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Extensive researches are being performed on a world wide basis with the aim of enhancing occupant protection on the side impact. The test methodology for side impact can be divided into two general groups; Sub-System Tests Full Scale Tests. However, the advantages of full scale test is that it is possible to make an integrated statement on the protective potential of the structural stiffness of the struck vehicle and the padding for a selected collision speed and type of collision. The advantages of sub-system test methodology can be simulates more exactly for wide range of accident(i.e. collision directions, impact points etc.). The latter test procedure can be carried out at a relatively earlier stage in the development of a new vehicle, and also can be reduce the time and cost. The Computer Controlled Composite Test Procedure(CC-CTP) presented in this paper has been developed by CCMC (Committee of Common Market Automobile Constructors).

This research was to model a 6×4 tractor-trailer rig using TruckSim and simulate severe braking maneuvers with hardware in the loop and software in the loop simulations. For the hardware in the loop simulation (HIL), the tractor model was integrated with a 4s4m anti-lock braking system (ABS) and straight line braking tests were conducted. In developing the model, over 100 vehicle parameters were acquired from a real production tractor and entered into TruckSim. For the HIL simulation, the hardware consisted of a 4s4m ABS braking system with six brake chambers, four modulators, a treadle and an electronic control unit (ECU). A dSPACE simulator was used as the “interface” between the TruckSim computer model and the hardware.

Ride quality of medium truck became a very important factor in the suspension design, due to the demand of more comfortable ride of passengers. This study describes how to determine and evaluate design parameters related to the chassis suspension system with time and frequency analysis. The spring stiffness and damping force of the chassis suspension system were obtained by observing the vertical acceleration PSD. The simulation was carried out on various road profiles, which was suggested by ISO. The pitching motion of the medium size truck was observed to improve the ride quality. A computer simulated truck model was constructed using DADS, a commercial dynamic analysis software, in order to simulate the truck motions. From the result of the sensitivity analysis of suspension parameters, it was concluded that the spring and the shock absorbers affect the pitching of the vehicle. In order to validate the computer simulated truck model, a physical prototype was constructed and tested.

A throttle/brake control law for the intelligent cruise control (ICC) system has been proposed in this paper. The ICC system consists of a vehicle detection sensor, a controller and throttle/brake actuators. For the control of a throttle/brake system, we introduced a solenoid-valve-controlled electronic vacuum booster (EVB) and a step-motor-controlled throttle actuator. Nonlinear computer model for the electronic vacuum booster has been developed and the simulations were performed using a complete nonlinear vehicle model. The proposed control law in this paper consists of an algorithm that generates the desired acceleration/deceleration profile in an ICC situation, a throttle/brake switching logic and a throttle and brake control algorithm based on vehicle dynamics. The control performance has been investigated through computer simulations and experiments.

This study presents engine test results of HMC's piston-ported 2-stroke gasoline engine. This single cylinder engine of 400cc displacement has featured in direct injection(DI) of fuel and external blower scavenging of air. Two different concepts of DI system were adopted, one is high pressure fuel injection(HPFI) system for solid fuel only and the other is low pressure air-assisted fuel injection(AAFI) system. Two kinds of engines with different scavenging intake port shapes and areas were tested to find the effect of scavenging port type on engine performance. Also tested were trends of BSFC, BSHC and BSCO versus fuel injection timing and engine speed with HPFI and AAFI, respectively. Power and boost pressure at full load and BSFC and BSHC at part load were tested.

This paper proposes a torque tracking algorithm via steer by wire to achieve the target steering feel and proposed a modified friction model to obtain return-ability. A three dimensional reference steering wheel torque map is designed using the measurement data of the steering characteristics of the target vehicle at a transition test and a weave test. In order to track the reference steering wheel torque, a sliding mode control is used in the tracking algorithm. In addition, to achieve return-ability, the modified friction model for steer by wire is used instead of the friction model defined in the reference steering wheel torque map. The modified friction model is composed of various models according to the angular velocity. The angular velocity and the angular acceleration used in the control algorithm are estimated using a kalman filter.

This paper presents the integrated chassis control(ICC) of four-wheel drive(4WD), electronic stability control(ESC), electronic control suspension(ECS), and active roll stabilizer(ARS) for limit handling. The ICC consists of three layers: 1) a supervisor determines target vehicle states; 2) upper level controller calculates generalized forces; 3) lower level controller, which is contributed in this paper, optimally allocates the generalized force to chassis modules. The lower level controller consists of two integrated parts, 1) longitudinal force control part (4WD/ESC) and 2) vertical force control part (ECS/ARS). The principal concept of both algorithms is optimally utilizing the capability of the each tire by monitoring tire saturation, with tire combined slip. By monitoring tire saturation, 4WD/ESC integrated system minimizes the sum of the tire saturation, and ECS/ARS integrated system minimizes the variance of the tire saturation.

After the second worldwide oil crisis, Brazil put in place by 1975 a strategic plan to stimulate the usage of ethanol (from sugar cane), to be mixed to the gasoline or to be sold as 100% ethanol fuel (known as E100). To enable an engine to operate with both gasoline and ethanol (and their mixtures), by 2003 the “Flex Fuel” technology was implemented. By 2012 calendar year, from a total of about 3.8 million vehicles sold in the Brazilian market, 91% offered the “Flex Fuel” technology, and great majority used a gasoline sub-tank to assist on cold starts (typically below 15°C, where more than 85% of ethanol is present in fuel tank). The gasoline sub-tank system suffers from issues such as gasoline deterioration, crash-worthiness and user inconvenience such as bad drivability during engine warm up phase. This paper presents fuel injector technologies capable of rapidly electrically heating the ethanol fuel for the Brazilian transportation market.

A nano-sized PM and THC emission characteristics were investigated according to the fuel injection strategy such as a pressure and timing in the GDI engine. On the part-load condition, the particulate emissions exhibited a strong sensitivity to the injection timing. The fuel injection pressure also had a great association with the nano-particles and THC. A size of PM exhausted from the GDI engine located near 10nm on the part-load. In contrast, accumulation mode particles within 60 - 80nm mainly exhausted during the cold transient start phase. Increment of fuel injection pressure positively affected on the nano-particle and THC emissions during the start of the engine, as well.

In order to extend the operability limit of the gasoline compression ignition (GCI) engine, as an avenue for low temperature combustion (LTC) regime, the effects of parametric variations of engine operating conditions on the performance of six-stroke GCI (6S-GCI) engine cycle are numerically investigated, using an in-house 3D CFD code coupled with high-fidelity physical sub-models along with the Chemkin library. The combustion and emissions were calculated using a skeletal chemical kinetics mechanism for a 14-component gasoline surrogate fuel. Authors’ previous study highlighted the effects of the variation of injection timing and split ratio on the overall performance of 6S-GCI engine and the unique mixing-controlled burning mode of the charge mixtures during the two additional strokes. As a continuing effort, the present study details the parametric studies of initial gas temperature, boost pressure, fuel injection pressure, compression ratio, and EGR ratio.

Recently, flexible fuel vehicle (FFV) has been drawn great attention because of its response for immediate use as alternative fueled one. Hyundai FFV can be operated on arbitrary fuel mixtures between gasoline and M85 with the specially programmed electronic control unit (ECU) which can determine optimized fueling quantity and ignition timing as the methanol content by the signal from electrostatic type fuel sensor. In this paper, the results of various tests including engine performance, cold startability, durability and exhaust emission reduction have been described. Full load, cold mode durability tests and field trials have been carried out with some material changes and surface treatments in the lubricating parts and fuel system. But, more work on its durability improvement is still required.

This paper describes Hyundai's research and development work on a flexible fuel vehicle (FFV). The work on FFV has been conducted to evaluate its potential as an alternative to the conventional gasoline vehicle. Hyundai FFV described here can operate on M85, gasoline, or any of their combinations, in which the methanol concentration is measured by an electrostatic type fuel sensor. For that operation, a special FFV ECU has been developed and incorporated in the FFV. The characteristics affecting FFV operation, such as FFV ECU control strategy and injector flow rate, have been investigated and optimized by experiment. Various development tests have been performed in view of engine performance, durability, cold startability, and exhaust emissions reduction. The exhaust gas aftertreatment system being consisted of manifold type catalytic converter(MCC) and secondary air injection system has shown good emission reduction performance including formaldehyde emission.

An experiment has been carried out to investigate the combustion process in an operating S.I. engine (MPI and Multi- valve), using in-cylinder high speed gas sampling techniques. Measurements have been made of local air fuel ratios and time-resolved concentrations of combustion gases such as CO, CO2, THC, NOx, and O2, particularly focused on spark plug location. The effects of fuel injection timing, swirl generating air motion, sampling location, spark timing, speed and load have been considered. With the end of fuel injection at 120° ATDC on the intake stroke, A/F ratio at spark plug location has the leanest value for standard inlet port, while it has the richest value for swirl generating inlet port. The initial NOx concentration in the unburned gas region, diluted by the residual gases, has been substantially reduced between 5° BTDC and 15° ATDC crank angle prior to combustion.

In this study, a series of tests have been carried out to evaluate the effects of the injection rate and timing on bsfc, NOx, and PM emissions in a heavy-duty diesel engine with TICS FIE system. Injection line pressure, cylinder pressure, NOx and smoke were measured with various injection times and injection rates. The injection rate was altered at a fixed injection timing, which could be realized either by changing the TICS setting time or by using different cam profiles. The injection time was varied by using TICS timing control function at a given setting time. A parametric study of the injection rate in in-line pump system was tried to correlate injection rate variations with combustion characteristics and emission. Two parameters, the injection pressure rising rate and the initially injected fuel quantity were introduced to characterize fuel injection.

For the improvement of ride quality, development of vibration damping control systems and isolating methods become more important. To define basic ride vibrational modes, the effects of vehicle velocity and wheelbase on the standard road surfaces should be investigated. The different vibrational responses depending on the measurement positions of a vehicle body are presented with the bounce and the pitch motions. A methodology for the isolation of engine mount system's resonance to the road input and periodical excitations of tire/wheel nonuniformity forces are discussed. Using the computer simulation and the experimental results, a useful ride model with respect to the vehicle velocity and the stiffness of engine mount is presented.

Fuel tank in vehicle must hold the fuel in a stable way under any driving condition. However, the fuel tank might not conserve the fuel firmly in case a crack emerged while the fuel tank is exposed to different driving condition. Basically, when the engine is in purging at a normal ambient temperature before fuel boiling, the pressure inside the fuel tank decreases. However, the pressure inside a fuel tank increases while a vehicle is driven at extreme hot ambient temperature as fuel is boiling. This repetitive pressure change in the fuel tank comes with fuel tank’s physical expansion and shrink, which would cause a damage to the fuel tank. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the root cause of why fuel tank cracks at a fatigue point. We also aim to set up the method of how to test durability of the fuel tank in association with the pressure inside the tank.

In case of all gasoline vehicles such as the passenger vehicle, heavy duty truck and light duty truck etc., a fuel pump is located inside the fuel tank and transfers the fuel to an engine for stable driving, however, engine stall can be occurred by low pressure fuel pump. The boiling temperature of gasoline fuel is very low, the initial boiling point is around 40°C so fuel can boil easily while driving and end boiling point is around 190°C. It boils sequentially depending on the temperature. It becomes the criteria to determine the amount of vapor released inside the fuel tank at high temperature. The main cause of engine stall at high temperature is rapid fuel boiling by increasing fuel temperature. This causes a lot of vapor. Such vapor flows into the fuel pump which leading to decrease the pump load and the current consumption of the fuel pump continuously. This ultimately results in engine stall.

High pressure fuel injection systems, such as common rail (CR) systems and electronically-controlled unit injector (EUI) systems, have been widely applied to modern heavy duty diesel engines. They are shown to be very effective for achieving high power density with high fuel efficiency and low exhaust gas emissions. However, the increased peak combustion pressure gives additional structural stress and thermal load to engine structure. Thus, proper material selection and thermal analysis of engine components are essential in order to meet the durability requirements of heavy-duty diesel engines adopting a high pressure injection system. In this paper, thermal analysis of a 12.9 ℓ diesel engine with an EUI system was studied. Temperatures were measured on a cylinder head, a piston and a cylinder liner. A specially designed linkage system was used to measure the piston temperatures. A radio-tracer technique was also used to verify the rotation of piston rings.