Automotive Engineering Commons^™

Internal Combustion Engine, Philippe D. Habets, Sam S. Flood, Paing Htet Lin, Jason Wu, Ricardo Cuevas

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of this project is to modify a Honda GX35 engine to improve its fuel efficiency and maximize its competitiveness in the Shell Eco-marathon competitions. This competition has tight restrictions on the type of fuel used to power the engine, but otherwise has very few rules limiting the type of modifications which may be made. Our primary goals are to maximize volumetric efficiency and maintain an efficient operating temperature. Future work might pursue more advanced technologies such as pseudo-atkinson cycle operation.

Simulation And Design Tool For Supermileage Vehicle (Smv) Club Final Design Report, Kimberly Kodama, Sung Ho An, Justice Aragon

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this project is to create a sensitivities tool and start an optimization tool to assist the Cal Poly SMV Team in designing their vehicle, developing a driving strategy for competition, and becoming a contender in endurance events. The development of a user-friendly vehicle simulation and design tool was proposed by Professor Joseph Mello who is the club’s advisor. The SMV Team competes in endurance events such as the Supermileage competition or the Shell Eco-marathon with the goal of achieving the best mileage possible.

This report will present the research that has been conducted to understand and define …

Pedestrian Navigation Using Artificial Neural Networks And Classical Filtering Techniques, David J. Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis is to explore the improvements achieved through using classical filtering methods with Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for pedestrian navigation techniques. ANN have been improving dramatically in their ability to approximate various functions. These neural network solutions have been able to surpass many classical navigation techniques. However, research using ANN to solve problems appears to be solely focused on the ability of neural networks alone. The combination of ANN with classical filtering methods has the potential to bring beneficial aspects of both techniques to increase accuracy in many different applications. Pedestrian navigation is used as a …

Techniques To Solve Decision-Making Problems, Dilnoz Tulkunovna Muhamediyeva, Bekmuratov Fayzievich Tulkun

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

Solving decision-making problems in poorly formalized systems only with the help of deterministic and probabilistic methods is insufficient. To do this, it is necessary to widely apply the methods of hybrid intelligent systems and, especially, the methods of “soft” calculations (SoftCalculation, SoftComputing) and the directions of ComputationalIntelligence — intelligent computing technologies that are emerging on this theoretical and methodological base. An immune - fuzzy algorithm for the synthesis of fuzzy inference systems (FIS) is proposed. A two-stage adaptive FIS synthesis algorithm is described. At the first stage, the initial fuzzy parameters are clustered in order to reduce the number of …

Electrathon Vehicle: Front Suspension, Christopher Clark

All Undergraduate Projects

Central Washington University does not currently have a competition field-able Electrathon America electric vehicle with adequate front suspension. The aim of this project was to provide the vehicle with handling that supports sound ground contact throughout the competition environment. Handling that supports sound ground contact is important for vehicles so they can go around corners without a loss of traction or flipping over. The solution to this engineering problem was designed and tested through various requirements. The requirements at hand were that the suspension components weigh less than 50 pounds, that there be no more than 3 inches of suspension …

Systemic Methodology For Cyber Offense And Defense, C. Ariel Pinto, Matthew Zurasky

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper describes a systemic method towards standardization of a cyber weapon effectiveness and effectiveness prediction process to promote consistency and improve cyber weapon system evaluation accuracy – for both offensive and defensive postures. The approach included theoretical examination of existing effectiveness prediction processes for kinetic and directed energy weapons, complemented with technical and social aspects of cyber realm. The examination highlighted several paradigm-shifts needed to transition from purely kinetic-based processes and transition into the realm of combined kinetic and cyber weapons. Components of the new method for cyber weapons are cyber payload assessment, effects identification, and target assessment. The …

Quantitative Performance Assessment Of Lidar-Based Vehicle Contour Estimation Algorithms For Integrated Vehicle Safety Applications, David M. Mothershed

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Many nations and organizations are committing to achieving the goal of `Vision Zero' and eliminate road traffic related deaths around the world. Industry continues to develop integrated safety systems to make vehicles safer, smarter and more capable in safety critical scenarios. Passive safety systems are now focusing on pre-crash deployment of restraint systems to better protect vehicle passengers. Current commonly used bounding box methods for shape estimation of crash partners lack the fidelity required for edge case collision detection and advanced crash modeling. This research presents a novel algorithm for robust and accurate contour estimation of opposing vehicles. The presented …

Numerical Analyses And Integration Of Split Lot Sizing Using Lean Benchmark Model For Small Lot Manufacturing In High Mix Low Volume Production, Omkar Bhosale

Theses and Dissertations--Manufacturing Systems Engineering

As the global demand for automobiles has increased rapidly over the last fifty years, customers have become more particular about the characteristics of the autos they want. This change in demand, in part has pushed manufacturing to become more flexible and created a demand for alternative, more efficient processes like the High Mix Low Volume (HMLV) production of vehicles. During HMLV, manufacturers create production lot sizes and schedule to synchronize the production processes to meet customer demand on time. The demand for the automobile parts may not be uniform or parts may not be consumed by the customer immediately, Due …

Development Of An Eco Approach And Departure Application To Improve Energy Consumption Of A Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle In Charge Depleting Mode, Brandon Narodzonek

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A recent study at Michigan Technological University as part of the NEXTCAR DOE APRA-E Project was conducted to determine the potential energy savings of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) equipped with various Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Technologies. One aspect of this study focused on the development of an Eco Approach and Departure (Eco AnD) Application that would further reduce the energy consumed around a signalized intersection.

Many modern intersections are equipped with traffic signals that can broadcast Basic Safety (BSM), MAP, and Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) message sets that contain intersection ID, location, current phase, and cyclic …

A Cfd Study Investigating Drag Reduction For Different Offset And Inline Distance For Two Trucks Platooning, Wael Mokhtar, Kyle Dinger, Shardul Kachare, Mdrazib Hossain, Colin Britcher

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The automotive industry invests huge resources to improve fuel consumption of commercial vehicles by improving their aerodynamic efficiency. Recently, numerous studies investigating the effect of platooning on aerodynamic drag of semi-trucks have been performed by researchers indicating a positive impact. For the present study, a three-dimensional computational study was performed to investigate the effect of varying offset and linear distance during platooning on the total drag of two semi-trucks. The study was conducted on a full-scale model using Reynold’s Averaged Navier-Strokes governing equations for a moving ground simulation using the STAR-CCM+ computational package. Furthermore, for turbulence, the standard k- …

Design Of An Anti-Jerk Controller For Both Locked And Slipping Torque Converter Conditions In A Vehicle, Syed Ahmad Nadeem

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

With the advancement in the automotive technologies, the customer scrutiny on the ride comfort of automobiles has come to light. Vehicle drivability is one of the important aspects that defines the ride comfort for a vehicle. Drivability of a vehicle is a qualitative measure and may differ from person to person, however, researches have come up to highlight a few parameters that can categorize the drivability performance of a vehicle into good or bad for a majority of the targeted audience. One of those parameters include shuffle, which is defined as the longitudinal oscillations that occurs in the drivetrain when …

Data Driven Sensor Fusion For Cycle-Cycle Imep Estimation, Cooper Heyne Minehart

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

As the world searches for ways to reduce humanity’s impact on the environment, the automotive industry looks to extend the viable use of the gasoline engine by improving efficiency. One way to improve engine efficiency is through more effective control – effective control systems require a feedback signal. Indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) is a useful feedback signal for automotive control but is costly to measure directly.

Successful machine learning based sensor fusion requires effective feature extraction and model creation. Through a multistage application of machine learning to both the feature extraction process and the IMEP estimation process we are …

Energy Consumption And Savings Analysis Of A Phev In Real World Driving Through Vehicle Connectivity Using Vehicle Platooning, Blended Mode Operation And Engine Start-Stop Optimizers, Pruthwiraj Santhosh

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This report presents an analysis on energy consumption of a Gen II Chevrolet Volt PHEV and its energy savings potential in Real World Driving scenarios with the help of vehicle connectivity. The research on the energy consumption analysis and optimization using connectivity will focus on four main areas of contribution which includes 1.) vehicle testing on a pre-defined drive cycle and alternative routing near the Michigan Tech campus and APS research center that is a continuation of previous students' works, 2) the energy savings potential of vehicle platooning and various vehicle platoon configurations, 3) the updating of a PHEV implementation …

Atv Dynamics And Pediatric Rider Safety, James T. Auxier Ii

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

It has been observed through numerous academic and governmental agency studies that pediatric all-terrain vehicle ridership carries significant risk of injury and death. While no doubt valuable to safety, the post-hoc approach employed in these studies does little to explain the why and how behind the risk factors. Furthermore, there has been no prolonged, widespread, organized, and concerted effort to reconstruct and catalog the details and causes of the large (20,000+) number of ATV-related injuries that occur each year as has been done for road-based motor vehicle accidents. This dissertation takes the opposite approach from a meta-analysis and instead examines …

Filtered-Dynamic-Inversion Control For Unknown Minimum-Phase Systems With Unknown Relative Degree, Sumit Suryakant Kamat

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

We present filtered-dynamic-inversion (FDI) control for unknown linear time-invariant systems that are multi-input multi-output and minimum phase with unknown-but-bounded relative degree. This FDI controller requires limited model information, specifically, knowledge of an upper bound on the relative degree and knowledge of the first nonzero Markov parameter. The FDI controller is a single-parameter high-parameter-stabilizing controller that is robust to uncertainty in the relative degree. We characterize the stability of the closed-loop system. We present numerical examples, where the FDI controller is implemented in feedback with mathematical and physical systems. The numerical examples demonstrate that the FDI controller for unknown relative degree …

A Study Of Model-Based Control Strategy For A Gasoline Turbocharged Direct Injection Spark Ignited Engine, Xin Wang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

To meet increasingly stringent fuel economy and emissions legislation, more advanced technologies have been added to spark-ignition (SI) engines, thus exponentially increase the complexity and calibration work of traditional map-based engine control. To achieve better engine performance without introducing significant calibration efforts and make the developed control system easily adapt to future engines upgrades and designs, this research proposes a model-based optimal control system for cycle-by-cycle Gasoline Turbocharged Direct Injection (GTDI) SI engine control, which aims to deliver the requested torque output and operate the engine to achieve the best achievable fuel economy and minimum emission under wide range of …

Real-Time Predictive Control Of Connected Vehicle Powertrains For Improved Energy Efficiency, Joseph Oncken

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The continued push for the reduction of energy consumption across the automotive vehicle fleet has led to widespread adoption of hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) by auto manufacturers. In addition, connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies have seen rapid development in recent years and bring with them the potential to significantly impact vehicle energy consumption. This dissertation studies predictive control methods for PHEV powertrains that are enabled by CAV technologies with the goal of reducing vehicle energy consumption.

First, a real-time predictive powertrain controller for PHEV energy management is developed. This controller utilizes predictions of future vehicle velocity …

Defects Analysis Of Seat Belt Tensioner Cast Body, Artur Soroczński, Piotr Czyżewski, Krzysztof Rechowicz

VMASC Publications

The article presents an analysis of the implementation of a selected element of the traveler safety system used in road transport. The results of metallographic tests were presented, and the state of stress introduced to the casting by means of forming the element by means of plastic forming was analyzed. An analysis of the manufacturing process was carried out indicating the risks that may lead to cracks in the material structure. Possible causes of founding defects were pointed out and possible technological solutions were pointed out in order to avoid them.

Degrader Analysis For Diagnostic And Predictive Capabilities: A Demonstration Of Progress In Dod Cbm+ Initiatives, William Baker, Steven Nixon, Jeffrey Banks, Karl Reichard, Kaitlynn Castelle

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents a modified reliability centered maintenance (RCM) methodology developed by The Applied Research Laboratory at The Pennsylvania State University (ARL Penn State) to meet challenges in decreasing life cycle sustainment costs for critical Naval assets. The focus of this paper is on the requirements for the development of the on-board Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system with a discussion on the implementation progress for two systems: the high pressure air compressor (HPAC), and the advanced carbon dioxide removal unit (ACRU). Recent Department of Defense (DoD) guidance calls for implementing Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) as an alternative to traditional …

Zips Racing Electric Can Communications, Andrew Jordan, Adam Long, Susanah Kowalewski, Rami Nehme

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The CAN protocol has been a standard of electronic communication networks of automotive vehicles since the early 2000s due to its robust reliability in harsh environments. For the 2020 competition year, the Zips Racing Electric design team will be building an entirely new, fully-electric vehicle with CAN communication implemented rather than communicating via pure analog signals. Hardware and software can be utilized to read analog electrical signals from a source, such as accelerator and brake sensors, and encode them into a digital message that meets the CAN 2.0B communication protocol standard. Likewise, software can be used to extract data from …

Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Improvement, Nathan Embaugh, Jason Mack, Jeremiah Fitzgerald, Zachary J. Lindsey

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The energy harvester is used to convert a portion of the tire deflection waste energy to power up tire embedded sensors. A piezoelectric energy harvester is designed and some preliminary tests are done on it. So far, it has been shown that this design is sufficient for tire application. The team will need to modify the design of the energy harvester, the measurement setup and add a temperature and a strain senor to the existing setup so that the tire deflection and temperature can be measured and at the same time the energy harvester should be tested to see how …

Human Powered Vehicle Internal Systems Design, Zachary Broadbent, Jordan Boos, Patrick Gaertner, Caleb Miner

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of this design project is to redesign the seat and steering system for the Human Powered Vehicle Team. The goal of the seat design is too improve ergonomics by making it more comfortable and adjustable. In making the seat adjustable, it will be easier for drivers to achieve an optimal efficiency when pedaling. The aim for steering will be to improve the ergonomics as well as performance by analyzing steering systems in the past and evaluating how each design was successful and for what reason. Another main goal of the steering system will be improving the stability and …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And Transportation Engineering, Chris Hendrickson,, Laurence Rilett

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous global disruption with immense economic, environmental, and social impacts throughout the world. Only world wars and the flu pandemic of 1918 are comparable in the wide range of consequences, including fatalities, over a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, we can expect other major disruptions to occur in the future. In this editorial, we intend to discern some lessons for the transportation engineering profession that can be learned from the current catastrophe that can help us prepare for future disruptions. We will ignore nontransportation aspects of the pandemic such as the development of …

Autonomous Guided Vehicle Frame For Outdoor Use, Thomas Mcgrath

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The overall goal for my project is to design a durable Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGV) frame intended for carrying a heavy load over outdoor terrain. I will not be designing a complete vehicle, only the basic structure that can be used to build a complete AGV on. There will be complete 3D models of the design and its individual parts. I also would like to provide limited Finite Element Analysis of the design using ANSYS software to determine weaknesses and methods for improvement. The design I create is meant to be used as a framework for complete outdoor AGV designs. …

Vehicle Dynamics Modeling For Autonomous Drifting And Clothoid Based Waypoint Interpolation, Shubham Vatsa

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The advent of autonomous vehicles necessitates a redefinition of road safety regulations, considering a controller can possess better driving skills than an average person. The work presented here partly focuses on a vehicle dynamics model development to help imitate and control vehicle drifting maneuvers. As we see, a professional driver drifting through the traffic while keeping the car safe, it can be utilized to avoid accidents at high speeds, if required. Although drifting can produce higher yaw rates than the regular driving regime, these control capabilities have not yet been exploited in the current automotive control systems. Therefore, this report …

Hybrid Electric Vehicle Energy Management Strategy With Consideration Of Battery Aging, Bin Zhou

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The equivalent consumption minimization strategy (ECMS) is a well-known energy management strategy for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV). ECMS is very computationally efficient since it yields an instantaneous optimal control. ECMS has been shown to minimize fuel consumption under certain conditions. But, minimizing the fuel consumption often leads to excessive battery damage. The objective of this dissertation is to develop a real-time implementable optimal energy management strategy which improves both the fuel economy and battery aging for Hybrid Electric Vehicles by using ECMS. This work introduces a new optimal control problem where the cost function includes terms for both fuel consumption …

Measurement Of Current Distribution In The Land Channel Direction Of A Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, Chinmay Kulkarni

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A fully functional proton exchange membrane fuel cell with single land channel geometry on the cathode and segmented anode current collector with 9 mm² active area with a 350μm spatial resolution was utilized to measure the local current distribution in the land channel direction. A distinguished printed circuit board approach was used for the data acquisition to adapt to any flow field design.

Performance of this segmented cell was examined at dry, wet and moderate humidity settings to study the water transport phenomenon in the PEMFC. In the dry condition at 60 ͦ C with 0% relative humidity, the …

Sensor Fusion And Non-Linear Mpc Controller Development Studies For Intelligent Autonomous Vehicular Systems, Ahammad Basha Dudekula

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The demand for safety and fuel efficiency on ground vehicles and advancement in embedded systems created the opportunity to develop Autonomous controller. The present thesis work is three fold and it encompasses all elements that are required to prototype the autonomous intelligent system including simulation, state handling and real time implementation. The Autonomous vehicle operation is mainly dependent upon accurate state estimation and thus a major concern of implementing the autonomous navigation is obtaining robust and accurate data from sensors. This is especially true, in case of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor data. The IMU consists of a 3-axis gyro, …

การวิเคราะห์เชิงสถิติของปัจจัยที่ส่งผลต่อการเกิดไฟป่าในจังหวัดน่าน, ชัชวาล แซ่โค้ว

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

จังหวัดน่านมักเกิดไฟป่าเป็นประจำทุกปี ซึ่งเป็นสาเหตุของปัญหาน้ำท่วมและดินถล่มในช่วงฤดูฝน ขาดแคลนน้ำได้ง่ายในช่วงฤดูแล้ง รวมถึงปัญหามลพิษอากาศ PM10 เกินค่ามาตรฐาน ส่งผลต่อการอุปโภคบริโภค การเกษตรและการดำรงชีวิตของมนุษย์ ดังนั้น งานวิจัยนี้จึงมีวัตถุประสงค์ในการศึกษาปัจจัยที่ส่งผลต่อการเกิดไฟป่าและสร้างแผนที่ความเสี่ยง เพื่อระบุระดับความเสี่ยงต่อการเกิดไฟป่าในแต่ละพื้นที่ นำไปสู่แนวทางการป้องกันและความคุมไฟป่าอย่างมีประสิทธิภาพต่อไป โดยแบ่งการศึกษาออกเป็น 4 เขต และพิจารณาข้อมูลระหว่างปี พ.ศ. 2555 – 2562 สำหรับตัวแปรที่นำมาวิเคราะห์ได้แก่ เดือนในช่วงฤดูไฟป่า วันในสัปดาห์ (อาทิตย์ - เสาร์) เวลา อุณหภูมิ ความชื้น ระดับความสูง ระดับความชัน ระยะห่างจากถนน ระยะห่างจากพื้นที่เกษตร ระยะระหว่างตำแหน่งจุดเกิดไฟใกล้เคียงและประเภทป่าไม้ ซึ่งได้มีการจัดทำชั้นข้อมูลถนนสายรองเพิ่มเติมในแต่ละเขต เช่น ถนนในพื้นที่เกษตรและบริเวณโดยรอบ ถนนที่เชื่อมต่อเข้าไปในพื้นที่ป่า เป็นต้น ในส่วนของการวิเคราะห์จะประกอบด้วย การหาค่าความถี่ การทดสอบไคสแควร์และสหสัมพันธ์ในรูปแบบเพียร์สัน ร่วมกับค่าถดถอยพหุคูณ ด้วยโปรแกรม IBM SPSS Statistic 22 และนำมาสร้างแผนที่ความเสี่ยง จากการศึกษาพบว่า ทั้ง 4 เขต มีเพียงวันในสัปดาห์ ที่ไม่พบความสัมพันธ์กับการเกิดไฟป่า สำหรับปัจจัยหลักที่ส่งผลต่อการเกิดไฟป่าคือ ระยะห่างจากถนน ระยะห่างจากพื้นที่เกษตรและระยะระหว่างตำแหน่งจุดเกิดไฟใกล้เคียง ดังนั้น จึงนำตัวแปรทั้ง 3 มาสร้างแผนที่ความเสี่ยงและทดสอบด้วยตำแหน่งจุดเกิดไฟป่าของปี 2563 พบว่า ไฟป่ากว่าร้อยละ 55.55 เกิดในพื้นที่เสี่ยงสูงและสูงมาก โดยเฉพาะในเขต 3 เกิดไฟป่าในพื้นที่เสี่ยงสูงมากถึงร้อยละ 81.63 ซึ่งพื้นที่เสี่ยงสูงและสูงมากของทั้ง 4 เขต มีเพียงร้อยละ 8.14 ของพื้นที่ทั้งจังหวัด

Investigation Of Particle Measurement In Different Dilution Ratios With Gasoline Direct Injection And Port Fuel Injection, John Adam Phillips

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ambient air quality has been a concern in the United States since the mid-1900’s, forcing legislations like the Air Pollution Control Act and Clean Air Act necessary to bring focus on air pollution and quality. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to update the requirements for more efficient vehicles and emissions sampling methods. Today the EPA has implemented regulations on modern spark ignited engines without any major focus on the type of injection technologies being used. While particle matter (PM) is a requirement to measure for a vehicle certification, more research should focus on the particle number (PN) measurements that …