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Current developments in automotive industry such as hybrid powertrains and the continuously increasing demands on emission control systems, are pushing complexity still further. Validation of such systems lead to a huge amount of test cases and hence extreme testing efforts on the road. At the same time the pressure to reduce costs and minimize development time is creating challenging boundaries on development teams. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to utilize testing and validation prototypes in the most efficient way. It is necessary to apply high levels of instrumentation and collect as much data as possible. And a streamlined data pipeline allows the fleet managers to get new insights from the raw data and control the validation vehicles as well as the development team in the most efficient way. In this paper we will demonstrate a data-driven approach for validation testing.

Beside the automotive industry, where 2-cylinder inline engines are catching attention again, twin-cylinder configurations are quite usual in the small engine world. From stationary engines and range-extender use to small motorcycles up to big cruisers and K-Cars this engine architecture is used in many types of applications. Because of very good overall packaging, performance characteristics and not least the possibility of parts-commonality with 4-cylinder engines nearly every motorcycle manufacturer provides an inline twin in its model range. Especially for motorcycle applications where generally the engine is a rigid member of the frame and vibrations can be transferred directly to the rider an appropriate balancing system is required.

Engine simulation can be performed using model approaches of different depths in capturing physical effects. The present paper presents a comprehensive comparison study on seven different engine models. The models range from transient 1D cycle resolved approaches to steady-state non-dimensional maps. The models are discussed in the light of key features, amount and kind of required input data, model calibration effort and predictability and application areas. The computational performance of the different models and their capabilities to capture different transient effects is investigated together with a vehicle model under real-life driving conditions. In the trade-off field of model predictability and computational performance an innovative approach on crank-angle resolved cylinder modeling turned out to be most beneficial.

In spark-ignition engines, fluctuations of the in-cylinder pressure trace and the apparent rate of heat release are usually observed from one cycle to another. These Cycle-to-Cycle Variations (CCV) are affected by the early flame development and the subsequent flame front propagation. The CCV are responsible for engine performance (e.g. fuel consumption) and the knock behavior. The occurrence of the phenomena is unpredictable and the stochastic nature offers challenges in the optimization of engine control strategies. In the present work, CCV are analyzed in terms of their impact on the engine knock behavior and the related efficiency. Target is to estimate the possible fuel consumption savings in steady-state operation and in the drivecycle, when CCV are reduced. Since CCV are immanent on real engines, such a study can only be done by means of simulation.

Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs), produced through injection molding, are increasingly preferred over steel in automotive applications due to their lightweight, moldability, and excellent physical properties. However, the expanding use of FRPs presents a critical challenge: deformation stability. The occurrence of warping significantly compromises the initial product quality due to challenges in part mounting and interference with surrounding parts. Consequently, mitigating warpage in FRP-based injection parts is paramount for achieving high-quality parts. In this study, we present a holistic approach to address warpage in injection-molded parts using FRP. We employed a systematic Design of Experiments (DOE) methodology to optimize materials, processes, and equipment, with a focus on reducing warpage, particularly for the exterior part. First, we optimized material using a mixture design in DOE, emphasizing reinforcements favorable for warpage mitigation.

Beside hard facts as performance, emissions and fuel consumption especially the brand specific attributes such as styling and sound are very emotional, unique selling prepositions. To develop these emotional characters, within the given boundary conditions of the future pass-by regulation, it is necessary to define them at the very beginning of the project and to follow a consequent development process. The following paper shows examples of motorcycle NVH development work on noise cleaning and sound engineering using a hybrid development process combining front loading, simulation and testing. One of the discussed solutions is the investigation of a piston pin offset in combination with a crankshaft offset for the reduction of friction. The optimization of piston slap noise as a result of the piston secondary motion was performed by simulation. As another example a simulation based development was performed for the exhaust system layout.

The electrification of the powertrain is a prerequisite to meet future fuel consumption limits, while the internal combustion engine (ICE) will remain a key element of most production volume relevant powertrain concepts. High volume applications will be covered by electrified powertrains. The range will include parallel hybrids, 48V- or High voltage Mild- or Full hybrids, up to Serial hybrids. In the first configurations the ICE is the main propulsion, requiring the whole engine speed and load range including the transient operation. At serial hybrid applications the vehicle is generally electrically driven, the ICE provides power to drive the generator, either exclusively or supporting a battery charging concept. As the ICE is not mechanically coupled to the drive train, a reduction of the operating range and thus a partial simplification of the ICE is achievable.

The automotive industry’s journey towards fully autonomous vehicles brings more and more vehicle control systems. Additionally, the reliability and robustness of all these systems must be guaranteed for all road and weather conditions before release into the market. However, the ever-increasing number of such control systems, in combination with the number of road and weather conditions, makes it unfeasible to test all scenarios in real life. Thus, the performance and robustness of these systems needs to be proven virtually, via vehicle simulations. The key challenge for performing such a range of simulations is that the tire performance is significantly affected by the road/weather conditions. An end user must therefore have access to the corresponding tire models. The current solution is to test tires under all road surfaces and operating conditions and then derive a set of model parameters from measurements.

Spark Ignited (SI) combustions engines in combination with different degrees of hybridization are expected to play a major role in future vehicle propulsion. Due to the combustion principle and the related thermodynamic efficiency, it is especially challenging to meet future CO2 targets. The layout and optimization of the overall system requires novel methods in the development process which feature a seamless transition between real and virtual prototypes. Herein, engine models need to predict the entire engine operating range in steady-state and transient conditions and must respond to all relevant control inputs. In addition, the model must feature true real-time capability. This work presents a holistic and modular modeling framework, which considers all relevant processes in the complex chain of physical effects in SI combustion.

Today, many car manufacturers and their suppliers are very interested in power-operated door handles, known as auto flush door handles. These handles have a distinguishing feature in terms of the way they operate. They are hidden in door skins and deployed automatically when users need to open the door. It is obvious that it is a major exterior styling point that makes customers interested in the vehicles that apply it. To make this auto flush door handle, however, there lie difficulties. First, because there is no sufficient space inside a door, applying these handles can be a constraint in exterior design unless the structures of them are kinematic optimized. The insufficient space can also cause problems in appearance of the handles when they are deployed. The purpose of this study is to establish the kinematic system of auto flush door handle to overcome the exterior handicaps such as the excessive exposure of the internal area on the deployed position.

In the present work, a scalable simulation methodology is presented that enables the assessment of the impact of SI-engine cycle-to-cycle combustion variations on fuel consumption and hence CO2 emissions on three different levels of modeling depth: in-cylinder, steady-state engine and transient engine and vehicle simulation. On the detailed engine combustion chamber level, a 3D-CFD approach is used to study the impact of the turbulent in-cylinder flow on the cycle-resolved flame propagation characteristics. On engine level, cycle-to-cycle combustion variations are assessed regarding their impact on indicated mean effective pressure, aiming at estimating the possible fuel consumption savings when cyclic variations are minimized. Finally, on the vehicle system level, a combined real-time engine approach with crank-angle resolved cylinder is used to assess the potential fuel consumption savings for different vehicle drivecycle conditions.

In order to meet current and future emission and CO2 targets, an efficient vehicle thermal management system is one of the key factors in conventional as well as in electrified powertrains. Global vehicle simulation is already a well-established tool to support the vehicle development process. In contrast to conventional vehicles, electrified powertrains offer an additional challenge to the thermal conditioning: the durability of E-components is not only influenced by temperature peaks but also by the duration and amplitude of temperature swings as well as temperature gradients within the components during their lifetime. Keeping all components always at the preferred lowest temperature level to avoid ageing under any conditions (driving, parking, etc.) will result in very high energy consumption which is in contradiction to the efficiency targets.

For noise quality and brand sound design of passenger cars a unique software tool is currently used by our clients world-wide to evaluate and optimise the interior noise quality and brand sound aspects of passenger cars on an objective basis. The software tools AVL-VOICE and AVL-COMFORT are designed for the objective analysis of interior noise quality, for benchmarking, for the definition of noise quality targets and most important for effective vehicle sound engineering. With this tool, the target orientated implementation of the required interior noise quality or brand sound by predictable hardware modifications into passenger cars - for tailor made joy of driving - becomes feasible. The use of this tools is drastically reducing vehicle evaluation time and sound engineering effort when compared with traditional jury subjective evaluation methods and standard acoustic NVH optimisation procedures.

This study deals with the fatigue life prediction methodology of welding simulation components involving arc welding. First, a method for deriving the cyclic deformation and fatigue properties of the weld metal (that is also called ER70S-3 in AWS, American Welding Standard) is explained using solid bar specimens. Then, welded tube specimens were used with two symmetric welds and subjected to axial, torsion, and combined in-phase and out-of-phase axial-torsion loads. In most previous studies the weld bead’s start/stop were arbitrarily removed by overlapping the starting and stop point. Because it can reduce fatigue data scatter. However, in this study make the two symmetric weld’s start/stops exposed to applying load. Because the shape of the weld bead generated after the welding process can act as a notch (Ex. root notch at weld start / Crater at weld stop) to an applied stress. Accordingly, they were intentionally designed to cause stress concentrations on start/stops.

Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) system is considered as the most effective method to reduce particulate mater (PM) out of diesel exhaust. In general, silicon carbide (SiC) has been employed as the base materials for DPF substrate in diesel vehicles. Currently, a material, called cordierite (Cd), has been adopted for the DPF in a modern SUV with 2-liter CRDI diesel engine, complying EURO-5 emission regulation. Instead of its lower cost, Cd-based substrate was disadvantageous on thermal conductivity and heat capacity relative to SiC. In this work, the problems (i.e., face crack), initiated by the thermal drawbacks, were investigated as it applied into the DPF substrate. As the countermeasures to overcome, a control optimization of regeneration temperature elevation and an introduction of ingenious multiple regeneration strategy at problematic conditions were proposed and verified through real-road endurance tests.

This paper presents deep learning-based prognostics and health management (PHM) for predicting fractures of an electric propulsion (eP) drivetrain system using real-time CAN signals. The deep learning algorithm, based on autoencoders, resamples time-series signals and converts them into 2D images using recurrence plots (RP). Subsequently, through unsupervised learning of DeepSVDD, it detects anomalies in the converted 2D images and predicts the failure of the system in real-time. Also, reliability analysis based on fracture mechanics was performed using the detected signals and big data. In particular, the severity of the eP drivetrain system is proportional to the maximum shear stress (τmax) in terms of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) and can be calculated by summarizing the relationship between cracks (a) and the stress intensity factor (KIII).

Recently, the wagon for European has been developed. The characteristic of this vehicle is to have a capability of large luggage space. Therefore the passenger needs to be protected from injuries by sudden inflow of baggage from luggage room. This is also a requirement of EU regulation (ECE R-17[4]). Barrier Net[1, 2, 3] to small size wagon has been adopted for the first time based on advanced foreign supplier's technology. This reality still gives us the burden of high cost and royalty expenditure. The objective of this study is to overcome these restrictions, especially for patent circumvention and secure the new design concept which is entirely independent of the present system in addition to cost effectiveness.

Recently, keen interest has been focused on the reduction of fuel consumption through the development of eco-friendly and weight-effective vehicles. This is due in part to the strengthening of regulatory standards for fuel efficiency in each country. This study will focus on the optimization of the IP (Instrument Panel) module, in particular, the cowl crossbar, which in some vehicles, can account for more than 33% of the IP module weight. The design objectives of the cowl crossbar were to use continuous fiber thermoplastic composite materials to achieve high stiffness, while optimizing the strength to weight performance as evaluated through vehicle sled and crash testing. This research will introduce the development and optimization methodology for an alternative material, which achieved about a 30% weight reduction as compared to steel.

Increasing demands for safety, security, and certifiability of embedded automotive systems require additional development effort to generate the required evidences that the developed system can be trusted for the application and environment it is intended for. Safety standards such as ISO 26262 for road vehicles have been established to provide guidance during the development of safety-critical systems. The challenge in this context is to provide evidence of consistency, correctness, and completeness of system specifications over different work-products. One of these required work-products is the hardware-software interface (HSI) definition. This work-product is especially important since it defines the interfaces between different technologies. Model-based development (MBD) is a promising approach to support the description of the system under development in a more structured way, thus improving resulting consistency.

To achieve future fleet CO2 emission targets, all powertrain types, including those with internal combustion engines, need to achieve higher efficiency. Next to others the reduction of friction is one contributor to increase powertrain efficiency. The piston bore interface (PBI) accounts for up to 50 % of the total engine friction losses [1]. Optimizations in this area combined with the use of low viscosity oil, which can reduce the friction of further engine sub-systems, will therefore have a high positive impact. To assess the friction of the PBI whilst considering cross effects of other relevant parameters for mechanical function (e.g. blow-by & wear) and emissions (e.g. oil consumption) AVL has established a holistic development method based around the AVL FRISC (FRIction Single Cylinder) engine with a floating liner measurement concept.