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The steady growth in the number of electronic control units on the average vehicle and the complexity of the algorithms that reside on these controllers has resulted in one of the most significant initiatives in the automotive industry in years. AUTOSAR - the Automotive Open System Architecture - has united more than 100 companies, automobile manufacturers, suppliers and tool vendors to develop a standard architecture for electronic control units. By the end of 2006 Version 2.1 was released, and now OEMs as well as suppliers have started to develop and integrate AUTOSAR-compliant functionality and components into vehicles. This paper will focus on the approach and challenges faced by engineers developing AUTOSAR-compliant production code using Model-Based Design.

Manufacturing readiness of composite rotors and certification of flywheels depend in part on the maturity of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technology for process optimization and quality assurance, respectively. Capabilities and limitations of x-ray-computed tomography and radiography, as well as advanced ultrasonics were established on NDE ring and rotor standards with EDM notches and drilled holes. Also, intentionally seeded delamination, tow break, and insert of bagging material were introduced in hydroburst-rings to study the NDE detection capabilities of such anomalies and their effect on the damage tolerance and safe life margins of subscale rings and rotors. Examples of possible occurring flaws or anomalies in composite rings as detected by NDE and validated by destructive metallography are shown. The general NDE approach to ensure quality of composite rotors and to help in the certification of flywheels is briefly outlined.

This paper discusses a computer simulation of the transient, thermochemical events associated with ignition and combustion of an automotive airbag gas-generator unit. Following a brief description of the model development and physical assumptions made in the analysis, calculations are presented for a series of test cases that are characteristic of the standard, passenger-side, 60-L experiments conducted at TRW-VSSI. Pressure and temperature profiles generated by the airbag combustion program are presented and compared with experimental data for a special test case. The calculations show excellent agreement with experimental data obtained in the TRW-VSSI test apparatus. The results presented in this paper also demonstrate the usefulness of the airbag combustion program in assessing the sensitivity of airbag pressure curves to various design parameters. A short discussion is also provided on experimental data which must be collected for model development and verification requirements.