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In order to investigate the corrosion resistance of organic composite-coated steel sheets ( OCS ) in a real automotive environment, many kinds of corrosion tests were performed on test pieces and real automotive doors. Tests with a corrosive solution including iron rust were introduced to simulate the real corrosive environment of automotive doors. The relationship between the components of OCS and the corrosion resistance in the rust-including tests was examined. In addition, electrochemical studies were performed. Results indicate OCS has much better corrosion resistance than plated steel sheets with heavier coating weight in all tests. OCS shows excellent corrosion resistance in rust-free corrosive solution, however, some types of OCS do have corrosion concerns in rust-including tests. It became clear that these OCS types have an organic coating with lower cross-linking.

To coat flexible parts such as R-RIM Urethane Fascia baked at low temperatures, a different painting approach from one for steel parts is employed. Since paint color differences between the fascia and the body would downgrade the product, a color matching technique is required. For better color matching, matching of color shades was attempted with improvement of paint resin, optimal pigment blending and analysis of how color is affected by varying conditions. Application of a primer for finishing has brought about the desired paint film distinctness. Introduced was also the high weatherablilty paint for plastic parts. All such techniques were utilized on R-RIM Urethane Fascia to achieve high-grade color matching.

Spot friction welding (SFW) is a cost-effective spot joining technology for aluminum sheets compared with resistance spot welding (RSW) [1]. In this study, coated mild steel was spot friction welded to 6000 series aluminum using a tool with shoulder diameter of 10 mm and welding conditions of 1500-2000 rpm and time of 5 s. Testing showed that tensile shear strength increased as the solidus temperature of the coating on the steel decreased. Microstructure characterizations of steel/Al joint interfaces showed that zinc from the coatings was incorporated into the stir nuggets and that intermetallic phases may have formed but not in continuous layers. Some Al-Zn oxides that appeared to be amorphous were also found in the joint interfaces.

The objective of the present study is to analyze soot formation in diesel engine combustion by using multi-dimensional combustion simulations with a parallelized explicit ODE solver. Parallelized CHEMEQ2 was used to perform detailed chemical kinetics in KIVA-4 code. CHEMEQ2 is an explicit stiff ODE solver developed by Mott et al. which is known to be faster than traditional implicit ODE solvers, e.g., DVODE. In the present study, about eight times faster computation was achieved with CHEMEQ2 compared to DVODE when using a single thread. Further, by parallelizing CHEMEQ2 using OpenMP, the simulations could be run not only on calculation servers but also on desktop machines. The computation time decreases with the number of threads used. The parallelized CHEMEQ2 enabled combustion and emission characteristics, including detailed soot formation processes, to be predicted using KIVA-4 code with detailed chemical kinetics without the need for reducing the reaction mechanism.

The Wankel rotary engine is more compact than conventional piston engines, but its oil and fuel consumption must be reduced to satisfy emission standards and customer expectations. A key step toward this goal is to develop a better understanding of the apex seal lubrication to reduce oil injection while reducing friction and maintaining adequate wear. This paper presents an apex seal dynamics model capable of estimating relative wear and predicting friction, by modeling the gas and oil flows at the seal interfaces with the rotor housing and groove flanks. Model predictions show that a thin oil film can reduce wear and friction, but to a limited extent as the apex seal running face profile is sharp due to the engine kinematics.

Mazda has developed new-generation V6 engines. The new V6 series comprises 2.5-litre, 2.0-litre and 1.8-litre engines. The development objective was to ensure high output performance for excellent “acceleration and top-end feel”, while satisfying “Clean & Economy” requirements. The engines also had to have a pleasant sound. Mazda selected for these engines a short stroke, 60° V-shaped 24 valve DOHC with an aluminum cylinder block. Various techniques are adopted as follows: Combustion improvement and optimization of control to achieve high fuel economy and low emissions Improvement of volumetric efficiency, inertia reduction of rotating parts and optimization of control to achieve excellent “acceleration and top-end feel” Adoption of a high-rigidity, two-piece cylinder block and crankshaft and weight reduction of reciprocating parts to achieve a pleasant engine sound Material changes and elimination of dead space to achieve a compact, lightweight engine

New material and processing technologies were developed for main components of the rotary engine to establish its reliability and durability. The components discussed in this paper are the rotor housing, side housing, and sealing elements. Also described are the material and processing technologies which resolved problems about their strength, rigidity, wear, etc.

This paper studies the ignition processes of two biodiesel from two different feedstock sources, namely waste cooked oil (WCO) and palm oil (PO). They were investigated using the direct photography through high-speed video observations and detailed chemical kinetics. The detailed chemical kinetics modeling was carried out to complement data acquired using the high-speed video observations. For the high-speed video observations, an image intensifier combined with OH* filter connected to a high-speed video camera was used to obtain OH* chemiluminscence image near 313 nm. The OH* images were used to obtain the experimental ignition delay of the biodiesel fuels. For the high-speed video observations, experiments were done at an injection pressure of 100, 200 and 300 MPa using a 0.16 mm injector nozzle.

The objectives of this work were to establish a method to diagnose the source of gear rattle and to evaluate the rattle objectively. The methods are described in detail, applied to two passenger cars as an example. Investigations were conducted into transmission rattle under transient conditions. By analysing the transmission casing vibration with respect to the engine flywheel angle, and presenting the data in the form of contour maps, it was shown that the two vehicles had different characteristics of gear impacts. Further measurements of the angular motion of each gear revealed the impact conditions at the input mesh in the transmission largely controlled the character of the rattle and were fundamentally different between the two vehicles. A rattle index was developed, based on the casing vibration under transient driving conditions.

For a crash analysis using FEM with respect to a structure that is composed of thin plates, we developed a new structure study method (plastic strain equalization method). This method defines the optimality criteria as in the linear analysis of a fully stressed design and indirectly finds an optimal solution. We assume that a structure with both a lightweight and high collapse load should have sufficient strength corresponding to impact loads in each area. This means that at any area the load value and the strength are balanced at a certain value. For the criteria that the plastic strain value is equal over the whole area, a solution can be found by repeating computations. The design variable is the thickness of shell elements and the computation is iterated until plastic strain values are almost equal. In this paper, a structure with both a lightweight and a high collapse load could be optimized by equalizing the plastic strain value.

Aldehydes are the cause of sick house syndrome or chemical sensitivity and have harmful influences for human beings. In the cabin of vehicle, aldehydes which are included in the volatilization gas from the interior materials, DE emission gas in intake air, cigarette smoke and so on spoil the comfortableness. Active carbon, which has been used as an adsorbent, shows an excellent removal efficiency for most of the gas components by physical adsorption. But for aldehydes, it has difficulty because aldehydes are hard to be adsorbed physically. We have developed new aldehydes adsorbent undergoing addition reaction with gaseous aldehydes on its surface. Aldehydes capture material (ACM) make use of the chemical reaction using a resorcin as a reagent and an H-type zeolite as a water-containing support, and active hydrogen is used as a catalyst to promote the reaction. In addition, we have applied ACM to cabin air filter (CAF) of vehicle.

A technique to strengthen body frame with a polymeric structural foam has been developed with benefits of reducing vehicle weight and improving drivability and fuel economy. The idea of this new technology was evolved from the concept that body frame strength will increase drastically if the body frames are prevented from folding on collision. The energy of a collision impact would be effectively absorbed if weak portions of body frames are reinforced by a high strength structural foam. The new technology composed of the high strength structural foam and a light-weight frame structure with partial foam filling is reported here.

The present trend of internal combustion engines toward higher-speed and higher-output capacity is pressing the need for improved lubrication of sliding parts in the combustion chamber to secure reliability. To meet this need, investigation into frictional phenomena was made with a rotary engine, which led to the development of a method of coating the inner surface of the rotor housing with fluorocarbon resin superior in self-lubrication and friction resistance. Rotary engines given this surface finishing showed no trace of irregular wear of the sliding surfaces even when subjected, prior to completion of run-in firing (in green condition), to high-speed and high-load tests, indicating this method's noteworthy benefit of improving comformability. This method offers an excellent surface finish for sliding parts of internal combustion engines (rotary and reciprocating) which will gain increasingly higher output in the future.

A method was studied for simultaneous zinc phosphating on aluminum and steel surfaces to obtain high corrosion resistance on aluminum surfaces, which conventional phosphatic processing could not provide with sufficient corrosion resistance. Since aluminum is protected by an oxide film on its surface, it has poor processability with zinc phosphating solutions applied to steel. An appropriate quantity of fluoride was therefore added to improve processing, and the coating film, aluminum composition and surface conditions were optimized to suppress filiform corrosion, which is characterized by string-like blisters of paint film starting from a paint defect. In addition, in view of the actual production environment, the corrosion resistance of the ground area made for readjustment after stamping was studied for the optimization of the processing solution.

A new and very practical technology has been developed to prevent gasoline permeation in plastic fuel tanks. The main body of the new tank is multi-layered, consist of high density polyethylene (HDPE), adhesive resin, polyamide (PA). The top and bottom parts of the tank are single layer consist of HDPE. This method has many advantages including such features as excellent gasoline permeation prevention, the processing time is the same as that for conventional blow molding methods, the method is safe because no toxic substances are used in the treatment process, the cost-performance ratio is excellent due to the minimum use of expensive auxiliaries (PA, adhesive resin), and the top and bottom single layer flashes can be re-used if they are pulverized.

Magnesium has the lowest specific gravity of all metals used for structural members. The application of magnesium for a road wheel leads to improved vehicle handling and drivability because of the reduction of an unsprung weight. The authors have developed new magnesium alloy which shows excellent mechanical properties and attained a magnesium forged road wheel that is 30% lighter than aluminum wheels.

An all-ceramic swirl chamber has been developed which meets the 1987 U.S. particulate emission standard for LDV. The all ceramic construction raises combustion temperature to reduce particulate emission to the necessary level. But particulate reduction led to two-fold increase in NOx. This problem was coped with by applying EGR and fuel injection timing control. As a result NOx has been cut to the same level as with a base engine and particulate has been further reduced.

Disk brake rotors require reduced unsprung weight and improved cooling ability for improved fade performance. Automotive brake rotors made from aluminum metal matrix composites (MMC) were evaluated by dynamometer and vehicle tests for the required improvement. The friction and wear performance and the thermal response during fade stops were compared with those of commercially produced gray cast iron (GCI) rotors. It was proved that MMC is a very effective material to replace GCI for brake rotor application, as it reduces unsprung weight and decreases maximum operation temperature of the brake system.

The U.S. Federal Emission Standards ruled that particulate emissions from '87 models should be no more than 0.20 g/mile for passenger cars and 0.26 g/mile for light-duty trucks. A complete ceramic swirl chamber with a heat insulating air gap has been developed to meet the above standards without sacrificing fuel economy or power output. The whole process by which the ceramic swirl chamber was developed will be described: optimization of materials, design, manufacturing, and the method and system of quality control. The results of long term durability tests will be described, which demonstrate the chamber's excellent reliability.

This paper describes a calculating method to predict the quasi-static collapsing behaviors of spot-welded closed-hat section curved beams under axial compression. The overall deformat ions and the local buckling modes of beams were calculated using a geometrical model. Force-displacement relations were predicted by a elastic-plastic structural analysis method using the ‘plastic hinge’ concept. Collapsing tests were made on beams which are differenting section size, rotation angle, and metal sheet thickness. Comparisons between the calculated and experimental results of deformed shapes of beams, the local buckling modes and the force displacement relations are discussed.