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Drivers’ physical and physiological states change with prolonged driving. Driving for extended periods of time can lead to an increased risk of low back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders, caused by the discomfort of the seats. Static and dynamic are the two main categories must be considered within the seating development. The posture and orientation of the occupant are the important factors on static comfort. Driving posture measurement is essential for the evaluation of a driver workspace and improved seat comfort design. This study evaluated the comfortable driving posture through physiological and ergonomics measurements of an automotive premium driver seat. The physiological evaluation includes electroencephalographic (EEG) for brain waves, Biopac’s AcqKnowledge program, and subjective measurements on 32 healthy individuals. JACK simulation was used for the ergonomics evaluation, i.e., the magnitude of the spinal loads about lumbar vertebrae was estimated.

To be practical, auxiliary power units (APUs) should operate on the same fuels that the internal combustion engine (ICE) uses for vehicle propulsion. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have previously been shown to be able to convert the chemical energy of certain room-temperature-liquid hydrocarbon fuels (toluene and synthetic diesel fuel) to electricity by direct oxidation. Because such SOFCs operate without reformers, the systems based on these SOFCs are expected to be compact. To work with existing infrastructure fuels, the cells must be able to tolerate typical contaminants such as sulfur that are found in the everyday fuels. In this paper, we report on recent laboratory results that show direct oxidation SOFCs with ceria-copper anodes can provide at least 2 hours operation in the presence of 200 ppm sulfur in the fuel. Also, a laboratory cell has been run for 12 hours on regular unleaded gasoline.

To meet the increasing electrical power demands for advanced internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, auxiliary power units (APUs) are of growing interest. Fuel cell based APUs offer the potential for high chemical-to-electrical conversion efficiency with low noise and low emissions. It has recently been shown that solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) can be used to directly convert the chemical energy of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to electricity. Because the combustion reaction takes place by direct oxidation of vaporized fuel at the fuel cell anode, the expectation exists for development of compact, reformerless APUs that can operate on the same fuel that the ICE uses for vehicle propulsion. Critical issues for the transportation SOFC-APU applications are fast start-up and the need to survive extensive thermal cycling.

The objective of this study is to develop a neuro controlled active suspension for the ride quality improvement. The performance index of the optimal control is represented as the frequency-shaped using Parseval's theorem. The incorporation of frequency-dependent weighting matrices allow one to emphasize the specific variables related to the vibrations of the specific bands of frequencies. Once the active control law is obtained, we use the artificial neural networks to train the neuro controller to learn the relation of road input and control force. From the numerical results, we found that back propagation learning does good pattern matching and the neuro controlled suspension may reduce the vertical acceleration of the driver's seat and sprung mass motions significantly at desired bands of frequencies.