Search Results

In the material design, essential and functional properties are very important information. This information includes the numerical value, the image photograph, the table and the figure, etc. However most of this information has been kept as analogue information. It is necessary to convert analogue into digital one. Thereupon it is significant to construct the database related with all information organically. In this study, the energy absorption properties of FRP tube were paid attention. The construction of the database system was investigated by using various kinds of information. It aimed at the multi-function design aid tool to be used by the Internet.

Tapered FRP tubes have high-energy absorption performance under axial compressive load. FRP will be useful for structural material of a shock absorber in the various industries. And in order to simulate the behavior of this material, several experimental tests and numerical simulations using FEM have been carried out recently. However, it is still difficult to simulate the behavior of tapered FRP tubes involving so called “Progressive Crushing” with FEM properly, because the fracture mechanism contains various kinds of fractures such as delamination, fiber fracture and so on. In this study, we proposed a specially designed FEM model based that is useful for the crush-worthiness analysis of FRP tube.

A Hardware-In-the-Loop simulator with a vehicle-ready Electronic Control Unit (ECU) coupled with a vehicle model, simulating a real vehicle movement in real time, was developed. The simulator was used to validate the ECU software and hardware components of the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system. The authors have modularized each vehicle component so that the entire vehicle model can be rebuilt automatically by selecting each component. This feature enables flexible and rapid building of the virtual vehicle. As a result, the simulator with auto building vehicle model allowed the development and validation of the ACC control system for various vehicle configurations.

The thermal management system for electric vehicles is developed. Called the Thermal Link System, it consists of a heat-pump air conditioner, a system recovering waste heat from the electric power train, and a heat exchanger between the air-conditioner refrigerant and the power-train coolant water. The recovered heat is used for interior heating, so the amount of power consumed by the heat-pump air conditioner can be reduced. In this system the refrigerant for the heat-pump air conditioner and the coolant water for electric power trains are thermally linked by the heat exchanger, which can reduce the temperature of the coolant water to less than that of the surrounding air. This enhanced cooling function increases the power of electric power trains, or extends the amount of time at full power operation. Here we describe the Thermal Link System's mechanism and effects on energy efficiency.