements and have reached a level of performance, which is comfortable overall for the consumers. The issue with glare, which everybody has when driving at night is already accepted today as a given fact. This paper tries to define the next steps lighting suppliers need to take in order to improve this glare issue by considering alternative solutions.

Vehicles with low power consumption, less CO2 emission and reduced fuel consumption rate are more and more in the focus and are required by customers. Lighting is able to contribute in introducing Low Power HID (High Intensity Discharge) and LED (Light Emitting Diode) light sources. The paper will present a new LED Headlamp system with Low Beam, High Beam, and Daytime Running Light (DRL). The DRL will be mandatory for all new vehicles according to ECE (Economic Commission for Europe) regulation in 2011. The multifunctional design of such a headlamp system makes it possible to achieve an optimum balance between the requested light performance at night and the challenge to reduce power consumption, to reduce CO2 and to achieve economic fuel consumption rates. The paper describes the new designed headlamp system, reports on the light performance results and indicates the opportunities for the future automotive market.

In 2003, the first AFS systems have been launched in various vehicles. The movable headlamps should improve the visibility mainly in curved roads. Especially the comparison between the Xenon (HID) - version and the Halogen system was noticed with considerably high interest. The paper describes the experimental study we did in order to find out, what the real benefit on the road for the consumer is going to be. The evaluation shows, that even with the AFS Halogen solution we can report a higher visibility in curved roads than with the static Xenon system. Additionally, the introduction of static bending lights and cornering lights in combination or as a stand alone system will be considered. The subjective impression for a better visibility for the drivers when parking or making U-turns could be clearly detected by the experimental survey. Nevertheless, the dynamic bending lights are getting the highest priority for the drivers at night.

Dominating sound sources of vehicles (like the combustion engine and the powertrain) have been significantly improved in terms of sound emission during the last decades. Therefore the acoustic performance of A/C-compressors becomes more important for passenger comfort. At engine idling and at extreme temperatures the A/C-compressor can be audible as the significant sound source. Compressor's air borne noise radiation can be quantified by the sound power. The reverberation chamber method is a suitable procedure for the determination of sound power levels. A small reverberation chamber was designed at Visteon for this technique. Acoustic characteristics of the sound field inside the chamber were determined. Objective evaluation of the air borne sound emission of five different refrigerant compressors was performed. The reverberation chamber method was then compared to the sound intensity method for sound power determination.

Within the last decade we have noticed considerable improvements in Automotive lighting devices. Xenon headlights, Systems with low beam and high beam out of one Xenon bulb, so called Bi-Function headlights and in the near future, advanced front lighting systems (AFS) will lead to an important contribution in terms of safety when driving at night. In parallel the philosophy of automotive engineering has changed from individual technical solutions contributing to improved value within the vehicles to a system integration concept, where individual technical solutions will be combined to one specific innovation. The use of various sensors and information tools for different and multiple applications within a vehicle is highly appreciated and will lead to synergies with reduced costs for the individual components. This philosophy will also be applied for lighting systems in the future. The potential applications and possible solutions will be described within this paper.

Automotive HVAC systems contribute to acoustic discomfort caused by high interior noise level especially at extreme climate conditions. Progress in vehicle acoustics has lead to more NVH optimization efforts concerning air handling devices. Various testing and analysis techniques are used at Visteon Product Development Climate to investigate noise and vibration problems. Four of them are chosen as examples. Sound Power can be determined with the sound intensity method or the reverberation chamber method. A comparison of these methods is performed. The vibrational behavior of air handling systems is investigated with experimental modal analysis and running mode analysis. Both techniques are applicable for air handling units.

Due to the general requirements in the automotive industry to reduce the power consumption, fuel consumption rate and CO2 emission a new HID (High Intensity Discharge) bulb with only 25W is under development for front lighting systems. A first headlamp integrated in a hybrid vehicle is now launched as a first application in the market. The current regulation in ECE allows to get rid of the mandatory headlamp cleaning system and the automatic leveling requirement once the 25W HID bulb is applied. The reason for this is the objective luminous flux of the 25W HID bulb, which emits less than 2000 lm, a boundary defined in the regulation, where a headlamp cleaning and an automatic leveling is requested. That simplifies especially the integration in smaller vehicles and electric and hybrid vehicles. The paper describes the special design of the headlamp, the projector unit, the light performance, packaging advantages and future outlook of further applications in the near future.

The fuel consumption and the emissions of modern passenger cars are highly affected by the fluid and material temperatures of the engine. Unfortunately, the high thermal efficiencies of Direct Injection (DI) Diesel and Spark Ignition (SI) engines cause in many driving situations low heat transfer to the engine components and especially to the oil and the coolant. In these conditions the normal operating temperatures are not achieved. Especially at low ambient temperatures and low engine loads the requirement of a comfortable cabin heating and a fast warm-up of engine oil and coolant cannot be satisfied simultaneously. To reach the required warm-up performance, an Exhaust Heat Recovery System (EHRS) will be demonstrated. Further design and optimization processes for modern cooling systems in fuel-efficient engines require numerical and experimental investigations of supplemental heater systems to meet all requirements under all circumstances.