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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.

This paper describes a method for optimization of engine settings in view of best total cost of operation fluids. Under specific legal NOX tailpipe emissions requirements the engine out NOX can be matched to the current achievable SCR NOX conversion efficiency. In view of a heavy duty long haul truck application various specific engine operation modes are defined. A heavy duty diesel engine was calibrated for all operation modes in an engine test cell. The characteristics of engine operation are demonstrated in different transient test cycles. Optimum engine operation mode (EOM) selection strategies between individual engine operation modes are discussed in view of legal test cycles and real world driving cycles which have been derived from on-road tests.

Eliminating toxic exhaust emissions, amongst them particulate matter (PM), is one of the driving factors behind the increasing use of electrified vehicles. However, it is frequently overseen that PM arise not only from combustion, but from non-exhaust traffic related causes as well; in particular from the vehicle brakes, tires and the road surface. Furthermore, as electrified vehicles weigh more and typically exhibit higher torques at low speeds, their non-exhaust emissions tend to be higher than for comparable conventional vehicles, especially those generated by tires. Fortunately, tire related emissions are directly related to tire wear, so that limiting tire wear can reduce these emissions as well. This can be accomplished by intelligently modulating the vehicle torque profile in real time, to limit the operation in conditions of higher tire wear.

Previous studies have shown that regenerating particulate filters are very effective at reducing particulate matter emissions from diesel engines. Some particulate filters are passive devices that can be installed in place of the muffler on both new and older model diesel engines. These passive devices could potentially be used to retrofit large numbers of trucks and buses already in service, to substantially reduce particulate matter emissions. Catalyst-type particulate filters must be used with diesel fuels having low sulfur content to avoid poisoning the catalyst. A project has been launched to evaluate a truck fleet retrofitted with two types of passive particulate filter systems and operating on diesel fuel having ultra-low sulfur content. The objective of this project is to evaluate new particulate filter and fuel technology in service, using a fleet of twenty Class 8 grocery store trucks. This paper summarizes the truck fleet start-up experience.

Traditional power train development work is concentrated mainly on test bed and on chassis dyno. Though we can simulate a lot of real world conditions on testbed and chassis dyno today, on road application work willis gaining more attention. This means that strategies and tools for invehicle testing under real world conditions are becoming more important. Emission, performance, fuel economy, combustion noise and driving comfort are linked to combustion quality, i.e. quality of fuel mixture preparation and flame propagation. The known testing and research equipment is only partly or not at all applicable for in-vehicle development work. New tools for on the road testing are required. Following, a general view on in-vehicle power train testing will be given. Additionally, new ways to investigate cylinder and cycle specific soot formation in GDI engines with fiber optic tools will be presented.

Real world operating scenarios have a major influence on emissions and fuel consumption. To reduce climate-relevant and environmentally harmful gaseous emissions and the exploitation of fossil resources, deep understanding concerning the real drive behavior of mobile sources is needed because emissions and fuel consumption of e.g. passenger cars, operated in real world conditions, considerably differ from the officially published values which are valid for specific test cycles only [1]. Due to legislative regulations by the European Commission a methodology to measure real drive emissions RDE is well approved for heavy duty vehicles and automotive applications but may not be adapted similar to two-wheeler-applications. This is due to several issues when using the state of the art portable emission measurement system PEMS that will be discussed.

The paper gives an overview of the partially extremely complex problem when looking into commonalities and differences of the three main application areas of engines and powertrains - automotive, agricultural tractors, and industrial engines, the last being predominantly but not exclusively focused on construction equipment. The modern “platform” approach has been used in the automotive world to a large extent and the learned experiences may be of interest for the agricultural tractors and/or the construction equipment manufacturers. On the other hand the truck engine engineers and manufacturers will learn more about the special requirements of the tractor and the industrial engines fields, and thus influence concepts and development procedures and also the production of the automotive engines which in many cases serve as the basis for derivate engines.

The implementations of the Tier 2 and LEVII emission levels require fast catalyst light-off and fast closed loop control through high-speed engine management. The paper describes the development of innovative catalyst designs. During the development thermal and mechanical boundary conditions were collected and component tests conducted on test rigs to identify the emission and durability performance. The products were evaluated on a Super Imposed Test Setup (SIT) where thermal and mechanical loads are applied to the test piece simultanously and results are compared to accelerated vehicle power train endurance runs. The newly developed light-off catalyst with Perforated Foil Technology (PE) showed superior emission light-off characteristic and robustness.

Gasoline turbocharged direct injection (GTDI) engines, such as EcoBoost™ from Ford, are becoming established as a high value technology solution to improve passenger car and light truck fuel economy. Due to their high specific performance and excellent low-speed torque, improved fuel economy can be realized due to downsizing and downspeeding without sacrificing performance and driveability while meeting the most stringent future emissions standards with an inexpensive three-way catalyst. A logical and synergistic extension of the EcoBoost™ strategy is the use of E85 (approximately 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) for knock mitigation. Direct injection of E85 is very effective in suppressing knock due to ethanol's high heat of vaporization - which increases the charge cooling benefit of direct injection - and inherently high octane rating. As a result, higher boost levels can be achieved while maintaining optimal combustion phasing giving high thermal efficiency.

Two campaigns measuring on-road emissions of 23 VN-trucks on a randomly chosen driving cycle, consisting of 10 miles two-lane and 8 miles four-lane road were performed. The first, during October 2004, showed tailpipe NOx emissions on fleet average of 1.06 g/bhp-hr including the time the exhaust gas temperature was below 200°C. The second, during June 2005, showed tailpipe NOx emissions on fleet average of 1.13 g/bhp-hr including the time the exhaust gas temperature was below 200°C. Complementary measurements in a SET-cycle (13 point OICA-cycle) on a chassis dynamometer showed a tailpipe emission of 0.008 g PM per bhp-hr. Moreover, cost analysis show that the diesel fuel consumption remains unchanged whether the truck running on ULSD is equipped with a Combined Exhaust gas AfterTreatment System (CEATS) installed or not.

Six 2001 International Class 6 trucks participated in a project to determine the impact of gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel and catalyzed diesel particle filters (DPFs) on emissions and operations from December 2003 through August 2004. The vehicles operated in Southern California and were nominally identical. Three vehicles operated “as-is” on California Air Resources Board (CARB) specification diesel fuel and no emission control devices. Three vehicles were retrofit with Johnson Matthey CCRT® (Catalyzed Continuously Regenerating Technology) filters and fueled with Shell GTL Fuel. Two rounds of emissions tests were conducted on a chassis dynamometer over the City Suburban Heavy Vehicle Route (CSHVR) and the New York City Bus (NYCB) cycle. The CARB-fueled vehicles served as the baseline, while the GTL-fueled vehicles were tested with and without the CCRT filters. Results from the first round of testing have been reported previously (see 2004-01-2959).

A fleet of six 2001 International Class 6 trucks operating in southern California was selected for an operability and emissions study using gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel and catalyzed diesel particle filters (CDPF). Three vehicles were fueled with CARB specification diesel fuel and no emission control devices (current technology), and three vehicles were fueled with GTL fuel and retrofit with Johnson Matthey's CCRT™ diesel particulate filter. No engine modifications were made. Bench scale fuel-engine compatibility testing showed the GTL fuel had cold flow properties suitable for year-round use in southern California and was additized to meet current lubricity standards. Bench scale elastomer compatibility testing returned results similar to those of CARB specification diesel fuel. The GTL fuel met or exceeded ASTM D975 fuel properties. Researchers used a chassis dynamometer to test emissions over the City Suburban Heavy Vehicle Route (CSHVR) and New York City Bus (NYCB) cycles.

No abstract available.

With the implementation of EURO VI and similar emission legislation, the industry assumed the pace and stringency of new legislation would be reduced in the future. The latest announcements of proposed and implemented legislation steps show that future legislation will be even more stringent. The currently leading announced legislation, which concerns a large number of global manufacturers, is the legislation from the United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Both announced new legislation for CO2, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Phase II. CARB is also planning additional Ultra Low NOx regulations. Both regulations are significant and will require a number of technologies to be used in order to achieve the challenging limits. AVL published some engine related measures to address these legislation steps.

Best fuel efficiency is one of the core requirements for commercial vehicles in India. Consequently it is a central challenge for commercial vehicle OEMs to optimize the entire powertrain, hence match engine, transmission and rear axle specifications best to the defined application. The very specific real world driving conditions in India (e.g. traffic situations, road conditions, driver behavior, etc.) and the large number of possible commercial powertrain combinations request an efficient and effective development methodology. This paper presents a methodology and tool chain to specify and develop commercial powertrains in a most efficient and effective way. The methodology is based on the measurement of real world driving scenarios, identification of representative Real World Driving Profiles and vehicle system simulation which allows extended analysis of the road topography, the traffic situation as well as the driver behavior.

A multi-year technology validation program was completed in 2001 to evaluate ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels and passive diesel particle filters (DPF) in several different diesel fleets operating in Southern California. The fuels used throughout the validation program were diesel fuels with less than 15-ppm sulfur content. Trucks and buses were retrofitted with two types of passive DPFs. Two rounds of emissions testing were performed to determine if there was any degradation in the emissions reduction. The results demonstrated robust emissions performance for each of the DPF technologies over a one-year period. Detailed descriptions of the overall program and results have been described in previous SAE publications [2, 3, 4, 5]. In 2002, a third round of emission testing was performed by NREL on a small subset of vehicles in the Ralphs Grocery Truck fleet that demonstrated continued robust emissions performance after two years of operation and over 220,000 miles.

One main general goal during product development in the passenger car industry as well as in the commercial vehicle industry is to reduce time to market. The customer wants to get the newest product and is not accepting the risk of any product call backs. This means the minimization of the risk of field claims for the manufacturer. The challenge to reach this goal is a capable volume production of each new product. To create a competitive, innovative product it is the task for design and simulation engineers in the development phase to design the product in view of function, efficiency, fatigue strength, optimized weight and optimized product costs. Additionally an agreement between design and industrial production planning is required. An early involvement of production engineers into the development of a product ensures design for manufacturing from the very beginning.

Electrification globally shows promise in reducing greenhouse and noxious emissions. Although there is immense potential in such technologies penetrating across vehicle segments in the Indian market, the key lies in offering scalable, cost effective battery solutions suiting the diverse product and customer needs. This paper describes the development and possible applications of a low voltage battery system that fulfills the current needs on the Indian market. Based on real-world driving profiles the energy and power output required for the target platform are determined. Keeping in mind the Indian operating conditions, safety requirements, driving behavior, charging infrastructure, operational costs, supplier network and serviceability, technical requirements for such systems are described. Also, benchmarking data of current battery systems help to optimize the mechanical, thermal, and electrical layouts.

Legislative challenges, changing customer needs and the opportunities opened-up by electrification are the major driving forces in today’s automotive industry. Fuel cell vehicles offer the potential for CO2 emission free mobility, especially attractive for heavy duty long-haul range application. The development of key components of fuel cell powered vehicles, namely the fuel cell stack itself as well as the related hydrogen/air supply and thermal management sub-systems, goes hand in hand with various challenges regarding performance, lifetime and safety. The proper layout and sizing of the stack and the related fuel and air supply system components, as well as the suitable dimensioning of the cooling system, are decisive for the overall system efficiency and achievable lifetime.

Originally developed for the automotive market, a fully automatic real-time measurement tool AVL-DRIVE is commercially available for analyzing and scoring vehicle drive quality, also known as “Driveability”. This system from AVL uses its own transducers, calibrated to the sensitivity and response of the human body to measure the forces felt by the driver, such as acceleration, shock, surging, vibration, noise, etc. Simultaneously, the vehicle operating conditions are measured, (throttle grip angle, engine speed, gear, vehicle speed, temperature, etc.). Because the software is pre-programmed with the scores from a multitude of different vehicles in each vehicle class via neural networks and fuzzy logic formula, a quality score with reference to similar competitor vehicles is instantly given. This tool is already successfully implemented in the market for years to investigate such driveability parameters for passenger cars.