Search Results

The fuel consumption and emissions of diesel engines is strongly influenced by the injection rate pattern, which influences the in-cylinder mixing and combustion process. Knowing the exact injection rate is mandatory for an optimal diesel combustion development. The short injection time of no more than some milliseconds prevents a direct flow rate measurement. However, the injection rate is deduced from the pressure change caused by injecting into a fuel reservoir or pipe. In an ideal case, the pressure increase in a fuel pipe correlates with the flow rate. Unfortunately, real measurement devices show measurement inaccuracies and errors, caused by non-ideal geometrical shapes as well as variable fuel temperature and fuel properties along the measurement pipe. To analyze the thermal effect onto the measurement results, an available rate measurement device is extended with a flexible heating system as well as multiple pressure and temperature sensors.

This paper describes a new concept for a Ford GT instrument panel (IP) based on structural magnesium components, which resulted in what may be the industry's first structural IP (primary load path). Two US-patent applications are ongoing. Design criteria included cost, corrosion protection, crashworthiness assessments, noise vibration harshness (NVH) performance, and durability. Die casting requirements included feasibility for production, coating strategy and assembly constraints. The magnesium die-cast crosscar beam, radio box and console top help meet the vehicle weight target. The casting components use an AM60 alloy that has the necessary elongation properties required for crashworthiness. The resulting IP design has many unique features and the flexibility present in die-casting that would not be possible using conventional steel stampings and assembly techniques.

Ford GT 2005 vehicle was designed for performance, timing, cost, and styling to preserve Ford GT40 vintage look. In this vehicle program, many advanced manufacturing processes and light materials were deployed including aluminum and magnesium. This paper briefly explains one unique design concept for a Ford GT instrument panel comprised of a structural magnesium cross-car beam and other components, i.e. radio box and console top, which is believed to be the industry's first structural I/P from vehicle crash load and path perspectives. The magnesium I/P design criteria include magnesium casting properties, cost, corrosion protection, crashworthiness assessments, noise vibration harshness performance, and durability. Magnesium die casting requirements include high pressure die cast process with low casting porosity and sound quality, casting dimensional stability, corrosion protection and coating strategy, joining and assembly constraints.

The Ford GT powertrain (see Figure 1) is an integrated system developed to preserve the heritage of the LeMans winning car of the past. A team of co-located engineers set out to establish a system that could achieve this result for today's supercar. Multiple variations of engines, transaxles, cooling systems, component locations and innovations were analyzed to meet the project objectives. This paper covers the results and achievements of that team.

The High Voltage Power Distribution Unit (PDU) is constructed of magnesium in support of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) weight reduction efforts. The PDU distributes and controls a nominal 75 kilowatts of power generated by the Fuel Cell, the primary source of High Voltage power, to all the vehicle loads and accessories. The constraints imposed on the design of the PDU resulted in a component highly susceptible to general and galvanic corrosion. Corrosion abatement was the focus of the PDU redesign. This paper describes the redesign efforts undertaken by Ford personnel to improve the part robustness and corrosion resistance.

Designing an efficient vehicle coolant system depends on meeting target coolant flow rate to different components with minimum energy consumption by coolant pump. The flow resistance across different components and hoses dictates the flow supplied to that branch which can affect the effectiveness of the coolant system. Hydraulic tests are conducted to understand the system design for component flow delivery and pressure drops and assess necessary changes to better distribute the coolant flow from the pump. The current study highlights the ability of a complete 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation to effectively mimic a hydraulic test. The coolant circuit modeled in this simulation consists of an engine water-jacket, a thermostat valve, bypass valve, a coolant pump, a radiator, and flow path to certain auxiliary components like turbo charger, rear transmission oil cooler etc.

This paper presents part of the analytical work performed for the development and optimization of the 3.5L EcoBoost combustion system from Ford Motor Company. The 3.5L EcoBoost combustion system is a direct injected twin turbocharged combustion system employing side-mounted multi-hole injectors. Upfront 3D CFD, employing a Ford proprietary KIVA-based code, was extensively used in the combustion system development and optimization phases. This paper presents the effect of intake port design with various levels of tumble motion on the combustion system characteristics. A high tumble intake port design enforces a well-organized stable motion that results in higher turbulence intensity in the cylinder that in turn leads to faster burn rates, a more stable combustion and less fuel enrichment requirement at full load.

The performance of three way and NOx catalysts was evaluated on vehicles utilizing non-feedback fuel control and electronic feedback fuel control. The vehicles accumulated 80,450 km (50,000 miles) using fuels representing the extremes in hydrogen-carbon ratio available for commercial use. Feedback carburetion compared to non-feedback carburetion improved highway fuel economy by about 0.4 km/l (1 mpg) and reduced deterioration of NOx with mileage accumulation. NOx emissions were higher with the low H/C fuel in the three way catalyst system; feedback reduced the fuel effect on NOx in these cars by improving conversion efficiency with the low H/C fuel. Feedback had no measureable effect on HC and CO catalyst efficiency. Hydrocarbon emissions were lower with the low H/C fuel in all cars. Unleaded gasoline octane improver, MMT, at 0.015g Mn/l (0.06 g/gal) increased tailpipe hydrocarbon emissions by 0.05 g/km (0.08 g/mile).

Springback is a serious problem in sheet metal stamping. It measures the difference between the final shape of the part and the shape of the forming die. Sheet metal forming simulation has made significant progress in predicting springback and several computer simulation codes are commercially available to predict and compensate for it in tool design. The accurate prediction of springback is important and there is a need to validate and verify those predictions with experimental results. Current validation techniques lack standardized procedures, require measurement fixtures that may impose unrealistic restraint on the part, require profiling equipment such as CMM or laser scanning and for the most part produce small springback which reduces measurement accuracy and increases experimental error. A benchmark test has been developed which addresses all these concerns and compares springback predictions by various numerical simulation codes with each other and with experimental results.

Experimental procedures and results of a benchmark test for springback are reported and a complete suite of obtained data is provided for the validation of forming and springback simulation software. The test is usually referred as the Slit-Ring test where a cylindrical cup is first formed by deep drawing and then a ring is cut from the mid-section of the cup. The opening of the ring upon slitting releases the residual stresses in the formed cup and provides a valuable set of easy-to-measure, easy-to-characterize springback data. The test represents a realistic deep draw stamping operation with stretching and bending deformation, and is highly repeatable in a laboratory environment. In this study, six different automotive materials are evaluated.

The proposed technique is a tailored deep neural network (DNN) training approach which uses an iterative process to support the learning of DNNs by targeting their specific misclassification and missed detections. The process begins with a DNN that is trained on freely available annotated image data, which we will refer to as the Base model, where a subset of the categories for the classifier are related to the automotive theater. A small set of video capture files taken from drives with test vehicles are selected, (based on the diversity of scenes, frequency of vehicles, incidental lighting, etc.), and the Base model is used to detect/classify images within the video files. A software application developed specifically for this work then allows for the capture of frames from the video set where the DNN has made misclassifications. The corresponding annotation files for these images are subsequently corrected to eliminate mislabels.

Software development for automotive application requires several iterations in order to tune parameters and strategy logic to operate accordantly with optimal performance. Thus, in this paper we present an optimizer method and tool used to tune calibration parameters related to torque estimation for a hybrid automatic transmission application. This optimizer aims to minimize the time invested during the software calibration and software development phases that could take significant time in order to cover the different driving conditions under which a hybrid automatic transmission can operate. For this reason, an optimization function based on the Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm using Matlab software helps to find optimized calibration values based on a cost function (square sum error minimization).

Ford Motor Company has recently implemented a Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) testing system for a new, highly complex, hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) Electronic Control Unit (ECU). The implementation of this HIL system has been quick and effective, since it is based on proven Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) automation tools for real-time that allow for a very flexible and intuitive design process. An overview of the HIL system implementation process and the derived development benefits will be shown in this paper. The initial concept for the use of this HIL system was a complete closed-loop vehicle simulation environment for Vehicle System Controller testing, but the paper will show that this concept has evolved to allow for the use of the HIL system for many facets of the design process.

The high temperature fatigue behaviors of three cast aluminum alloys used for cylinder head fabrication - 319, A356 and AS7GU - are compared under isothermal fatigue at room temperature and elevated temperatures. The thermo-mechanical fatigue behavior for both out-of-phase and in-phase loading conditions (100-300°C) has also been investigated. It has been observed that all three of these alloys present a very similar behavior under both isothermal and thermo-mechanical low-cycle fatigue. Under high-cycle fatigue, however, the alloys A356 and AS7GU exhibit superior performance.

Dent resistance is an important attribute in the automotive panel design, and the ability to accurately predict a panel's dentability requires careful considerations of sheet metal properties, including property changes from stamping process. The material is often work-hardened significantly during forming, and its thickness is reduced somewhat. With increased demand for weight reduction, vehicle designers are seriously pushing to use thinner-gauged advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) as outer body panels such as fenders, hoods and decklids, with the expectation that its higher strength will offset reduced thickness in its dentability. A comparative study is conducted in this paper for a BH210 steel fender as baseline design and thinner DP500 steel as the new design.

To advance vehicle lightweighting, chopped carbon fiber sheet molding compound (SMC) is identified as a promising material to replace metals. However, there are no effective tools and methods to predict the mechanical property of the chopped carbon fiber SMC due to the high complexity in microstructure features and the anisotropic properties. In this paper, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) approach is used to model the SMC microstructure. Two modeling methods, the Voronoi diagram-based method and the chip packing method, are developed to populate the RVE. The elastic moduli of the RVE are calculated and the two methods are compared with experimental tensile test conduct using Digital Image Correlation (DIC). Furthermore, the advantages and shortcomings of these two methods are discussed in terms of the required input information and the convenience of use in the integrated processing-microstructure-property analysis.

Two oxygenated fuels were evaluated on a single-cylinder diesel engine and compared to three hydrocarbon diesel fuels. The oxygenated fuels included canola biodiesel (canola methyl esters, CME) and CME blended with dibutyl succinate (DBS), both of which are or have the potential to be bio-derived. DBS was added to improve the cold flow properties, but also reduced the cetane number and net heating value of the resulting blend. A 60-40 blend of the two (60% vol CME and 40% vol DBS) provided desirable cold flow benefits while staying above the U.S. minimum cetane number requirement. Contrary to prior vehicle test results and numerous literature reports, single-cylinder engine testing of both CME and the 60-40 blend showed no statistically discernable change in NOx emissions relative to diesel fuel, but only when constant intake oxygen was maintained.

Combustion in modern spark-ignition (SI) engines is increasingly knock-limited with the wide adoption of downsizing and turbocharging technologies. Fuel autoignition conditions are different in these engines compared to the standard Research Octane Number (RON) and Motor Octane Numbers (MON) tests. The Octane Index, OI = RON - K(RON-MON), has been proposed as a means to characterize the actual fuel anti-knock performance in modern engines. The K-factor, by definition equal to 0 and 1 for the RON and MON tests respectively, is intended to characterize the deviation of modern engine operation from these standard octane tests. Accurate knowledge of K is of central importance to the OI model; however, a single method for determining K has not been well accepted in the literature.

As part of the International Lubricant Standardization and Approval Committee's (ILSAC) goal of developing a global automatic transmission fluid (ATF) specification, members have been evaluating test methods that are currently used by various automotive manufacturers for qualifying ATF for use in their respective transmissions. This report deals with comparing test methods used for determining torque capacity in friction systems (shifting clutches). Three test methods were compared, the Plate Friction Test from the General Motors DEXRON®-III Specification, the Friction Durability Test from the Ford MERCON® Specification, and the Japanese Automotive Manufacturers Association Friction Test - JASO Method 348-95. Eight different fluids were evaluated. Friction parameters used in the comparison were breakaway friction, dynamic friction torque at midpoint and the end of engagement, and the ratio of end torque to midpoint torque.

With concerns over increasing worldwide demand for gasoline and greenhouse gases, many automotive companies are increasing their product lineup of vehicles to include flex-fuel vehicles that are capable of operating on fuel blends ranging from 100% gasoline up to a blend of 15% gasoline/85% ethanol (E85). For the purpose of this paper, data was obtained that will enable an evaluation relating to the effect the use of E85 fuel has on exhaust system surface temperatures compared to that of regular unleaded gasoline while the vehicle undergoes a typical drive cycle. Three vehicles from three different automotive manufacturers were tested. The surface of the exhaust systems was instrumented with thermocouples at specific locations to monitor temperatures from the manifold to the catalytic converter outlet. The exhaust system surface temperatures were recorded during an operation cycle that included steady vehicle speed operation; cold start and idle and wide open throttle conditions.