Automotive Science and Engineering
Volume:2 Issue: 2, Spring 2012

Biofuels are playing important role in recent decades as substitutes for petro diesel. Biodiesel derived from vegetable oils are found to give comparable performance and emission characteristics. In this paper a comparative study has been done between two fuels combinations i.e. jatropha and castor. The biodiesel was prepared from neat oils and blends of biodiesel (up till 20%) were prepared with diesel. Produced blends were tested for their use as a substitute fuel for diesel in a single cylinder diesel engine. On the observed data for both the fuels, Student t statistical test was applied. The values for fuel consumption calculated for t were 0.088 for jatropha oil methyl ester (JOME) and 0.44 for castor oil methyl ester (COME) blends. Similarly for emission characteristics the values for CO2, CO, NOx calculated for t were 2.94, -4.781, 2.83 for COME and 5.48, -2.91 and 4.24 for JOME respectively. The values concluded that there is no effect of fuel type on fuel consumption up till 20 percent biodiesel blended fuel with respect to performance and emission characteristics.

In this paper, mini-channel type evaporator which is new in mobile air conditioning (MAC) or automotive air conditioning (AAC) systems is thermally modeled. The performance of mini-channel evaporator is also compared with the laminated evaporator which is being currently used in automotive industries. The mini-channel evaporator was constructed of two rows of parallel flow mini-channel tubes with inlet and outlet headers. The numerical results of modeling the laminated and mini-channel evaporators validated with the corresponding experimental data which was obtained from experiments performed on mobile air conditioning system in calorimeter test bench. The comparison of modeling results of two evaporators showed good agreement with experimental data. The performance of laminated and mini-channel evaporators were also compared under various operating conditions. The mini-channel evaporator had higher cooling capacity (7.2%) and higher refrigerant pressure drop (45%) in comparison with the corresponding values in laminated evaporator assuming the same external geometry. The outlet air temperature and enthalpy of minichannel evaporator was also lower, 11% and 8% respectively, than that for laminated evaporator. This cause to reduce the time period as well as power/fuel consumption for reaching the comfortable cabin temperature.

Vehicle driveline system and its working accuracy play an important role in the performance of car. The purpose of this study is to provide an appropriate mechanism for investigating, identifying and determining the position and size of defects in the vehicle power transmission system. This is based on the patterns of the residual signal, obtained from a simulated model of the system. Neuro-fuzzy networks have been used in diagnosis of defects because of its specific advantages and capabilities in pattern recognition. Simulation results demonstrate that the resulting fault detection system is able to properly locate the fault types under all test conditions, and is sensitive also to fault size. Test and simulation results using MATLAB software is given at the end.

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) contribute to a wide range of environmental effects including the formation of acid rain and destroy ozone layer. In-cylinder high temperature flame and high oxygen concentration are the parameters which affect the NOx emissions. The EGR system is a very effective way for reducing NOx emission from a diesel engine (via reduction of these parameters), particularly at the high load of engine operation condition. In this study, the influence of EGR on diesel engine combustion, NOx/PM emissions, brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), engine thermal efficiency, cylinder pressure and heat release rate (HRR) are analyzed and presented. The experiments have been conducted on a turbocharged DI diesel engine under full load condition at two different injection timings in order to distinguish and quantify some effects of Hot and Cooled EGR with various rates on the engine parameters. Experimental results showed that increase of EGR rate has a negative effect on air-fuel ratio. For a premixed combustion at constant boost pressure, ignition delay is increased leading to retardation of all combustion process, a low HRR peak and reduce of in-cylinder peak temperature. Using of Hot EGR reduces NOX emissions whereas PM emissions are increased. The advance of injection timing resulted in the reduction PM while both NOX emissions and fuel consumption were increased. The use of cooled EGR was more effective compared to the hot EGR. As a result, the EGR temperature has no significant impact on NOx emissions. With increasing EGR rate, unequal EGR distribution was increased in inlet port of cylinders while the reducing EGR temperature (cooled EGR) improved its distribution among the engine cylinders and decreased the EGR cylinder-to-cylinder variations.

In this paper, a complete model of an electro hydraulic driven dry clutch along with its performance evaluation has elucidated. Through precision modeling, a complete nonlinear physical and full order sketch of clutch has drawn. Ultimate nonlinearities existent in the system prohibits it from being controlled by conventional linear control algorithms and to compensate the behavior of the system mainly during gearshift procedure, a nonlinear control program has been developed and tested. A unique approach to estimating clamp force has been adopted which makes the system comparable to a real world and full-physical one. Based on this type of modeling, the control approach is a true and feasible, ready-to-implement program which is based only on reality. The clutch model has been validated against experiments and great agreement has been attained since, every fine point has been taken into account and nothing is out of representation unless it is not crucial to system performance. The nonlinear control program does the control task very well and administrates the system in the desired trajectory.

In this paper, the acoustic environment in a vehicle cabin under the influence of highfrequencies aerodynamic sources has been studied. Some panels on the windshield, the roof, the doors, the front pillars, and the floor of a vehicle simulated as input source of noise when the car is moving at high speed, i.e. 112 km/h. The status of vehicle cabin in each of these modes has been studied and compared to each other. There are some methods to simulate acoustic behavior of a vehicle cavity such as Finite Elements or Statistical Energy Analysis methods. A brief overview for Statistical Energy Analysis (SAE) is stated. In this study, the statistical energy method is used for determination of acoustic analysis. Auto SEA software is used to simulate and estimate the amount of sound pressure level. In addition, sound pressure formulation presented and used for comparison in vehicle cabin points and with experimental results for validation. Also, considering viscoelastic materials, a common form of material nonbinding panel has determined. The result shows that the roof is the most important panel in acoustic analysis under influence of aerodynamic sources. Accordingly, this panel has more effectiveness in optimization to control sound pressure level in a vehicle cabin. In addition, the amount of reduction in sound pressure level (SPL) in the cabin with viscoelastic material is presented as it could diminish the vibration of plates. In addition, the effect of using acoustic glasses is presented. Finally, the SPL effect of passenger position including front and rear is investigated and compared

Non-linear characteristic of tire forces is the main cause of vehicle lateral dynamics instability, while direct yaw moment control is an effective method to recover the vehicle stability. In this paper, an optimal linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller for roll-yaw dynamics to articulated heavy vehicles is developed. For this purpose, the equations of motion obtained by the MATLAB software are coded and then a control law is introduced by minimizing the local differences between the predicted and the desired responses. The influence of some parameters such as the anti roll bar, change the parameters of the suspension system and track wide in articulated heavy vehicles stability has been studied. The simulation results show that the vehicle stability can be remarkably improved when the optimal linear controller is applied