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The Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis (ITS-Davis) has brought together a group of public and industrial partners to demonstrate and evaluate the Siemens-Westinghouse Urea-Selective Catalyst Reduction System (SINOx™). The SINOx System has the potential to generate major reductions in nitrogen oxides (NOx) and the volatile organic fraction (VOF) of particulate (PM) from heavy-duty diesel engines, without increasing fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This demonstration began with engine bench testing at Detroit Diesel Corporation to calibrate the system to attain 1 g/bhp-hr NOx emissions in the transient portion of the US-FTP on a 1999 Series 60 engine that has a 4 g/bhp-hr emission level. The second phase of the project entails an on-highway demonstration of a set of ten, Freightliner Class 8 heavy-duty diesel vehicles. These vehicles are part of the Valley Material Transport fleet based in French Camp, California.

Simultaneous engineering techniques have been applied to a SMC truck hood to reduce the lead-time for production introduction from 22 months to 12 months. Several other technologies were also applied to insure a successful product introduction in this reduced timeframe: computer definition of the hood surface for accuracy, RTM prototype tooling for early design tryout and durability testing, Finite Element Analysis to further confirm durability of the hood structure, and brittle lacquer combined with strain gaging to provide life data using a hydraulic road simulator for load inputs.

This paper describes the ergonomics program at Freightliner and how it is integrated in the engineering and design process. It will also describe how we use advanced technologies such as 3-D Digital Human Modeling with RAMSIS and how these are applied to the design process to ensure optimized ergonomics in our trucks.

The challenge of providing adequate stored electrical energy for heavy-duty vehicles is an increasing one. Batteries must provide the power needed to crank the engine, and still have the energy capacity to supply power to the electrical loads used when the engine is not running. The use of electrochemical capacitors may permit more optimum design of the electrical energy storage system to reduce some of the compromises required in today's systems. This paper discusses the evaluation of electrochemical capacitors and how they could potentially be used to enhance the performance of energy storage systems for heavy-duty vehicles.