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In this paper three-dimensional Large Eddy Simulations (i.e., LES) by using a PLIC-VOF method have been adopted to investigate the atomization process of round liquid jets issuing from automotive multi-hole injector-like nozzles. LES method is used to compute directly the effect of the large flow structure, being the smallest one modelled. A mesh having a cell size of 4 μm was used in order to derive a statistics of the detached liquid structures, i.e. droplets and ligaments. The latter have been identified by using an algorithm coded by authors. Cavitation modeling has not been included in the present computations. Two different mean injection nozzle flow velocities of 50 m/s and 270 m/s, corresponding to two mean nozzle flow Reynolds numbers of 1600 and 8700, respectively, have been considered in the calculations as representative of laminar and turbulent nozzle flow conditions.

A flash evaporation model is being developed to capture the effects of bubble nucleation and growth inside multi-hole injector nozzles to investigate the flash evaporation in fuel injector sprays in Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI). The 1D flash evaporation model is a key tool for providing the 3D Eulerian-Eulerian or Lagrangian spray simulation model with the right droplet size in order to properly predict the effect of degree of superheating on mixture formation. Super heating conditions are likely to be found under partial load conditions in GDI applications or they might be deliberately induced to enhance fuel atomization and vaporization. A quasi-1D nozzle flow model has been developed to help quantifying the effects of main physical and geometrical parameters in promoting fuel flash evaporation. This model is based on an weakly compressible homogenous two-phase mixture assumption. A non-equilibrium model is used to predict the vapour formation rate along the nozzle.

Added masses computation is a crucial aspect to be considered when the density of a body moving in a fluid is comparable to the density of the fluid displaced: added mass can be defined as the inertia added to a system because an accelerating or decelerating body displaces some volume of neighboring fluid as it moves through it. The motion of vehicles like airships and ships can be addressed only by keeping into account the effect of added masses, while in case of aircrafts and helicopters this contribution is usually neglected. Lighter Than Air flight simulation, unmanned airships flight control system, airships flight dynamics are typical applications in which added masses are fundamental to achieve an effective and realistic modeling. A panel based method using the mesh of an airship external shape is developed to account for the added massed.

To accurately evaluate the energy consumption benefits provided by connected and automated vehicles (CAV), it is necessary to establish a reasonable baseline virtual driver, against which the improvements are quantified before field testing. Virtual driver models have been developed that mimic the real-world driver, predicting a longitudinal vehicle speed profile based on the route information and the presence of a lead vehicle. The Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) is a well-known virtual driver model which is also used in the microscopic traffic simulator, SUMO. The Enhanced Driver Model (EDM) has emerged as a notable improvement of the IDM. The EDM has been shown to accurately forecast the driver response of a passenger vehicle to urban and highway driving conditions, including the special case of approaching a signalized intersection with varying signal phases and timing. However, most of the efforts in the literature to calibrate driver models have focused on passenger vehicles.

Fuels are formulated by a variety of different components characterized by chemical and physical properties spanning a wide range of values. Changing the ratio between the mixture component molar fractions, it is possible to fulfill different requirements. One of the main properties that can be strongly affected by mixture composition is the volatility that represents the fuel tendency to vaporize. For example, changing the mixture ratio between alcohols and hydrocarbons, it is possible to vary the mixture saturation pressure, therefore the fuel vaporization ratio during the injection process. This paper presents a 1D numerical model to simulate the superheated injection process of a gasoline-ethanol mixture through real nozzle geometries. In order to test the influence of the mixture properties on flash atomization and flash evaporation, the simulation is repeated for different mixtures characterized by different gasoline-ethanol ratio.

The aim of this work is to propose modifications to the managing of the 1st generation Common Rail injectors in order to reduce actuation time towards multiple injection strategies. The current Common Rail injector driven by 1st ECU generation is capable of operating under stable conditions with a minimum dwell between two consecutive injections of 1.8 ms. This limits the possibility in using proper and efficient injection strategies for emission control purposes. A previous numerical study, performed by the electro-fluid-mechanical model built up by Matlab-Simulink environment, highlighted different area where injector may be improved with particular emphasis on electronic driving circuit and components design. Experiments carried out at injector Bosch test-bench showed that a proper control of the solenoid valve allowed reducing drastically the standard deviation during the pilot pulses.

This research was to model a 6×4 tractor-trailer rig using TruckSim and simulate severe braking maneuvers with hardware in the loop and software in the loop simulations. For the hardware in the loop simulation (HIL), the tractor model was integrated with a 4s4m anti-lock braking system (ABS) and straight line braking tests were conducted. In developing the model, over 100 vehicle parameters were acquired from a real production tractor and entered into TruckSim. For the HIL simulation, the hardware consisted of a 4s4m ABS braking system with six brake chambers, four modulators, a treadle and an electronic control unit (ECU). A dSPACE simulator was used as the “interface” between the TruckSim computer model and the hardware.

Knocking combustions heavily limits the efficiency of Spark Ignition engines. The compression ratio is limited in the design stage of the engine development, letting to Spark Advance control the task of reducing the odds of abnormal combustions. A detailed analysis of knocking events can help improving engine performance and diagnosis strategies. An effective way is to use advanced 3D CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation for the analysis and prediction of combustion performance. Standard 3D CFD approach is based on RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes) equations and allows the analysis of the mean engine cycle. However knocking phenomenon is not deterministic and it is heavily affected by the cycle to cycle variation of engine combustions. A methodology for the evaluation of the effects of CCV (Cycle by Cycle Variability) on knocking combustions is here presented, based on both the use of Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools and experimental information.

This study investigated the jackknife stability of Class VIII double tractor-trailer combination vehicles that had mixed braking configurations between the tractor and trailers and dolly (e.g. ECBS disc brakes on the tractor and pneumatic drum brakes on the trailers and dolly). Brake-in-turn maneuvers were performed with varying vehicle loads and surface conditions. Conditions with ABS ON for the entire vehicle (and select-high control algorithm on the trailers and dolly) found that instabilities (i.e. lane excursions and/or jackknifes) were exhibited under conditions when the surface friction coefficient was 0.3. It was demonstrated that these instabilities could be avoided while utilizing a select-low control algorithm on the trailers and dolly. Simulation results with the ABS OFF for the tractor showed that a tractor equipped with disc brakes had greater jackknife stability.

An existing tire model was investigated for additional normal load-dependent characteristics to improve the large truck simulations developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS). Of the existing tire model coefficients, plysteer, lateral friction decay, aligning torque stiffness and normalized longitudinal stiffness were investigated. The findings of the investigation led to improvements in the tire model. The improved model was then applied to TruckSim to compare with the TruckSim table lookup tire model and test data. Additionally, speed-dependent properties for the NADS tire model were investigated (using data from a light truck tire).

This paper presents the development of a CarSim model of an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) that can be used to predict the handling and stability characteristic of the vehicle. The inertia and suspension characteristics of a subject ATV are measured and a model of the ATV is built in CarSim based on the measurements. A simplified suspension model is developed to convert the suspension compliance measurements into parameters suitable to a CarSim model. Procedures used to apply vehicle mass, inertia and suspension kinematics data in CarSim are also shown. The model is evaluated using predictions of vehicle response during a constant radius circle test. The simulation results of the maneuver are compared with the field test results shown in a recent CPSC report on ATV’s. Similar cornering characteristics are found in both results. Modifications are made to the model to study how changes to the ATV affect performance.

Charge motion is known to accelerate and stabilize combustion through its influence on turbulence intensity and flame propagation. The present work investigates the effect of charge motion generated by intake runner blockages on combustion characteristics and emissions under part-load conditions in SI engines. Firing experiments have been conducted on a DaimlerChrysler (DC) 2.4L 4-valve I4 engine, with spark range extending around the Maximum Brake Torque (MBT) timing. Three blockages with 20% open area are compared to the fully open baseline case under two operating conditions: 2.41 bar brake mean effective pressure (bmep) at 1600 rpm, and 0.78 bar bmep at 1200 rpm. The blocked areas are shaped to create different levels of swirl, tumble, and cross-tumble. Crank-angle resolved pressures have been acquired, including cylinders 1 and 4, intake runners 1 and 4 upstream and downstream of the blockage, and exhaust runners 1 and 4.

Transmission error has long been identified to be the main exciter of gear whine noise. This research effort seeks to investigate the mechanisms and principal controlling factors that affect the actual noise generation from a typical gearbox housing due to transmission error excitations. The insight gained is expected to help in identifying possible noise control procedures in typical gearing applications. The example gearbox of this paper is an aircraft auxiliary-drive idler gearbox run at low load so that transmission error is the primary mesh excitation. A limited set of dynamic noise and vibration data are collected in transient speed run-ups. A contact-mechanics gear-tooth model is used to predict the static transmission error at each mesh. A finite-element model of the shafting that incorporates complex shaft and bearing data is used to predict the shaft dynamics with the static transmission error at the gear mesh(es) as the sole excitation.

The engine start-up process introduces speed-dependent transient vibration problems in ground vehicle drivelines as the torsional system passes through the critical speeds during the acceleration process. Accordingly, a numerical study is proposed to gain more insights about this transient vibration issue, and the focus is on nonlinear analysis. First, a new nonlinear model of a multi-staged clutch damper is developed and validated by a transient experiment. Second, a simplified nonlinear torsional oscillator model with the multi-staged clutch damper, representing the low frequency dynamics of a typical vehicle driveline, is developed. The flywheel velocity measured during the typical engine start-up process is utilized as an excitation. The envelope function of the speed-dependent response amplification is estimated via the Hilbert transform technique. Finally, the envelope function is effectively utilized to examine the effect of multi-staged clutch damper properties.

In the next incoming future the necessity of reducing the raw emissions leads to the challenge of an increment of the thermal engine efficiency. In particular it is necessary to increase the engine efficiency not only at full load but also at partial load conditions. In the open literature very few technical papers are available on the partial load conditions analysis. In the present paper the analysis of the effect of the throttle valve rotational direction on the mixture formation is analyzed. The engine was a PFI 4-valves motorcycle engine. The throttle valve opening angle was 17.2°, which lays between the very partial load and the partial load condition. The CFD code adopted for the analysis was the FIRE AVL code v. 2013.2. The exhaust, intake and compression phases till TDC were simulated: inlet/outlet boundary conditions from 1D simulations were imposed.

The component response synthesis approach utilizing frequency response function (FRF) has been used to analyze the dynamic interaction of two or more vehicle components coupled at discrete interface points. This method is somewhat suitable for computing higher frequency response because experimental component FRFs can be incorporated into the formulation directly. However its calculations are quite sensitive to measurement errors in the FRFs due to the several matrix inversion steps involved. In the past, researchers have essentially used a combined direct inverse and truncated singular valued decomposition (TSVD) technique to ensure a stable calculation, which is typically applied semi-empirically due to the lack of understanding of the influence of measurement error.

Model-based design is a collection of practices in which a system model is at the center of the development process, from requirements definition and system design to implementation and testing. This approach provides a number of benefits such as reducing development time and cost, improving product quality, and generating a more reliable final product through the use of computer models for system verification and testing. Model-based design is particularly useful in automotive control applications where ease of calibration and reliability are critical parameters. A novel application of the model-based design approach is demonstrated by The Ohio State University (OSU) student team as part of the Challenge X advanced vehicle development competition. In 2008, the team participated in the final year of the competition with a highly refined hybrid-electric vehicle (HEV) that uses a through-the-road parallel architecture.

The widely used Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is applied to a planar model of an articulated vehicle to predict jackknifing events. The states of hitch angle and hitch angle rate are estimated using a vehicle model and the available or “measured” states of lateral acceleration and yaw rate from the prime mover. Tuning, performance, and compromises for the EKF in this application are discussed. This application of the EKF is effective in predicting the onset of instability for an articulated vehicle under low-μ and low-load conditions. These conditions have been shown to be most likely to render heavy articulated vehicles vulnerable to jackknife instability. Options for model refinements are also presented.

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) represents nowadays one of the most promising techniques for the evaluation of the dynamics and evolution of turbulent structures characterizing internal combustion engines (ICE). In the present paper, subdivided into two parts, the capabilities of the open-source CFD code OpenFOAM® v2.3.0 are assessed in order to evaluate its suitability for engine cold flow LES analyses. Firstly, the code dissipative attitude is evaluated through an inviscid vortex convection test to ensure that the levels of numerical dissipation are compatible with LES needs. Quality and completeness estimators for LES simulations are then proposed. In particular the Pope M parameter is used as a LES completeness indicator while the LSR parameter provides useful insights far calibrating the grid density. Other parameters such as the two-grid LESIQk index are also discussed.

Automating road vehicle control can increase the range and reliability of dynamic testing. Some tests, for instance, specify precise steering inputs which human test drivers are only able to approximate, adding uncertainty to the test results. An automated steering system has been developed which is capable of removing these limitations. This system enables any production car or light truck to follow a user-defined path, using global position feedback, or to perform specific steering sequences with excellent repeatability. The system adapts itself to a given vehicle s handling characteristics, and it can be installed and uninstalled quickly without damage or permanent modification to the vehicle.