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The articulated steering system is widely used in engineering vehicles due to its high mobility and low steering radius. The design parameters have a vital impact on the selection of the steering system assemblies, such as the operation stroke, pressure, and force of the hydraulic cylinders during the steering process, which will affect the system weight. The system energy consumption is also relevant to the geometry parameters. According to the kinetic analysis of the steering system and dynamic analysis of the steering process, the kinetic model of an engineering vehicle steering system is built, and the length and pressure variation of the cylinder is calculated and validated by the field test. The influence of the factors is analyzed based on the established model. To lower the system weight, needed pressure, and force, the multi-objective particle swarm optimization method is initiated to optimize the geometry parameter of the articulated steering system.

Accuracy of heat flux models is critical to clutch design in case of excessive temperatures due to large amounts of friction heat generated in the narrow space. Pressure distribution on the clutch friction interface is an important factor affecting heat flux distribution, thus affecting temperature distribution. In this paper, an experiment is conducted to obtain the pressure distribution for one typical dry clutch equipped with a set of diaphragm spring. Considering that the frictional interface is in contact, this study makes use of pressure sensitive film and acquires data based on image processing techniques. Then a polynomial mathematical model with dimensionless parameters is developed to fit the pressure distribution on the friction disc. After that, the proposed pressure model is applied to a thermal model based on finite element method. In addition, two conventional thermal models (i.e., uniform heat flux model and uniform pressure model), are implemented for comparison.

With the rapid development of series-parallel hybrid electric vehicles (SPHEVs), mode transition from pure electrical drive to hybrid drive has attracted considerable attention. The presence of time delay due to response capacity of actuators and signal transmission of communication may cause decrease of speed tracking accuracy, even instable dynamics. Consequently, drivability of the SPHEV is unacceptable, and durability of the components is reduced. So far, plenty of control strategies have been proposed for mode transition, however, no previous research has been reported to deal with the time delay during mode transition. In this paper, a dynamic model with time delay of hybrid electric system is established. Next, a mode transition time-delay controller is proposed based on a two degree of freedom internal model controller (2-DOF-IMC).

Rotating clutches play an important role in automatic transmissions (AT), dual-clutch transmissions (DCT) and hybrid transmissions. It is very important to continually improve the transmission systems in the areas such as simplifying actuator designs, reducing cost and increasing controllability. A new concept of electrical motor driven actuation using a wedge mechanism, a wedge clutch, demonstrates potential benefits. This wedge clutch has the characteristics of good mechanical advantage, self-reinforcement, and faster and more precise controllability using electrical motor. In this paper, a new rotating wedge clutch is proposed. It presents a challenge since the motor actuator has to be stationary while the clutch piston is rotating. A new mechanism to connect the motor to the wedge piston, including dual-plane bearings and two mechanical ramp linkages, is studied. The design and verification of the physical structure of the actuator are discussed in detail in the paper.

The wedge clutch takes advantages of small actuation force/torque, space-saving and energy-saving. However, big challenge arises from the varying self-reinforced ratio due to the varying friction coefficient inevitably affected by temperature and wear. In order to improve the smoothness and synchronization time of the slipping process of the wedge clutch, this paper proposes a self-tuning PID controller based on Lyapunov principle. A new Lyapunov function is developed for the wedge clutch system. Simulation results show that the self-tuning PID obtains much less error than the conventional PID with fixed gains. Moreover, the self-tuning PID is more adaptable to the variation of the friction coefficient for the error is about 1/5 of the conventional PID.

Dry dual clutch transmission (DCT) has played an important role in the high performance applications as well as low-cost market sectors in Asia, with a potential as the future mainstream transmission technology due to its high mechanical efficiency and driving comfort. Control system simplification and cost reduction has been critical in making dry DCT more competitive against other transmission technologies. Specifically, DCT clutch actuation system is a key component with a great potential for cost-saving as well as performance improvement. In this paper, a new motor driven clutch actuator with a force-aid lever has been proposed. A spring is added to assist clutch apply that can effectively reduce the motor size and energy consumption. The goal of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of this new clutch actuator, and the force-aid lever actuator's principle, physical structure design, and validation results are discussed in details.

A wedge clutch with a wedge ramp transfers the tangential force to an axial force. It has unique features of self-reinforcement and small actuation force, and can be packaged into tight spaces. This wedge clutch can be developed to apply to an automatic transmission (AT) or a hybrid transmission. This paper focuses on the simulation of one wedge clutch in AT during shifting. A mathematical formula is given to describe the self-reinforcement principle of the wedge. The dynamic model of a motor actuated wedge clutch during shifting is built to simulate and develop the control algorithm. The model is implemented in Matlab/Simulink, which includes a DC motor model, a dynamic model of the wedge mechanism and clutch pack, and a driveline model of AT which can simulate a gear shift process. The key characteristics such as variation of normal pressure, response time and energy consumption are evaluated, and the results show a favorable comparison with the traditional hydraulic clutch.

A three-dimensional numerical investigation into aerodynamic feature of the turbocharger turbine under pulsating flow conditions is conducted in this paper. Dual time stepping approach is applied to solve the unsteady Navier-Stokes equations, while the Jameson central scheme is brought in for spatial discretization, and Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model is employed in order to get good viscous resolution, accuracy and computing efficiency. The quasi-steady and unsteady performance of the turbine is given and compared. Five blade passage cross sections are chosen to analyze the structure of the secondary flow at 4 key instants. The developments of different vortex, especially the tip leakage vortex, passage vortex are discussed. The results have shown that the unsteady performance deviates substantially from quasi-steady performance, and the secondary flow structure varies tremendously under the pulsating flow conditions.

Since the vehicle AMT(Automatic Manual Transmission) has been developed to meet the requirements of high quality vehicles as well as hybrid vehicles, there are more and more tasks running on the ECU (Electronically Controlled Unit). Concerned with both function correctness and timing correctness, the scheduling of those tasks becomes important. A perfect scheduler, which distributes the proper task working during the proper time, can not only make the best use of the ECU, but also predict its capacity rationally. Compared with ordinary algorithm such as clock driven scheduler, static and dynamic priority-driven scheduler as well as round robin scheduler, this paper proposes an offline-designed Blended Timer-triggered Scheduler (BTTS) for AMT control. BTTS can coordinate periodical and event-triggered tasks in one envelope. It designates the available time slice for each task, which can make each critical task run at the proper time.

Real-time theory is introduced to analyze reliability and robustness for ECU (Electronically Controlled Unit) of vehicle AMT (Automatic Mechanical Transmission). Real time analysis architecture is proposed. Analysis and simulation for the four working stages of AMT are illustrated. The results show, the real time system model with 9 tasks working on 4 processors is reasonable, and the designed Blended Timer-Triggered Scheduler is feasible as well as robust, which provide the system more extendibility and reliability.

The lump-fashioned droplet group micro-explosions in water-in-diesel fuel emulsion sprays during the atomization, evaporation and combustion processes in a high-pressure, high temperature bomb were observed with a multi-pulsed, off-axis, image-plane, ruby laser holocamera and a high-speed camera. The explosions expand the volume of spray, improve the fuel-air mixing process and speed up the flame propagation. A no-water layer formed by Hills vortex was also observed in emulsion droplets. The ambient temperature has the most important influence on the occurrence and violence of the micro-explosion. The fuel consumption and exhaust emissions with emulsions of different water fractions were studied under various operating conditions by numerical simulation and engine tests.