Search Results

Recently Piaggio developed a new scooter equipped with a revolutionary front suspension electronically controlled locking. It was critical to test and validate the design of this new control system before deployment to ensure high customer satisfaction and reducing warranty costs. Test on a HIL platform accelerates the verification and validation process. A validated HIL set-up, being a repeatable and reliable test platform with a short turnaround time is ideal for developing standardized processes for Electronic Control Unit (ECU) testing and calibration. With shortening life cycles in the motorcycle industry, HIL technology is rapidly gaining acceptance not only in conventional vehicle programs, but also challenging vehicle programs. The development of control strategies for MP3 ECU has benefited from HIL-based testing. It has proven to be an efficient tool for software strategy development, implementation and validation.

In order to improve the emission and performance capabilities of modern engines several devices are introduced in the system. One of such devices is the Continuously Variable Cam Phaser (CVCP), which, by shifting the relative angle between the crank and cam shafts, allows to modify the opening and closing times of the inlet and outlet valves with respect to the base engine configuration, thus giving more design freedom. The control of the CVCP is performed by the Engine Control Unit, which both sets the desired values for the CVCP shift angle and commands the CVCP actuator to control it at the correct position. The new FIRE engine 1.4l 16v also includes a CVCP. The aim of the activity described in the paper was to perform a functional validation of the CVCP position control algorithms, through a sensitivity analysis of the CVCP control performance to a series of environmental and production variables.

Since 2000 the European regulation has introduced an ""on-board"" diagnosis system on the emission relevant components (EOBD). In particular, a monitoring of the catalytic converter has been introduced and the damage recognition threshold has been fixed for THC emissions only (0.4 g/km for EURO stage 3, evaluated on NEDC cycle). Therefore, special damaged components with THC emissions greater then the threshold limit is needed during calibration and tuning phases.

As U.S. and European regulation of automotive emissions is getting more stringent, great interest is growing around new solutions for future emission standards. Pollutant reduction can be achieved improving both engine out emission and aftertreatment system efficiency. Engine out emission can be reduced improving combustion process especially during warm-up, friction and the engine management system. In any case engine out emission reduction involves engine sophistication increasing costs, which must be accurately evaluated, especially for small displacement large mass production engine. Since, as it is well known, 80 - 90 per cent of HC and CO emissions are produced during the first 100s of NEDC cycle, great improvement could be achieved reducing the catalyst light-off time. Different configurations of exhaust gas after treatment system have been tested to improve conversion efficiency during warm-up phases.

The new European Legislation requires new strategies in order to achieve a reliable emission diagnostic over the entire life of the vehicle (EOBD). For the validation and the fine-tuning of the new diagnostic controls, the car manufacturers must manage fleets of vehicles in order to evaluate the behavior of these diagnostics over a real aging cycle. This paper describes a useful tool that has been developed to check the most important diagnostic indexes behavior with aging, that help us in the management of a durability fleet. The system is composed of: a specific hardware added to the Engine Control Unit (ECU) a real time software for the automatic storage of the most important diagnostic parameters an off line software for data analysis. During the use of durability car the system runs automatically and does not require any additional operation to the driver (“black-box system”), and no additional skilled people is required for the data acquisition.