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A very difficult problem exists regarding windshield shape, and that is to create a balance between aerodynamics and optical distortion. To assist in solving this problem, this study, concerning the characteristics of visual perception for the optical distortion when drivers receive visual information through a windshield, was carried out. In this study, the windshield area was divided into 4 zones from the viewpoints of the level of drivers' fixation frequency and types of objects observed. Distortion was defined as the gap angle ( distortion angle ), which crossed the lines of a grid board with and without a windshield, and distortion angles were measured on a total of 4 windshields. Four drivers indicated areas in each windshield in which they felt the area was distorted. As a result, the thresholds of optical distortion were shown as a function of the horizontal and vertical distortion angles by discriminatory analysis.

A new experimental method, that enables to estimate the body and driveline sensitivity to unit transmitting error of a hypoid gear for automotive rear axle gear noise, has been developed. Measurements were made by exciting the tooth of the drive-pinion gear and that of the ring gear separately using the special devices designed with regard to simulation of acceleration and deceleration. The characteristic of this method is to estimate the forces at the contact point of the gears. Estimation of these forces is carried out under the condition that the higher stiffness is provided by the tooth of the drive-pinion gear and that of the ring gear, compared with the stiffness of the driveshafts and that of the propeller shaft etc., and relative angular displacement of the torsional vibration between the teeth of the drive-pinion gear and those of the ring gear is constant.

Direct injection gasoline engines require extremely advanced control of air-fuel mixture in order to achieve good stratified combustion. The method of examining quality of mixture formation in combustion chambers is essential for the achievement. In this research, air-fuel mixture in combustion chamber of the TOYOTA D-4 engine was analyzed in space and time by visualization as well as Air/Fuel ratio measurement by multi-point and high response techniques. Thus the effects that injection timing, swirl and fuel pressure exerted to mixture formation were elucidated.

The authors developed a useful analysis method of the rotational-angle of gear under transient state using the Hilbert Transform because the conventional method was not available under the transient state. Here, under the transient state the gear revolution speed was changed from 600r/min to 2000r/min in 0.35 seconds. A key technology of this method was that Hilbert Transform method, which used to be applicable only for steady data was improved so that it could treat transient data. Hence, the following procedures were developed. 1. The rotation of gear-teeth was detected by a gap-sensor pair, which can cancel the measuring error due to fluctuation of gear shaft. 2. The frequency of such signals varied significantly by the gear-revolution speed. Transient gear-teeth detection signals obtained at a constant sampling rate were converted to almost-constant frequency signals over the data series axis using a trigger pulse obtained per gear revolution.

Vehicle stability after releasing the accelerator during limit cornering (from now on “Tuck-in”) is the behavior that the turning radius of a vehicle gets smaller after releasing the accelerator. This paper presents that the main factors of yaw moment variation by releasing the accelerator are the change of lateral forces due to longitudinal transfer of normal loads, lateral shift of vehicle center of gravity due to vehicle roll and tire lateral deflection, and the change of lateral forces due to deceleration. It also shows that roll stiffness distribution and longitudinal acceleration have an influence through the formulation of turning radius ratio.

In this paper, the authors have developed a new measuring method of the liquid fuel film thickness on walls, such as intake ports, the combustion chamber and cylinder liner of a Port Fuel Injection (PFI) engine, and clarified the fuel film behavior under various running conditions when Fiber-based Laser-Induced Fluorescence (Fiber-based LIF) was applied to the newly developed method. The thickness of the fuel film is measured by detecting the intensity of fluorescence from the film that is irradiated by a He-Cd laser. A single optical fiber is used to simultaneously transmit the laser beam and the fluorescence from the film. In addition, the S/N ratio of the fluorescence is improved by using a He-Cd laser of which the wavelength (λ=442nm) is able to efficiently irradiate test fuel doped 2-3-butandione. Using this method, the fuel film thickness on the wall of the PFI engine was analyzed in two case studies.

The recent growth of available computational resources has enabled the automotive industry to utilize unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for their product development on a regular basis. Over the past years, it has been confirmed that unsteady CFD can accurately simulate the transient flow field around complex geometries. Concerning the aerodynamic properties of road vehicles, the detailed analysis of the transient flow field can help to improve the driving stability. Until now, however, there haven’t been many investigations that successfully identified a specific transient phenomenon from a simulated flow field corresponding to driving stability. This is because the unsteady flow field around a vehicle consists of various time and length scales and is therefore too complex to be analyzed with the same strategies as for steady state results.

A communication system that uses roadside beacons to broadcast road and traffic information and private messages to vehicles has been developed. The system, called Road/Automobile Communication System (RACS), was the result of a joint research project involving the Public Works Research Institute and 25 private-sector corporations. This paper contains an outline of RACS and of an onboard system developed by TOYOTA and presents the results of field tests conducted in the Tokyo area. The results not only verify the capability of the RACS system and the effectiveness of the in-vehicle equipment but also indicate the potential of such a beacon based network to improve traffic jam and driving safety whilst providing enhanced communication facilities without increasing radio-wave congestion.

In recent years Road Departure Mitigation Systems (RDMS) is introduced to the market for avoiding roadway departure collisions. To support the performance testing of the RDMS, the most commonly seen road edge, grass, is studied in this paper for the development of standard surrogate grass. This paper proposes a method for defining the resembling grass color and height features due to significant variations of grass appearances in different seasons, temperatures and environments. Randomly selected Google Street View images with grass road edges are gathered and analyzed. Image processing techniques are deployed to obtain the grass color distributions. The height of the grass is determined by referencing the gathered images with measured grass heights. The representative colors and heights of grass are derived as the specifications of surrogate grass for the standard evaluation of RDMS.

Road Departure Mitigation System (RDMS) is a new feature in vehicle active safety systems. It may not rely only on the lane marking for road edge detection, but other roadside objects This paper discusses the radar aspect of the RDMS testing on roads with grass road edges. Since the grass color may be different at different test sites and in different seasons, testing of RDMS with real grass road edge has the repeatability issue over time and locations. A solution is to develop surrogate grass that has the same characteristics of the representative real grass. Radar can be used in RDMS to identify road edges. The surrogate grass should be similar to representative real grass in color, LIDAR characteristics, and Radar characteristics. This paper provides the 24 GHz and 77 GHz radar characteristic specifications of surrogate grass.

This paper investigates a new approach to the quantification technique for road induced vehicle interior noise and vibration within the frequency range up to 40 Hz. By employing the least squares method, both vertical and fore-aft load to each wheel were quantified using transfer function and actual vibration response of the vehicle driven on a road. The coupled structural-acoustic vehicle model using the finite element method, which is also detailed in this paper, is combined with the quantified input load to simulate road induced interior noise and vibration response. Experimental verification, which indicates reasonable accuracy of the simulation, and an application for the prototype development are also presented.

Previous reports have already described the details of engine start-shock and the mechanism of vibration mechanism in a stationary vehicle. This vibration can be reduced by optimized engine and motor generator vibration-reduction controls. A prediction method using a full-vehicle MBD model has also been developed and applied in actual vehicle development. This paper describes the outline of a new method for the hybrid system of mechanical power split device with two motors that predicts engine start-shock when the vehicle is accelerating while the engine is stopped. It also describes the results of mechanism analysis and component contribution analysis. This method targets engine start-shock caused by driving torque demand during acceleration after vehicle take-off. The hybrid control system is modeled by MATLAB/Simulink. A power management and motor generator control program used in actual vehicles is installed into the main part of the control system model.

Toyota Hybrid System (THS), that combines a gasoline engine and an electric motor was installed in the Prius, which was introduced in 1997 as the world's first mass-produced hybrid passenger car, and was vastly improved in 2003. The new Prius gained a status of highly innovative and practical vehicle. In 2005, combined with a V6 engine, THS had a further evolution as a Hybrid System for SUV, which was installed in the RX400h and Highlander Hybrid to be introduced into the world. This report will explain “new THS” which achieved both V8 engine power performance and compact class fuel economy, while securing the most stringent emission standard, SULEV.

A new method to measure in-cylinder flame propagation and mixture distribution has been developed. The distribution is derived from analyzing the temporal history of flame spectra of CH* and C2*, which are detected by a spark plug type sensor with multi-optical fibers. The validity of this method was confirmed by verifying that the measurement results corresponded with the results of high speed flame visualization and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) measurement. This method was also applied to analysis of cyclic combustion fluctuation on start-up in a direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine, and its applicability was confirmed.

This paper contains an explanation of a Multiplex Wiring System with Optical Data-Link for cars, which has been installed in the Toyota “Century” since 1982. In this system, a total of 64 signals related to door wiring are transmitted in a multiplex fashion, and the number of wires from the front right-hand door to the interior could be reduced from 46 wires, which were used with conventional wiring techniques, to 10 wires including 2 plastic optical fibers. This system also has various control functions which includes a door-lock control function. In order to give high reliability to this system, we have developed a new optical data-link as well as a new custom micro-computer. And in the automobile industry, such a large scale multiplex wiring system having high reliability is very innovative in our opinion and will surely have a large impact in the future.

In the field of automotive gasoline engines, new products aiming at greater fuel economy and cleaner exhaust gases are under development with the aim of preventing environmental destruction. Severe ignition environments such as lean combustion, stronger charge motion, and large quantities of EGR require ever greater combustion stability. In an effort to meet these requirements, an iridium plug has been developed that achieves high ignitability and long service life through reduction of its diameter, using a highly wear-resistant iridium alloy as the center electrode.(1)(2) Recently, direct injection engines have attracted attention. In stratified combustion, a feature of the direct injection engine, the introduction of rich air-fuel mixtures in the vicinity of the plug ignition region tends to cause carbon fouling. This necessitates plug carbon fouling resistance.

We have developed a new measurement apparatus designed to take orange-peel quality-assessment measurements of paint-finished surfaces on a non-contact basis. This apparatus was developed to determine the relationship between in-line spray-coating conditions and the resulting orange peel surface, and to optimally control/manage the conditions of our existing facilities to ensure the best possible coating results based on the obtained data. The apparatus has been implemented by adopting image analysis, which combines an optical system design based on human inspectors’ visual-checking conditions and a set of straightforward algorithms.

High visibility electronic analog instruments with the blackface lens, lighting up pointers, and back lit dials are used in increasing number for automotive instrumentation. Now, we have developed a new instrument called Optical Space-Vision Instrumentation incorporating the above electronic analog instrument with virtual image by double reflection mechanism. The purpose of this development is to reduce reading time through far-focus and to improve visibility through high contrast. As part of this instrumentation, we also developed a new pointer that uses fluorescent material without a light-emitting element. This paper describes the construction and the engineering technology associated with this instrumentation. According to our test results, this instrument has realized a shorter reading time and higher contrast.

One of the key elements of vehicle safety requires a constantly uninterrupted visible view especially during unexpected weather conditions. Our present development of a light reflection type rain sensor is a key device of our automatic windshield wiper system. The design concept of the sensor is based on the quantification on both detected rainfalls and wiping modes in order to match the wiping mode in an operator's mind by optimizing the optical sensing system and establishing an algorithm for controlling wiping. In addition, auto-initialization of the system has been achieved first in the world.

Attaining optimum balance between longitudinal compliance and sideforce compliance steer in a torsion beam suspension system is a challenging task. We developed a suspension in which the longitudinal compliance is almost doubled and the side force compliance steer amount is improved by using the link effect of toe control links. This suspension system has been developed to realize excellent controllability, stability, riding comfort, and road noise performance.