Search Results

Gear oscillations are one of the most common sources of Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) issues manifested in automotive powertrains. These oscillations are generated mainly due to impacts of the meshing gear teeth over a broad frequency range. To mitigate NVH phenomena, automotive manufacturers traditionally couple linear tuned vibration absorbers to the driveline. Common palliatives used are clutch dampers and dual mass flywheels, which generally suppress vibrations effectively only over narrow frequency bands. Nonlinear Energy Sinks (NESs) are a class of vibration absorbers with essentially nonlinear characteristics that are designed for dissipating vibration energy over broad frequency ranges (due to the employed nonlinearity). The NES does not have a preferential natural frequency; this is rather characterized by the nonlinear stiffness.

As civil aircraft design matures and the viability of introducing new technological improvements diminishes, new criteria will need to be taken into account in the initial project design phase. This paper considers the overall situation and gives examples of parameters that may become more significant in future aircraft designs. These examples are taken from three different scenarios (aircraft performance, airport compatibility and public safety). The consideration of design aspects which are of a different type to traditional aeronautical engineering parameters will necessitate a change to the processes used in aircraft optimization. Methods developed and used in other disciplines will need to be combined with traditional parameters and the new broader based criteria to provide an overall assessment method. The paper concludes by suggesting a possible line of development.

The effects of child safety seats have been well documented in the medical literature. Scattered throughout the medical literature are individual case reports of cervical injury to children restrained in child restraint systems. A review of the literature is provided identifying previous documented cases. The authors also provide new case details of children with cervical spine injury without head contact. An overview of the growth of the infant and specific details in the cervical spine that may contribute to significant cervical injury without head impact is presented.

This paper presents an investigation into Elastohydrodynamic (EHL) modeling of differential hypoid gears that can be used in coupling with Newtonian (or multibody) dynamics to study Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) phenomena, such as axle whine. The latter is a noise of a tonal nature, emitted from differential axles, characterised by the gear meshing frequency and its multiples. It appears at a variety of operating conditions; during drive and coasting, high and low torque loading. Key design targets for differential hypoid gears are improved efficiency and reduced vibration, which depend critically on the formation of an EHL lubricant film. The stiffness and damping of the oil film and friction generated in the contact can have important effects and cannot be neglected when examining the NVH behaviour of hypoid gears.

The use of simulation tools by vehicle manufacturers to design, optimize and validate their vehicles is essential if they are to respond to the demands of their customers, to meet legislative requirements and deliver new vehicles ever more quickly. The use of such tools in the aerodynamics community is already widespread, but they remain some way from replacing physical testing completely. Further advances in simulation capabilities depend on the availability of high quality validation data so that simulation code developers can ensure that they are capturing the physics of the problems in all the important areas of the flow-field. This paper reports on an experimental program to generate such high quality validation data for a SAE 20 degree backlight angle notchback reference model.

Vehicle handling is heavily influenced by the torque distribution to the driving wheels. This work presents a newly developed differential, designed to actively control the driving torque distribution to the wheels. The new device incorporates an electric machine, which can operate either as a motor or generator. A control unit monitors signals from various sources in the vehicle, such as steering angle, yaw acceleration and wheel rotational speed. Then, a control algorithm takes into account the steering angle rate and the vehicle speed in order to determine the suitable difference between output torque values. The handling improvement capabilities are evaluated by simulating in ADAMS/Car the driving behavior of a vehicle equipped with the new differential. The model that has been used to simulate vehicle handling is that of a Formula SAE type racing car.

An experiment is described in which students from two universities, one in the UK and one in the USA, worked together in multidisciplinary teams on aircraft design projects to satisfy the “capstone” design course requirements in their respective degree programs. Aeronautical, Mechanical, Industrial, and Systems Engineering students from Virginia Tech and Loughborough University were placed on teams to work on two different airplane designs. The paper describes the evolution of this educational collaboration and the organization of the experiment. It also reviews the program ’s successes and its problems. Recommendations are made for continuation of the program and to guide others who might be interested in pursuing a similar experiment.

A driver's preference for one of two different vehicle models that have the same measurable acceleration may be explained by complicated factors such as styling, NVH or ergonomics. If the vehicles have identical appearance but different levels of engine tune, discrimination would probably be due to the measurable difference in performance although other factors cannot be entirely discounted. If however, the assessment is made of vehicles with identical appearance and identical performance then any preference is attributable to an area of human assessment that has been termed subjective performance. This paper discusses the first step in a qualitative approach to the analysis of driver perception of vehicle performance and more specifically investigates subjective performance. The proposed model ascribes distinct components such as induced and perceived performance to the total subjective performance rating.

The energy consumption of a vehicle is typically determined either by testing or in simulation. While both approaches are valid, they only work for a specific drive cycle, they are time intensive, and they do not directly result in a closed-form relationship between key parameters and consumption. This paper presents an alternative approach that determines the consumption based on a simple analytical model of the vehicle and statistical parameters of the drive cycle, specifically the moments of the velocity. This results in a closed-form solution that can be used for analysis or synthesis. The drive cycle is quantified via its moments, specifically the average speed, the standard deviation of the speed as well as the higher order moments skewness, and the kurtosis. A mixed quadratic term is added to account for acceleration or aggressiveness, but it is noticeably distinct from the conventional metric of positive kinetic energy (PKE).

Crash injury reduction via lap-shoulder belt use has been well documented. As any interior car component, lap-shoulder belts may be related to injury in certain crashes. Relatively unknown is the fact that cervical fractures or fracture-dislocations to restrained front seat occupants where, in the crash, no head contact was evidenced by both medical records and car inspection. An extensive review of the available world's literature on car crash injuries revealed more than 100 such cases. A review of the NASS 80-88 was also conducted, revealing more examples. Cases from the author's own files are also detailed.

Particle Image Velocimetry has developed over the last decade into a relatively mature flow-field measurement technique, capable of providing insight into time averaged and instantaneous flows that in the past have not been readily accessible. The application of the method in the measurement and analysis of flows around road vehicles has so far been limited to a relatively small number of specialist applications, but its use is expanding. This paper reviews the modern digital PIV technique placing emphasis on the important considerations required to obtain reliable and accurate data. This includes comments on each aspect of the PIV process, including initial setup and image acquisition, processing, validation and analysis. A number of automotive case studies are presented covering different aspects of the method, including a diffuser exit flow, edge radius optimization, ‘A’ pillar flow and aerial wake flows.

The dynamics of automotive differentials have been studied extensively to improve their efficiency and additionally, in recent years, generated noise and vibration. Various mathematical models have been proposed to describe the contact/impact of gear teeth pairs. However, the influence of vehicular cruising speed on the resisting torque has not been considered in sufficient detail. This can lead to unrealistic predictions with regards to loss of contact of teeth pair, a phenomenon which leads to NVH issues. The current work presents a torsional model of a hypoid gear pair. The resisting torque is a function of the traction force and aerodynamic drag, whilst the vehicle is cruising at nominally constant speed. The pinion input torque is derived through assumed instantaneous equilibrium conditions. In this approach, realistic excitation capturing the vehicle's driving conditions is imposed on the dynamics of the hypoid gear pair.

The promise of thermo-electric (TE) technology in vehicles is a low maintenance solid state device for power generation. The Thermo-Electric Generator (TEG) will be located in the exhaust system and will make use of an energy flow between the warmer exhaust gas and the external environment. The potential to make use of an otherwise wasted flow of energy means that the overall system efficiency can be improved substantially. One of the barriers to a successful application of the technology is the device efficiency. The TE properties of even the most advanced materials are still not sufficient for a practical, cost effective device. However the rate of development is such that practical devices are likely to be available within the next fifteen years. In a previous paper [ 1 ], the potential for such a device was shown through an integrated vehicle simulation and TEG model.

This paper presents the implementation of a vehicle and powertrain model of the parallel hybrid electric vehicle which can be used for several purposes: as a model for estimating fuel consumption, as a model for estimating performance, and as a control model for the hybrid powertrain optimisation. The model is specified as a multi-domain physical model in MATLAB Simscape, which captures the key electrical, mechanical and thermal energy flows in the vehicles. By applying hand crafted boundary conditions, this model can be simulated either in the forwards or backwards direction, and it can easily be simplified as required to address specific control problems. Modelling in the forwards direction, the driver inputs are specified, and the vehicle response is the model output. In the backwards direction, the vehicle velocity as a function of time is the specified input, and the engine torque, and fuel consumption are the model outputs.