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The Wireless Integrated Cockpit Information Display (WICID) program originated as a request to remotely control and display laptop based applications from a cockpit without use of the standard keyboard and mouse devices. The resulting system utilized multifunction displays to allow control and display from a single device. The foundations of this system are divided into three technologies: 1) remote display, 2) customized input interface, and 3) application control. This modular approach provides a highly flexible and extendible system capable of remotely controlling several Microsoft Windows based applications, hosted across several processors, without requiring any modifications to those applications.

As the construction of an International Space Station approaches reality, the next phases in the exploration of Space will require long duration missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The risk of traumatic injury and death will be an ever present factor in near space (within our solar system). Reviews of trauma deaths have consistently found that the greatest reduction in preventable death will occur by addressing definitive airway management, treatment of hemothorax and pneumothorax, and control of intra-abdominal hemorrhage. On a long duration space voyage realistic capabilities exist to potentially manage the first two injuries of this triad. The ability to manage a patient requiring operative control of an abdominal injury represents a quantum leap in commitment, but provides a new standard to target in surgical support of the ongoing exploration of space.

In the quest for improved fuel efficiency and reduced CO2 emissions, motor manufacturers are increasingly turning to the High Speed Direct Injection (HSDI) diesel engine for passenger car use. To achieve acceptable levels of noise and emissions at low loads two stage injection is being utilised. Such injection systems are prone to nozzle coking due to the small fuel metering holes, low opening pressures and low fuel flow rates under part load operation. This coking leads to a rapid deterioration of emissions performance. This paper describes work done to investigate conditions leading to this phenomena and the possible mechanisms involved.

One of the most promising ways to insure the periodic regeneration of a particulate trap, consists of additising the fuel with organo-metallic compounds. The present paper deals with a novel alkali product, able to promote natural regenerations, for exhaust temperatures as low as 200 °C, and treatment rates as low as 5 ppm metal. Tests have been carried out on a soot reactor and on an engine bench, with various trap locations in the exhaust, showing that the regeneration occurrence depends on temperature, soot mass loaded inside the porous structure and engine conditions. A complete trap cleaning still needs gas temperatures up to 400 °C, which can be encountered for high load conditions of the engine.

Concerns over the effects of combustion chamber deposits (CCD) on engine performance coupled with increasing environmental pressures on vehicle exhaust emissions, have forced the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to call for control of fuel compositions to preclude or minimise deposit formation in the combustion chamber. However, this is currently not felt to be feasible, given the scarcity of data on the effect of CCD on emissions, and the lack of an industry standard measurement technique. This paper describes a two-year project which demonstrates the positive impact that a fully synthetic CCD control additive system has on engine performance and emissions. The same programme demonstrates that tailpipe HC, CO, and NOx all directionally increased after the deposit accumulation period, but only NOx decreased with the removal of CCD. Engine-out NOx emissions increase with heavy CCD weight.

Diesel fuel detergent additives are increasingly linked with high quality automotive diesel fuels. Both in Europe and in the USA, field problems associated with fuel injector coking or fouling have been experienced. In Europe indirect injection (IDI) light duty engines used in passenger cars were affected, while in the USA, a direct injection (DI) engine in heavy duty truck applications experienced field problems. In both cases, a fuel additive detergent performance test has evolved using an engine linked with the original field problem, although engine design modifications employed by the manufacturers have ensured improved operation in service. Increasing awareness of the potential for injector nozzle coking to cause deterioration in engine performance is coupled with a need to meet ever more stringent exhaust emissions legislation. These two requirements indicate that the use of detergency additives will continue to be associated with high quality diesel fuels.

The atomisation characteristics of DI diesel engine fuel injection nozzles have been the subject of intensive study over the last decade. Much of this work has been related to clean, single hole nozzles spraying into quiescent air, at either ambient conditions or elevated pressures and temperatures. Experience shows that fuel injector nozzles may foul very rapidly in field service, and that this might have a significant effect on the performance of the engine particularly with regard to emissions. The build up of material on the injector nozzle can be controlled by the addition of suitable fuel additives. This paper describes test procedures developed to assess deposit build up and to indicate the efficacy of keep clean additives. The paper then goes on to describe high speed photographic techniques for studying the fuel spray characteristics of clean and fouled injectors in a firing engine.

Wax formation in diesel fuel can seriously inhibit the liquid flow characteristics, block filters and reduce the cold operability of diesel vehicles. The cold flow properties of fuels are usually quantified using laboratory techniques. The paper describes the ways that fuel waxing can influence the performance of vehicles and how techniques are being developed to evaluate the benefit of cold flow improving additives. Researchers often turn to laboratory tests to improve research progress. The credibility of two new test techniques is discussed. Reductions in fuel ignition quality can seriously influence cold starting and emissions. Work carried out to evaluate the cold starting qualities of ethanol with two different ignition improvers is discussed.

This paper gives background data on gasoline utilisation and the present status of fuel consumption procedures in Europe. The relationships between octane number requirement, compression ratio, and fuel consumption from current British cars of 1.0 to 4.0-litre capacity have been analysed. Published data are compared with results from dynamometer tests of engines and vehicles over a range of compression ratios. Various vehicle operating cycles have been used to show the consistently adverse effect on fuel consumption of lowering compression ratio, regardless of operating conditions. Gear ratio effects were also examined, and consumption trends were found to be dependent on the operating cycle. An amalgamation of all results gives an economy relationship for European cars similar to that shown for American automobiles - 1.4% more fuel used per unit drop in octane number.