Search Results

Powertrain Systems development is entering a period of unprecedented challenge driven by the convergence of many factors: increasing government regulations for both tailpipe emissions and fuel economy, increased competition, reduced workforce, and tighter program budgets. This has resulted in timing compression and resource reduction that stress a typical Design-Build-Test development practice. The application of telematics and information technology to engineering development can provide the efficiency gains required for engineers to deliver a robust powertrain system in a timely manner. By automating the evaluation of a system's robustness, engineers can focus their time on problem areas during their normal development process and launch with quality. This paper will detail how this methodology was jointly applied by Control-Tec and Navistar to identify and improve system performance before production.

Governmental regulations regarding exterior noise emitted by motor vehicles vary throughout the world. A vehicle which is compliant in one market may not be compliant in another market. In this case, a production North American class 8 truck was being prepared for sale overseas. The requirement to meet European Union (EU) pass-by regulations as tested per the EU standard meant development of a production feasible package to substantially reduce noise emissions without changing any fundamental design or operating parameters of the truck. The development testing was done on a chassis dynamometer in a hemi-anechoic chamber without any specific pass-by noise simulation software. Efforts to develop a reasonably accurate correlation from lab to track, use of acoustic beamforming for source localization and package design iterations leading to a final successful package are discussed.

The heavy-duty diesel industry continues to expand the use of sophisticated electronic controls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel economy in the transportation sector. This inevitably leads to a need for increased knowhow in all aspects of embedded software development, e.g. in writing model-based specifications, rapid controls prototyping, automatic code generation, and hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) testing. In addition, the software development organization has to recognize the need to establish maturity in its verification and validation test framework, which includes, among other things, a proper definition of testing process and workflow, greater organizational focus, and a robust tool architecture for software testing. Navistar has already undertaken a model-based approach to software development and continues to improve their processes, technology, and tooling in this area.