Search Results

As the automotive industry prepares to roll out an unprecedented range of fully electric propulsion vehicle models over the next few years - it really brings to a head for folks responsible for brakes what used to be the subject of hypothetical musings and are now pivotal questions for system design. How do we really go about designing brakes for electric vehicles, in particular, for the well-known limit condition of descending a steep grade? What is really an “optimal’ design for brakes considering the imperatives for the entire vehicle? What are the real “limit conditions” for usage that drive the fundamental design? Are there really electric charging stations planned for or even already existing in high elevations that can affect regenerative brake capacity on the way down? What should be communicated to drivers (if anything) about driving habits for electric vehicles in routes with significant elevation change?

The purchase of a new automobile is unquestionably a significant investment for most customers, and with this recognition, comes a correspondingly significant expectation for quality and reliability. Amongst automotive systems -when it comes to considerations of reliability - the brakes (perhaps along with the tires) occupy a rarified position of being located in a harsh environment, subjected to continuous wear throughout their use, and are critical to the safe performance of the vehicle. Maintenance of the brake system is therefore a fact of life for most drivers - something that almost everyone must do, yet given the potentially considerable expense, it is something that of great benefit to minimize.

There has been an increasing interest in exploring the potential to reduce energy consumption of future connected and automated vehicles. People have extensively studied various eco-driving implementations that leverage preview information provided by on-board sensors and connectivity, as well as the control authority enabled by automation. Quantitative real-world evaluation of eco-driving benefits is a challenging task. The standard regulatory driving cycles used for measuring exhaust emissions and fuel economy are not truly representative of real-world driving, nor for capturing how connectivity and automation might influence driving trajectories. To adequately consider real-world driving behavior and potential “off-cycle” impacts, this paper presents four collaborative evaluation methods: large-scale simulation, in-depth simulation, vehicle-in-the-loop testing, and vehicle road testing.

This report describes a new driving simulator capability at General Motors (GM) Research and Development's (R&D) Vehicle Development Research (VDR) Laboratory and its application in an iterative HMI development process. The paper also provides an overview of three recent simulator usability tests supporting HMI development.

The implementation of electronic shifters (e-shifter) for automatic transmissions in vehicles has created many new opportunities for the customer facing transmission interface and in-vehicle packaging. E-shifters have become popular in recent years as their smaller physical size leads to packaging advantages, they reduce the mass of the automatic transmission shift system, they are easier to install during vehicle assembly, and act as an enabler for autonomous driving. A button-style e-shifter has the ability to create a unique customer interface to the automatic transmission, as it is very different from the conventional column lever or linear console shifter. In addition to this, a button-style e-shifter can free the center console of valuable package space for other customer-facing functions, such as storage bins and Human-Machine Interface controllers.

Automotive technology is rapidly changing with electrification of vehicles, driver assistance systems, advanced safety systems etc. This advancement in technology is making the task of validation and verification of embedded software complex and challenging. In addition to the component testing, integration testing imposes even tougher requirements for software testing. To meet these challenges dSPACE is continuously evolving the Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) technology to provide a systematic way to manage this task. The paper presents developments in the HIL hardware technology with latest quad-core processors, FPGA based I/O technology and communication bus systems such as Flexray. Also presented are developments of the software components such as advanced user interfaces, GPS information integration, real-time testing and simulation models. This paper provides a real-world example of implication of integration testing on HIL environment for Chassis Controls.

There is higher and higher demand by customers for vehicles with the maximum level of comfort, this aspect being a target to be achieved together with the general trend to increase performance and also with the necessity to reduce engine out emissions to satisfy the new environmental regulations. GMDAT has recently developed new EU5 2.0 and 2.2 liter L4-cylinder turbocharged Diesel engines that, to address customer demands, have improved power, lower exhaust gas emissions and NVH performance aligned to best in class in its segment. With the final aim of making this engine best in class from an NVH perspective, the NVH development has been executed in a very structured way, going through target setting and deployment, concept and design, combustion and mechanical development through computational analysis first and subsequently experimental tests.

Understanding customer expectations is critical to satisfying customers. Holding customer clinics is one approach to set winning targets for the engineering functional measures to drive customer satisfaction. In these clinics, customers are asked to operate and interact with vehicle systems or subsystems such as doors, lift gates, shifters, and seat adjusters, and then rate their experience. From this customer evaluation data, engineers can create customer loss or preference functions. These functions let engineers set appropriate targets by balancing risks and benefits. Statistical methods such as cumulative customer loss function are regularly applied for such analyses. In this paper, a new approach based on the Taguchi method is proposed and developed. It is referred to as Taguchi Customer Loss Function (TCLF).

The comfort assessment of seats in the automotive industry has historically been accomplished by subjective ratings. This approach is expensive and time consuming since it involves multiple prototype seats and numerous people in supporting processes. In order to create a more efficient and robust method, objective metrics must be developed and utilized to establish measurable boundaries for seat performance. Objective measurements already widely accepted, such as IFD (Indentation Force Deflection) or CFD (Compression Force Deflection) [1], have significant shortcomings in defining seat comfort. The most obvious deficiency of these component level tests is that they only deal with a seats' foam rather than the system response. Consequently, these tests fail to take into account significant factors that affect seat comfort such as trim, suspension, attachments and other components.

Although advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have been widely introduced in automotive industry to enhance driving safety and comfort, and to reduce drivers’ driving burden, they do not in general reflect different drivers’ driving styles or customized with individual personalities. This can be important to comfort and enjoyable driving experience, and to improved market acceptance. However, it is challenging to understand and further identify drivers’ driving styles due to large number and great variations of driving population. Previous research has mainly adopted physical approaches in modeling drivers’ driving behavior, which however are often very much limited, if not impossible, in capturing human drivers’ driving characteristics. This paper proposes a reinforcement learning based approach, in which the driving styles are formulated through drivers’ learning processes from interaction with surrounding environment.

This paper studies the use of active rear steering (4-wheel steering) to change the transient lateral dynamics and body motion of passenger cars in the stable or linear region of the tires. Rear steering systems have been used for several decades to improve low speed turning maneuverability and high speed stability, and various control strategies have been previously published. With a model-based, feed-forward rear steer control strategy, the lateral transient can be influenced separately from the steady-state steering gain. This lateral transient is influenced by many vehicle parameters, but we will look at the influence of active rear steer and various tire types such as all-season, snow, and summer. This study will explore the ability for a rear steering system to change the lateral transient to a step steer input, compared to the effect of changing tire types.

Since steering wheel torque feedback is one of the crucial factors for drivers to gain road feel and ensure driving safety, it is especially important to simulate the steering torque feedback for a driving simulator. At present, steering wheel feedback torque is mainly simulated by an electric motor with gear transmission. The torque response is typically slow, which can result in drivers’ discomfort and poor driving maneuverability. This paper presents a novel torque feedback device with magnetorheological (MR) fluid and coil spring. A phase separation control method is also proposed to control its feedback torque, including spring and damping torques respectively. The spring torque is generated by coil spring, the angle of coil spring can be adjusted by controlling a brushless DC motor. The damping torque is generated by MR fluid, the damping coefficient of MR fluid can be adjusted by controlling the current of excitation coil.

The overall technology trend of Active Safety and Driver Assistance systems is relatively clear: increasing capability to avoid crashes as well as convenience on a path toward autonomous driving. What's less obvious, though, is the selection of features/technologies will make sense at each step along the path. Specific vehicle contenting decisions get made early in the vehicle planning process and rely on forecasting factors such as technology readiness, consumer interest, the economics in the supply base, and projected government regulations and consumer metrics. Additionally, for these technologies to be effective, often they need to be introduced in conjunction with other features and grouped in ways that are intuitive and relevant to current consumer needs.

Thermal cabin comfort is the largest consumer of battery energy second only to propulsion in Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV’s). Accurate prediction of thermal comfort in the vehicle cabin with fast turnaround times will allow engineers to study the impact of various thermal comfort technologies and develop energy efficient Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. In this study a novel data-driven model based on physics-guided Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) method was developed to predict Equivalent Homogeneous Temperature (EHT), Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) and cabin air temperature under transient conditions and drive cycles. EHT is a recognized measure of the total heat loss from the human body that can be used to characterize highly non-uniform thermal environments such as a vehicle cabin. The SINDy model was trained on drive cycle data from Climatic Wind Tunnel (CWT) for a representative Battery Electric Vehicle.

A computational study based on unsteady Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes that resolves the gas-liquid interface was performed to examine the unsteady multiphase flow in a 4 cylinder Inline (i-4) engine. In this study, the rotating motion of the crankshaft and reciprocating motion of the pistons were accounted for to accurately predict the oil distribution in various parts of the engine. Three rotational speeds of the crankshaft have been examined: 1000, 2800, and 4000 rpm. Of particular interest is to examine the mechanisms governing the process of oil drawdown from the engine head into the case. The oil distributions in other parts of the engine have also been investigated to understand the overall crankcase breathing process. Results obtained show the drawdown of oil from the head into the case to be strongly dependent on the venting strategy for the foul air going out of the engine through the PCV system.

Due to growing interest in automated driving, the need for better understanding of human driving behavior in uncertain environment, such as driving behavior at un-signalized crossroad and roundabout, has further increased. Driving behavior at roundabout is greatly influenced by different dynamic factors such as speed, distance and circulating flow of the potentially conflicting vehicles, and drivers should choose whether to leave or wait at the upcoming exit according to these factors. In this paper, the influential dynamic factors and driving behavior characteristics at the roundabout is analyzed in detail, random forest method is then deployed to predict the driving behavior. For training the driving behavior model, four typical roundabout layouts were created under a real-time driving simulator with PanoSim-RT and dSPACE. Traffic participants with different motion style were also set in the simulation platform to mimic real driving conditions.

In the course of this paper, a model suitable for studying the performance - in terms of response time, current draw, and peak pressure capacity - of an electric booster-based brake system is introduced. Some discussion about the need the model is attempting to fulfill and how it fits into the vehicle development process is offered, before explaining the model in full. The equations describing the physics of the model are presented, and an explanation of how the elements of the model are integrated together into an easy to use, fast-running spreadsheet environment is given. Case study examples, validating the model against physical test (hardware in the loop) test results are shown, followed by sensitivity studies testing how changing parameters such as caliper Pressure-Volume curves, hydraulic system flow characteristics, voltage supply, and temperature conditions affect performance.

Driver behavior models play a significant role in representing different driving styles and the associated relationships with traffic patterns and vehicle energy consumption in simulation studies. The models often serve as a proxy for baseline human driving when assessing energy-saving strategies that alter vehicle velocity. Such models are especially important in connectivity-enabled energy-saving strategy research because they can easily adapt to changing driving conditions like posted speed limits or change in traffic light state. While numerous driver models exist, parametric driver models provide the flexibility required to represent variability in real-world driving through different combinations of model parameters. These model parameters must be informed by a representative set of parameter values for the driver model to adequately represent a real-world driver.

Hybrid and electric vehicles utilize high power electric motors to propel the vehicle requiring a significant level of electric current to travel between various modules such as energy storage devices, power inverter modules, energy charging modules, and the motors themselves. This electric current creates magnetic fields around the devices themselves and wiring that delivers this current between devices within the vehicle. These devices and wiring exist throughout the vehicle and can even exist near vehicle occupants, which has prompted investigations looking into the short term biological effect these non-ionizing fields can have on the human body. The findings from these investigations have been published by organizations such as the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), and some nations have passed laws regulating the magnetic and electric field exposure to vehicle occupants.

In this paper, a driver identification scheme is studied using general driver inputs such as accelerating, braking and steering behavior, in addition to the settings related to driver’s physical characteristics, such as driver’s seat position. Several drivers are selected with various ages, genders and driving skills to participate in the study. Their driving data is collected using the same test vehicle, and while driving on the same routes. This helps eliminate the inherent vehicle to vehicle variations and the impact of the route differences and enables the identification algorithm to focus on the driving behavior. The driving routes are broken down into shorter segments where the driving features are calculated and populated in these segments. To reduce the identification bias towards certain rare events in the ride, the features are reset at the beginning of each trip segment. This additionally helps to ensure that there is no spill of feature values across the segments.