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The design of engine cylinders must satisfy two conflicting requirements, good cooling performance and ease of manufacture. A cooling system was designed to permit the circulation of engine lubricating oil as a coolant at high speed through grooves provided on the external periphery of the cylinder liner. Testing in an actual operating engine confirmed that this cooling system design not only provides better heat transfer and higher cooling performance but also simplifies the manufacturing of the cylinder since external cooling fins are not required. In this paper, we will discuss the cylinder cooling effect of the new cylinder cooling system, referring mainly to the test results of a single-cylinder motorcycle engine with lubricating oil from the crankcase used as the coolant.

The perforation corrosion of steel and galvanized steels due to the cyclic corrosion test (CCT) has been analyzed by the extreme-value statistics. The plots of the maximum values of perforation corrosion depth and the cumulative probability gave straight lines and they were fitted to the Gumbel (double exponential probability) distribution. The decrease of the slope of these lines with CCT time suggested that uniform corrosion occurred in an early stage of CCT but it changed to uneven corrosion with CCT time. The period of the uniform corrosion corresponds to the incubation time, tj, of perforation corrosion and the ti of the steel was extended proportionately with zinc coating weight. The perforation corrosion rate of Zn-Ni alloy electroplated steel after the t; was lower than those of other materials. This phenomenon seems to be attributable to formation of a protective corrosion product of ZnCl3 ·4Zn(OH)2 and a good adhesion of the product to the steel.

An active vision system equipped with a high-speed pulsed light-emitting projector and a high-speed image sensor is proposed and applied to lane marker detection in this paper. The proposed system has the capability to suppress image information obtained from the background light and provides only the image information from the signal light emitted by the projector. This is accomplished by synchronizing image capture with the time of signal light emission. To reduce the power consumption and cost of the system, a relatively low intensity projector is used as the light source. The background illuminance on a bright day can be much higher than that of the signal. To improve the signal-to-background ratio, the signal light is modulated using a pulse width modulation technique. Then, the image is captured using a high-speed camera operating in synchronization with the time the signal light is emitted.

This paper presents a new method for calculating optical flow using data from a high frame-rate camera. We focused on a feature of image data captured with a high frame-rate camera in which objects do not move more than one pixel between successive frames. This approach eliminates repetitive processing for object identification among frames taken at different sampling times. High-speed processing hardware architecture was designed with sequential processing only, and the algorithm was implemented in a field programmable gate array. The resultant unit can calculate optical flow for a 640×120 pixel size image with a 480-Hz processing cycle and 0.5-μsec processing latency.

A NEW TYPE FUEL FLOW SENSOR which is based upon heat transfer principle has been developed for automotive applications. The fuel flow sensor presented in this paper utilizes temperature sensitive resistors made of extremely thin platinum films, and is located in the main passage of a conduit opposite to a nozzle. An extraordinarily wide dynamic range and a quick response have been obtained in comparison with conventional methods. The hot film type fuel flow sensor could allow a new microprocessor to control the engine functions, as well as a fuel consumption or a fuel rate meter.

A highly sensitive, non-contact torque sensor was developed using amorphous magnetic alloy. A thin strip of amorphous magnetic alloy was bonded onto the surface of the shaft, formed into a chevron shape, then the torque applied to the shaft was detected from the difference in the inductance of the detection coil wound around the strip. A highly sensitive torque sensor having outstanding linearity could be made by selecting a magnetic working point and stress working point to apply to the amorphous magnetic alloy and by optimum arrangement of the heat treatment and bonding processes. Temperature characteristics, twist resistivity, and noise resistivity were also evaluated to prove performance in practical use.

New vapor deposited zinc alloy coatings, which are Zn-Mg, Zn-Al, Zn-Cr, Zn-Ni and Zn-Ti coatings, have been developed by vapor deposition pilot-line. Morphology of surface structure, depth profile of alloy composition and crystal structure have been studied for these coatings. Zn-Mg alloy coated steel sheet showed the best corrosion resistance. The corrosion behavior of this coating has been investigted. The coating surface is densely covered with a corrosion product layer composed of ZnC12·4Zn(OH)2, which could play a role as a protective barrier film. The corrosion potential remains active enough to give the substrate galvanic protection for a long time in a corrosive environment. Attention has been directed to corrosion resistance for automobile body panels in recent years and several types of zinc coated steel sheets has been developed for automotive usage.

DPR consists of a multiple fuel-injection system, an electronic engine control unit, and a DPR Cleaner. The DPR cleaner is one assembly unit consisting of a DOC, a catalyzed DPF, and an exhaust silencer. Thus, DPR is a system developed to achieve healthy operation of a DPF with active regeneration regardless of engine operating conditions. The IP Filter was developed to improve the DPR cleaner by reducing the size of the unit and shortening the regeneration time. Both the DOC and DPF are integrated into one unit structure. The IP Filter has open-ended cells on the front face unlike a conventional wall-flow DPF. Instead, the plugs are positioned at the interface between the DOC and DPF. On the rear face of the IP Filter, plugs are installed at the same positions as those of a conventional DPF. The DOC substrate of the IP Filter is made of highly porous, straight honeycomb, the same as that of DPF.