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This work discusses the development of SAE procedure J2747, “Hydraulic Pump Airborne Noise Bench Test”. This is a test procedure describing a standard method for measuring radiated sound power levels from hydraulic pumps of the type typically used in automotive power steering systems, though it can be extended for use with other types of pumps. This standard was developed by a committee of industry representatives from OEM's, suppliers and NVH testing firms familiar with NVH measurement requirements for automotive hydraulic pumps. Details of the test standard are discussed. The hardware configuration of the test bench and the configuration of the test article are described. Test conditions, data acquisition and post-processing specifics are also included. Contextual information regarding the reasoning and priorities applied by the development committee is provided to further explain the strengths, limitations and intended usage of the test procedure.

This paper provides an overview of rollover crash safety, including field crash statistics, pre- and rollover dynamics, test procedures and dummy responses as well as a bibliography of pertinent literature. Based on the 2001 Traffic Safety Facts published by NHTSA, rollovers account for 10.5% of the first harmful events in fatal crashes; but, 19.5% of vehicles in fatal crashes had a rollover in the impact sequence. Based on an analysis of the 1993-2001 NASS for non-ejected occupants, 10.5% of occupants are exposed to rollovers, but these occupants experience a high proportion of AIS 3-6 injury (16.1% for belted and 23.9% for unbelted occupants). The head and thorax are the most seriously injured body regions in rollovers. This paper also describes a research program aimed at defining rollover sensing requirements to activate belt pretensioners, roof-rail airbags and convertible pop-up rollbars.

The laboratory test method commonly known as “random vibration” is almost always used for Squeak & Rattle testing in today's automotive applications due to its obvious advantages: the convenience in simulating the real road input, the relatively low cost, and efficiency in obtaining the desired test results. Typically, Loudness N10 is used to evaluate the Squeak & Rattle (S&R) performance. However, due to the nature of random distribution of the excitation input, the repeatability of the loudness N10 measurements may vary significantly. This variation imposes a significant challenge when one is searching for a fine design improvement solution in minimizing S&R noise, such as a six-sigma study. This study intends to investigate (1) the range of the variations of random vibration control method as an excitation input with a given PSD, (2) the possibility of using an alternate control method (“time-history replication”) to produce the vibration of a given PSD for a S&R evaluation.

A typical problem that is encountered by drivers of vehicles with manual transmissions is rollback on an incline. This occurs when the driver is trying to coordinate the release of the brake pedal with the release of the clutch pedal and application of the accelerator all at the same time. If not done in harmony, the vehicle will roll down the incline. While the Hill Hold function is a highly desirable feature in manual transmission vehicles, it also enhances the driving experience in automatic transmission vehicles equipped with hybrid powertrains. The Hill Hold feature supports the Stop and Go performance associated with a hybrid powertrain by holding the vehicle on an incline and preventing undesired motion. The objective of this paper is to describe the implementation of the Hill Hold feature using an electric and / or a hydraulic brake control system. The paper describes the moding states in implementing the Hill Hold function at various levels of design complexity.

With increasingly stringent emissions regulations and concurrent requirements for enhanced engine thermal efficiency, a comprehensive characterization of the automotive gasoline fuel spray has become essential. The acquisition of accurate and repeatable spray data is even more critical when a combustion strategy such as gasoline direct injection is to be utilized. Without industry-wide standardization of testing procedures, large variablilities have been experienced in attempts to verify the claimed spray performance values for the Sauter mean diameter, Dv90, tip penetration and cone angle of many types of fuel sprays. A new SAE Recommended Practice document, J2715, has been developed by the SAE Gasoline Fuel Injection Standards Committee (GFISC) and is now available for the measurement and characterization of the fuel sprays from both gasoline direct injection and port fuel injection injectors.

The University of Wisconsin - Madison hybrid vehicle team has designed and constructed a four-wheel drive, charge sustaining, parallel hybrid-electric sport utility vehicle for entry into the FutureTruck 2003 competition. This is a multi-year project utilizing a 2002 4.0 liter Ford Explorer as the base vehicle. Wisconsin's FutureTruck, nicknamed the ‘Moolander’, weighs 2000 kg and includes a prototype aluminum frame. The Moolander uses a high efficiency, 1.8 liter, common rail, turbo-charged, compression ignition direct injection (CIDI) engine supplying 85 kW of peak power and an AC induction motor that provides an additional 60 kW of peak power. The 145 kW hybrid drivetrain will out-accelerate the stock V6 powertrain while producing similar emissions and drastically reducing fuel consumption. The PNGV Systems Analysis Toolkit (PSAT) model predicts a Federal Testing Procedure (FTP) combined driving cycle fuel economy of 16.05 km/L (37.8 mpg).

Implementation of engine turnoff at idle is desirable to gain improvements in vehicle fuel economy. There are a number of alternatives for implementation of the restarting function, including the existing cranking motor, a 12V or 36V belt-starter, a crankshaft integrated-starter-generator (ISG), and other, more complex hybrid powertrain architectures. Of these options, the 12V belt-alternator-starter (BAS) offers strong potential for fast, quiet starting at a lower system cost and complexity than higher-power 36V alternatives. Two challenges are 1) the need to accelerate a large engine to idle speed quickly, and 2) dynamic torque control during the start for smoothness. In the absence of a higher power electrical machine to accomplish these tasks, combustion-assisted starting has been studied as a potential method of aiding a 12V accessory drive belt-alternator-starter in the starting process on larger engines.

Electro-hydraulic actuation has been used widely in automatic transmission designs. With greater demand for premium shift quality of automatic transmissions, higher pressure control accuracy of the transmission electro-hydraulic control system has become one of the main factors for meeting this growing demand. This demand has been the driving force for the development of closed loop pressure controls technology. This paper presents the further research done based upon a previously developed closed loop system. The focus for this research is on the system requirements, such as solenoid driver selection and system latency handling. Both spin-stand and test vehicle setups are discussed in detail. Test results for various configurations are given.

Production software validation is critical during software development, allowing potential quality issues that could occur in the field to be minimized. By developing automated and repeatable software test methods, test cases can be created to validate targeted areas of the control software for confirmation of the expected results from software release to release. This is especially important when algorithm/software development timing is aggressive and the management of development activities in a global work environment requires high quality, and timely test results. This paper presents a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test bench for the validation of production transmission controls software. The powertrain model used within the HIL consists of an engine model and a detailed automatic transmission dynamics model. The model runs in an OPAL-RT TestDrive based HIL system.

This paper presents a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test bench for the validation of production transmission controls software, with a focus on a closed-loop vehicle drive-train model incorporating a detailed automatic transmission plant dynamics model developed for certain applications. Specifically, this paper presents the closed-loop integration of a 6-speed automatic transmission model developed for our HIL transmission controller and algorithm test bench (Opal-RT TestDrive based). The model validation, integration and its application in an HIL test environment are described in details.

During the production controller and software development process, one critical step is the controller and software verification. There are various ways to perform this verification. One of the commonly used methods is to utilize an HIL (hardware-in-the-loop) test bench to emulate powertrain hardware for development and validation of powertrain controllers and software. A key piece of an HIL bench is the plant dynamics model used to emulate the external environment of a modern controller, such as engine (ECM), transmission (TCM) or powertrain controller (PCM), so that the algorithms and their software implementation can be exercised to confirm the desired results. This paper presents a 6-speed automatic transmission plant dynamics model development for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test bench for the validation of production transmission controls software. The modeling method, model validation, and application in an HIL test environment are described in details.