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The present article is concerned with the investigation of the engine noise induced by the piston slap of an actual passenger car Diesel engine. The focus is put on the coherence of piston secondary movement, impact of the piston on the cylinder liner, generated structure-borne noise excitation of the engine structure and the occurring acceleration on the engine surface. Additionally, the influence of a varying piston-pin offset and piston clearance is evaluated. The analyses are conducted using an elastohydrodynamic multi-body simulation model, taking into account geometry, stiffness and mass information of the single components as well as considering elastic and hydrodynamic behavior of the piston-liner contact. A detailed description of the simulation model will be introduced in the article. The obtained results illustrate the piston secondary motion and the related structure-borne noise on the engine surface for several piston-pin offsets and piston clearances.

The automotive industry continues to develop new powertrain technologies aimed at reducing overall vehicle level fuel consumption. The ongoing trends of “downsizing” and “down speeding” have led to the development of turbocharged engines with low displacement and high torque density. In order to meet the launch response requirements with these engines as well as fuel economy needs, transmissions with large ratio spreads will need to be developed. Due to the lack of torque amplification from the torque converter, the next generation of dual clutch transmissions (DCT) will need to have larger launch ratios and ratio spreads than currently available in production today. This paper discusses the development of a new family of DCT (called “xDCT”) for use in front wheel drive vehicles, aimed at meeting some of these challenges. The xDCT family features two innovative concepts, the idea of “gear generation” and “supported shifts”.

Precise prediction of combustion parameters such as peak firing pressure (PFP) or crank angle of 50% burned mass fraction (MFB50) is essential for optimal engine control. These quantities are commonly determined from in-cylinder pressure sensor signals and are crucial to reach high efficiencies and low emissions. Highly accurate in-cylinder pressure sensors are only applied to test rig engines due to their high cost, limited durability and special installation conditions. Therefore, alternative approaches which employ virtual sensing based on signals from non-intrusive sensors retrieved from common knock sensors are of great interest. This paper presents a comprehensive comparison of selected approaches from literature, as well as adjusted or further developed methods to determine engine combustion parameters based on knock sensor signals. All methods are evaluated on three different engines and two different sensor positions.

Cybersecurity assumes a major role in the context of the automotive domain, where both existing and forthcoming regulations are heightening the need for robust security engineering. A significant milestone in advancing cybersecurity within the automotive industry is the release of the first international standard for automotive cybersecurity ISO/SAE 21434:2021 ‘Road Vehicles — Cybersecurity Engineering’. A recently published type approval regulation for automotive cybersecurity (UN R155) is also tailored for member countries of the UNECE WP.29 alliance. Thus, the challenges for embedded automotive systems engineers are increasing while frameworks, tools and shared concepts for cybersecurity engineering and training are scarce.

Amid the increasing demand for higher efficiency in combustion driven handheld tools, the recent developments in electric machine technology together with the already existing benefits of small combustion engines for these applications favor the investigation of potential advantages in hybrid powertrain tools. This concept-design study aims to use a fully parametric, system-level simulation model with exchangeable blocks, created with a power-loss approach in Matlab and Simulink, in order to examine the potential of different hybrid configurations for different tool load cycles. After the model introduction, the results of numerous simulations for 36 to 100 cc engine displacement will be presented and compared in terms of overall system efficiency and overall powertrain size. The different optimum hybrid configurations can show a reduction up to 30 % in system’s brake specific fuel consumption compared to the baseline combustion engine driven model.

To get an overview of the emission situation in the field of small non-road mobile machinery powered by various types of SI engines, the Association for Emissions Control by Catalyst (AECC), together with the Institute for Internal Combustion Engines and Thermodynamics (IVT) of Graz University of Technology, conducted a customized test program. The main goal for this campaign was to derive information regarding the emissions of regulated gaseous components (following European Directive 97/68/EC) as well as particulate matter. With regard to the big variety of different engines that are available on the European and North-American market, the most representative ones had to be chosen. This resulted in a pool of test devices to cover different engine working principles (2-Stroke and 4-Stroke), technological standards (low-cost and professional tools) and different emissions control strategies (advanced combustion and exhaust gas aftertreatment).

The European emission legislation for two-wheeler vehicles driven by engines of ≤ 50 cm₃ is continuously developing. One of the most important issues in the near future will be the finalization of the European Commission's proposals for future steps in the emissions regulations as well as the verification of the impacts of current standards on the market. To have a basis for the discussion about these topics, the Association for Emissions Control by Catalyst (AECC) with the Institute for Internal Combustion Engines and Thermodynamics of Graz University of Technology (IVT) carried out an extensive test program to show the actual emission situation of state-of-the-art mopeds including mass and number of particulate matter as well as unregulated gaseous components. One of the main goals of these tests was to measure exhaust emissions without any modifications to the engines of standard production vehicles available on the European market.

In hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), the operation strategy strongly influences the available system power, as well as local exhaust emissions. Predictive operation strategies rely on knowledge of future traction-force demands. This predicted information can be used to balance the battery’s state of charge or the engine’s thermal system in their legal operation limits and can reduce peak loads. Assuming the air and rolling drag-coefficient to be constant, the desired vehicle velocity, vehicle-mass and longitudinal driving resistances determine the vehicle’s traction-force demand. In this paper, a novel methodology, combining a history-based prediction algorithm for estimating future traction-force demands with the parameter identification of road grade angle and vehicle mass, is proposed. It is solely based on a route-history database and internal vehicle data, available on its on-board communication and measuring systems.

The interest in electric propulsion of vehicles has increased in recent years and is being discussed extensively by experts as well as the public. Up to now the driving range and the utilization of pure electric vehicles are still limited in comparison to conventional vehicles due to the limited capacity and the long charging times of today's batteries. This is a challenge to customer acceptance of a pure electric vehicle, even for a city car application. A Range Extender concept could achieve the desired customer acceptance, but should not impact the “electric driving” experience, and should not cause further significant increases in the manufacturing and purchasing cost. The V2 engine concept presented in this paper is particularly suited to a low cost, modular vehicle concept. Advantages regarding packaging can be realized with the use of two generators in combination with the V2 engine.

Automotive embedded systems have become very complex, are strongly integrated, and the safety-criticality and real-time constraints of these systems raise new challenges. The OSEK/VDX standard provides an open-ended architecture for distributed real-time capable units in vehicles. This is supported by the OSEK Implementation Language (OIL), a language aiming at specifying the configuration of these real-time operating systems. The challenge, however, is to ensure consistency of the concept constraints and configurations along the entire product development. The contribution of this paper is to bridge the existing gap between model-driven systems engineering and software engineering for automotive real-time operating systems (RTOS). For this purpose a bidirectional tool bridge has been established based on OSEK OIL exchange format files.

In a gasoline engine, the cycle-by-cycle fresh trapped charge, and corresponding unswept residual gas fraction (RGF) are critical parameters of interest for maintaining the desired air-fuel ratio (AFR). Accurate fueling is a key precursor to improved engine fuel economy, and reduced engine out emissions. Asymmetric flow paths to cylinders in certain engines can cause differences in the gas exchange process, which in turn cause imbalances in trapped fresh charge and RGF. Variable cam timing (VCT) can make the gas exchange process even more complex. Due to the reasons stated above, simplified models can result in significant estimation errors for fresh trapped charge and RGF if they are not gas dynamics-based or detailed enough to handle features such as variable valve timing, duration, or lift. In this paper, a new air flow and RGF measurement tool is introduced.

Advanced technologies such as direct injection DI, turbocharging and variable valve timing, have lead to a significant evolution of the gasoline engine with positive effects on driving pleasure, fuel consumption and emissions. Today's developments are primarily focused on the implementation of improved full load characteristics for driving performance and fuel consumption reduction with stoichiometric operation, following the downsizing approach in combination with turbocharging and high specific power. The requirements of a relatively small cylinder displacement with high specific power and a wide flexibility of DI injection specifications lead to competing development targets and additionally to a high number of degrees of freedom during optimization. In order to successfully approach an optimum solution, FEV has evolved an advanced development methodology, which is based on the combination of simulation, optical diagnostics and engine thermodynamics testing.

The optimization of aerodynamic drag represents an important research area for the fuel consumption reduction of heavy duty commercial vehicles. Today's design of tractor-trailers is significantly influenced by legal conditions regarding the vehicle dimensions and the provision of a maximum transportation volume. These boundary conditions lead to brick-shaped trailer outer geometries, especially at the rear ends. That is the reason why the investigations of aerodynamic optimization of commercial vehicle trailers are predominantly restricted to detail measures up to now. The present publication treats the aerodynamic characteristics of general modifications on the outer contour of long-distance haulage trailers in regard of reducing the drag resistance and, thus, potentially also the fuel consumption in highway traffic. A new approach for the realization of a variable outer contour of trailers provides the possibility to adjust the rear end to an aerodynamically optimized shape.

During recent years the accident simulation program PC-Crash was developed. This software simulates vehicle movement before, during and after the impact, using 3D vehicle and scene models. When reconstructing car accidents, quite often questions arise regarding occupant movement and loading. Especially important is the influence of different types of restraint systems on the occupant. MADYMO® is a software tool which was developed by TNO in the Netherlands and which is well known in the automotive industry for the simulation of occupant movement. It allows the simulation of all kinds of modern restraint systems such as airbags and seatbelts with and without pretensioners. As the software is used in the automotive industry quite extensively, a huge validated database of dummy and human models is available. Since MADYMO® demands the setup of quite complicated input files, its use normally requires a high level of expertise.

These days a new generation of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) are penetrating the global vehicle market - the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Compared to conventional HEVs, PHEVs have additional significant potential. They are able to improve fuel efficiency and reduce local emissions due to higher battery capacities, and they can be recharged from external outlets. Energy management has a major impact on the PHEVs performance. In this publication, an innovative operation strategy for PHEVs is presented. This is due to the fact that both increasing fuel efficiency and enhancing the vehicle's longitudinal performance requires a fine balance between the consumption of fossil and electric energy. The new operation strategy combines advanced predictive and adaptive algorithms. In contrast to the charge-sustaining strategy of HEVs, the charge-depleting mode for PHEVs is more appropriate.

Particulates are among the most harmful emission components of internal combustion engines (ICE)). Thus, emission limits have been widely introduced, e.g., for light- and heavy-duty vehicles. Although there are still engine applications without particulate limitations, the measurement of particulate mass (PM) and particulate number (PN) emissions is therefore of special interest for the development and operation of ICE. For this purpose, a measurement system for PN consisting of a custom-built sample conditioning and dilution system, and a TSI 3790-A10 [1] condensation particle counter (CPC) as particle number counter (PNC) was designed and built. In this work, we present the conditioning and dilution system, the operational parameters, and results from the particle concentration reduction factor (PCRF) calibration.

The absence of combustion engine noise pushes increasingly attention to the sound generation from other, even much weaker, sources in the acoustic design of electric vehicles. The present work focusses on the numerical computation of flow induced noise, typically emerging in components of flow guiding devices in electro-mobile applications. The method of Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) represents a powerful technique for capturing most part of the turbulent fluctuating motion, which qualifies this approach as a highly reliable candidate for providing a sufficiently accurate level of description of the flow induced generation of sound. Considering the generic test configuration of turbulent pipe flow, the present study investigates in particular the scope and the limits of incompressible Large-Eddy Simulation in predicting the evolution of turbulent sound sources to be supplied as source terms into the acoustic analogy of Lighthill.

Given approximately one million small and light aircraft in operation worldwide, icing detection and icing quantification of in-flight icing are still an open research topic. Despite technical means are available to de-ice on ground, there is a lack of a suitable control system based on sensor data to de-ice while the aircraft is airborne. Most often, it is still task of the pilot to visually inspect the icing status of the airfoil and/or other critical parts of the aircraft such as engine air intakes, which distracts the flight crew from flying the aircraft especially in IMC conditions. Based on preliminary simulation and tests in 2014 in a collaborative research project lasting from 2015 until 2018, the technology of energy self-sustaining, wireless, self-adhesive smart sensors for industrial sensing in an aerodynamically critical environment (i.e. wind turbines) was further investigated to fulfil general aviation requirements.

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.