Fluid-Structure Interaction on The Design of Fully Assembled Shell Eco-Marathon (SEM) Prototype Car

To achieve high fuel efficiency, vehicles designs are inclined to choose lightweight materials and structures. However, these structures are generally weak, and structural integrity is a common concern. The purpose of this paper is to carry out fluid-structure interaction (FSI) study in one-way coupling analysis on a Shell Eco Marathon (SEM) prototype car which travels in a low-speed range to analyse its structural response. A new set of economical materials is proposed and analysed with the concern on self-fabrication process. The Flax fibre composite is introduced as a part of the proposed material set due to its environmental and economic advantages. The study herein is purely a numerical simulation work as a first approach to design a sustainable SEM prototype car. The fully assembled SEM prototype car was analysed with the proposed materials with ANSYS Workbench in the coupling of the fluid (ANSYS Fluent) and structural solver (ANSYS Mechanical) in a one-way FSI. Even with a thin shell design, the proposed material only experiences minimum deformations. The simulations also reveal that the maximum von-Mises stress experienced, after considered the safety factor, is still several order lower than the yield strength. This study has confirmed that the car design has fulfilled its structural requirements to operate at the design speed.

A Mathematical Model for Control and Optimization of Industrial Rotary Alumina Kiln Process

Temperature is a crucial factor for clinker quality in the Industrial Rotary Alumina Kiln Process(IRAKP). However, the characteristic of the high temperature, complex kinetics, multivariable, non-linearreaction kinetics, long-time delayed reaction and various raw materials make it difficult to accurately controlthe temperature in IRAKP through an existing control technology. This paper proposes a dual-responsesurface-based process control (DRSPC) system for the IRAKP in a novel manner. In the DRSPC, instead ofthe more precise and complicated nonlinear equations, the dual response surface models are fitted to describethe reaction kinetics in the IRAKP and track their standard deviations for stable operation purpose. Because asimultaneous consideration of multiple control targets could address the problem of unstable operation inkilns; the objectives of the DRSPC study are designed as optimizing product quality, minimizing energyconsumption and temperature fluctuations. Therefore, the proposed DRSPC goals are to achieve a uniformquality clinker, a high fuel efficiency, and a long refractory life. A weight optimization approach is used tohandle these multiple objective functions. The proposed DRSPC can estimate the working conditions of a kilnand predict some optimal manipulated variables to the control system in each control time interval forimproving the efficiency of IRAKP. The DRSPC is applied to a real IRAKP for demonstrating itsapplicability and advantages.

Trends and Perspectives in the Design of Mobile Wood Chippers

Mobile wood chippers represent a mature technology now available in a wide range of sizes and configurations. Different types exist, but the most widespread are disc and drum chippers. The latter have enjoyed wider popularity in recent years because they are best suited to processing logging residue and other low-quality wood. Drum chippers can be fitted with screens, designed to re-circulate oversize particles. In general, industrial chippers offer high productivity and high fuel efficiency, especially if settings are properly adjusted. Chippers are high-maintenance equipment and require proper care. Maintenance cost increases with machine age and can be predicted quite accurately, and so can chipping productivity and cost. Reliable models exist for estimating both maintenance cost and productivity, based on dedicated user-entered assumptions. All things being equal, there are no substantial productivity and maintenance differences between tractor-powered and independent-engine chippers.

Methods to Improve the Spray Characteristics of n-Butanol by Visualization of Spray in a Port Injector

Generally, fossil fuels are non-renewable and depleting day by day. The usage of renewable fuels reduces global warming. Alcohols are renewable in nature and used in SI engines due to their good combustion properties like antiknock and flame velocity. Ethanol, methanol, and butanol are commonly used alcohols. Ethanol is widely used in countries, where it is abundant. Butanol is gaining more attention due to its combustion properties being similar to gasoline and its corrosion less behavior when compared to ethanol. Butanol injection in the intake port through port injectors will form a plume, which leads to high emission. The high viscosity of butanol is the reason behind such plume which is the major cause of poor vaporization, less fuel efficiency, and high hydrocarbon emissions. Methods like heating of butanol to high temperatures, increasing the injection pressure and blending of butanol with less viscous fuels like gasoline and ethanol can be accomplished to obtain a better fuel spray. This particular work reveals the visualization of the spray of butanol with different fuel temperatures, injection pressure and the blending of butanol with gasoline and ethanol. Further, it can be a knowledge base for utilizing renewable butanol effectively in automotive engines for achieving low emission and high fuel efficiency.

EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT OF ELECTRIC VEHICLE BY USING ACTIVE FILTERS

In electric vehicle is new emerging trend, because cost of fuel is increasing and air pollution is also increasing. Electric vehicle is control the air pollution. Electric vehicle also gives less cost per kilometer. Electric vehicles can run up to 450 km in a single battery charge to achieve this distance normal fuel consumes very large amount of fuel giving rise to costly journey as well as rise in air pollution but in case of electric vehicles does not pollute air and have high fuel efficiency because of this it is very beneficial for the society. In electric vehicles battery pack is uses to give power to electric motors. Battery is dc supply. Inverter is converted DC to impure AC supply having large harmonics, these harmonics reduces the efficiency of electric motor that as electric vehicle. This work shows some MATLAB simulation of inverter has done 21 levels. This simulation gives approximate output. As a result, THD reduce.

Baking Effect on Desorption of Diffusible Hydrogen and Hydrogen Embrittlement on Hot-Stamped Boron Martensitic Steel

Recently, hot stamping technology has been increasingly used in automotive structural parts with ultrahigh strength to meet the standards of both high fuel efficiency and crashworthiness. However, one issue of concern regarding these martensitic steels, which are fabricated using a hot stamping procedure, is that the steel is highly vulnerable to hydrogen delayed cracking caused by the diffusible hydrogen flow through the surface reaction of the coating in a furnace atmosphere. One way to make progress in understanding hydrogen delayed fractures is to elucidate an interaction for desorption with diffusible hydrogen behavior. The role of diffusible hydrogen on delayed fractures was studied for different baking times and temperatures in a range of automotive processes for hot-stamped martensitic steel with aluminum- and silicon-coated surfaces. It was clear that the release of diffusible hydrogen is effective at higher temperatures and longer times, making the steel less susceptible to hydrogen delayed fractures. Using thermal desorption spectroscopy, the phenomenon of the hydrogen delayed fracture was attributed to reversible hydrogen in microstructure sites with low trapping energy.

Power Flows in Compound Transmissions for Hybrid Vehicles

Hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) traction systems are the most promising technologies being characterized by high performance, high fuel efficiency, low emissions and long operating range. Significant improvements can be achieved equipping transmissions with variable transmission ratio such as power-split transmission and a compound power-split electric continuously variable transmission (eCVT). These systems have been introduced to improve vehicle global efficiency since they can maximize the efficiency in different operating conditions. Optimal design and control of these systems leads improvements in vehicles performance and mathematical models, which support the preliminary design phase, can play a key role in this field. In this work, the internal power circulations of “four-port-mechanical-power split device are determined through a dynamic analysis.” Finally, the efficiency of the compound transmission is analytically evaluated, assuming that the overall losses are linked to the eCVT variator.