Getting your V6 to act like a V8, while saving gas

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The history of engine improvements in the U.S. has tended primarily in one direction: raw horsepower. Engines have gotten bigger and more powerful over time—and that's certainly what automakers have used as a key selling point. But U.S. automaker Ford has decided to take turbocharging and direct fuel injection in another direction: fuel efficiency.Yesterday, Ford began production of what it's calling the EcoBoost engine: a new gasoline motor that employs turbocharging, direct fuel injection, variable timing in the valves that control fuel and exhaust flow to make a smaller, lighter six-cylinder engine perform like an eight-cylinder engine.* When these technologies are combined, "you can now significantly downsize the engine," says mechanical engineer Dan Kapp, Ford's director for power train research. "The fuel efficiency comes from a much smaller displacement engine providing equal or, in most cases, superior performance to the engine you're replacing."In essence, the new engine works by using the turbocharging to deliver more air to the fuel burning chamber, variable valve timing to fully flush exhaust gas after combustion in the chamber and then direct injection to overcome any knocking issues.

The company estimates the new engines—which will begin appearing in the Lincoln MKS and MKZ and the Ford Flex and Taurus this summer—can deliver at least 10 percent more miles-per-gallon and therefore reduced emissions of carbon dioxide. By 2013, the company plans to produce 1.3 million vehicles with EcoBoost engines in them, including 90 percent of all Ford vehicles sold in the U.S.Of course, such cars will be more expensive than current models, though Kapp declined to specify a price tag, saying only that fuel savings could pay for it "on the order of two years or less" at today's fuel prices. That’s compared to much longer payback times for diesels or hybrids (which Ford is also producing). Ultimately, the EcoBoost engine will also have to cope with alternative fuels, and Ford plans in the longer-term future to move more towards hybrids and electric vehicles. But for the next decade or so, Ford will be relying on these engines to meet some of the new fuel efficiency targets announced this week and reduce pollution. "What Ford is doing uniquely here is leveraging [EcoBoost] to deliver fuel efficiency through aggressive downsizing [of the engine] as opposed to the performance type approach," Kapp says. But it remains to be seen whether a car company that has spent years and millions of advertising dollars touting the horsepower that can be gained from such improvements (at the expense of fuel efficiency) can convince customers to change direction too.
Image 1: Lincoln MKZ engine. Copyright 2009—Ford Motor Company and Wieck Photo Database

Battery-powered Vehicles To Be Revolutionized By New Technology

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ScienceDaily (May 11, 2009) — Thousands of small electric scooters, bicycles and wheelchairs throughout Europe and Asia are powered by LifePO4 –- a material used in advanced lithium-ion batteries developed by Université de Montréal researchers.

"It's a revolutionary battery because it is made from non-toxic materials abundant in the Earth's crust. Plus, it's not expensive,'" says Michel Gauthier, an invited professor at the Université de Montréal Department of Chemistry and co-founder of Phostech Lithium, the company that makes the battery material. "This battery could eventually make the electric car very profitable."
The theory will soon be tested, since the 100 percent electric Microcar that's set to debut in Europe this year will be and powered by the LifePO4 battery.
Phostech Lithium's production plant in St. Bruno, Quebec, produces the black LifePO4 powder, which is shipped across the world in tightly sealed barrels.
"The theoretical principle behind the battery was patented by a University of Texas professor in 1995. However, without the work of local chemists such as Nathalie Ravet, we couldn't have developed it," says Phostech Lithium engineer Denis Geoffroy.
Süd-Chemie, a leading specialty chemistry company based in Germany, first invested in Phostech Lithium in 2005. Now, just four years later, Süd-Chemie's total Canadian investments have reached $13 million and it stands as the 100% owner of Phostech Lithium. Phostech's St. Bruno plant began to produce LiFePO4 in 2006 with 20 employees and a 400 metric-ton capacity. Since then, Phostech has nearly doubled its staff.
"It is a battery that is much more stable and much safer," says Dean MacNeil, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Chemistry and new NSERC-Phostech Lithium Industrial Research Chair in Energy Storage and Conversion. "In addition, it recharges much faster than previous batteries."
The NSERC Research Chair, funded in part by Phostech Lithium, will help investigate ways to improve the LifePO4 battery.
For Gauthier, Phostech Lithium is the product of academia and the business world coming together. "Even if we knew that lithium, iron and phosphate were theoretically promising materials, we had to make them efficient. We had to find the right voltage and maintain the right charging and discharging properties. This is where the university played a major role."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Montreal.

Bridge Strengthening Research

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070914163132.htm

Science Daily — These days, a drive across a bridge is not always a pleasure cruise. Mindful of the war on terrorism, it can often be a cautious experience.

In one scenario, someone sets off a series of bombs to weaken the cables and the key structural connections of a major city bridge, all during rush hour. Not easy to do, but now thinkable. This summer, the possibility of sabotage was quickly examined—then dismissed—when the I35W bridge in Minneapolis tragically collapsed into the Mississippi River.
As authorities monitor and stand guard over bridges, the Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate is looking to scientists and engineers for the security technologies of tomorrow. What if, for instance, we could one day not only guard bridges but fortify them? Like Superman’s blue suit, what if the cables and connections on bridges could be shielded with protective sleeves or covers, making them nearly impossible for the villains to penetrate?
This is the goal of the Directorate's bridge-strengthening research. Through a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center, the Directorate’s Infrastructure and Geophysical Division is testing current bridge designs and investigating advances in steel and reinforced concrete to explore whether such shields could work.
The first step is to determine which bridges and materials are most vulnerable, says Stanley Woodson, who oversees the project at the Center’s Geotech and Structures Lab. A major focus, he says, are the cables and the support columns—or towers—that are used in the cable-stayed design of bridges. Unlike the cables of a suspension bridge, which are attached from tower to tower, the cables in a cable-stayed bridge are connected directly to accessible points along the horizontal bridge deck.
"In controlled experiments, Woodson’s team has been re-creating the forces holding up these bridges and blowing up samples of their cables using various kinds of explosives," say Dr. Mary Ellen Hynes, director of the research. "They then use sophisticated software to analyze the impact and results."
“We tension the cables just like a real bridge,” Woodson explains. “We want to see just how they’d react in an actual terrorist event.”
The next step will be more complicated, says Woodson: Determining what material would suffice for another layer of protection, and what form it should take. “We’re looking at the practical as well as the innovative,” he says, recognizing the potential for high costs.
By the end of 2008, Woodson and his team will be imitating concrete bridge towers and subjecting them to the same explosive testing.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Department of Homeland Security.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Safer Car Controls

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070909215312.htm

Science Daily — The number of electronic components in cars is growing rapidly. To ensure that vehicle electronics will work properly in future despite the overabundance of software and its increasing complexity, researchers are remodeling it and making it even safer.

The sight of a shiny new car suggests streamlined high-tech devices. But appearances are deceptive. Under the hood, all is confusion. Around 100 microprocessors control auxiliary functions such as ABS, ESP or the headlight that can shine around corners. Almost as many control units send their commands to fuel injection systems, airbags and other functional modules.
Components from numerous manufacturers are scattered throughout the car body. Vehicle development engineers attempting to unite all the different systems into a working entity face a truly Herculean task, for each control unit carries its own software. Experts expect the volume of software in new cars to continue to increase by as much as 300 percent in the next four years.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST in Berlin has joined the international development initiative AUTOSAR (Automotive Open System Architecture) on behalf of the BMW Group. All the well-known car manufacturers and suppliers are members of the partnership. The goal of AUTOSAR is to pare down the ballast of in-car software and make it easier to handle.
The idea behind it is that vehicle functions will first be defined and linked together independently of their specific platforms. Only at the next stage are these functions to be assigned to the vehicle’s existing control units. After this the infrastructural software, likewise standardized, needs to be “fine-tuned”. However, the actual information processing takes place at a higher level, on the AUTOSAR Virtual Functional Bus. This approach simplifies matters tremendously and reveals a way of structuring the growing confusion of software.
“At long last, AUTOSAR gives software integrators in the automotive industry something that developers in other sectors, in the form of standardized development libraries, have had at their fingertips for decades,” says Markus Hardt, head of the department for reliable technical systems at the ISST. But before AUTOSAR can take to the road in tomorrow’s cars, it has to be tested to ensure it functions in a stable manner.
To enable this, Markus Hardt and his colleagues are developing the “aXBench”, a test platform that simulates the AUTOSAR architecture’s mode of operation and suggests an optimal distribution of functions. The “aXBench” enables the scientists to imitate and evaluate the correct functioning of control units, the swift transmission of data between the middleware and the receiver, and even true-to-life details such as hardware and software response times.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Student Hopes To Break Human Land Speed Record Using Bullet Shaped Bicycle

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829191414.htm

Science Daily — This October, Jerrod Bouchard will attempt to become the fastest college student to be propelled by his or her own power.

Bouchard, a senior in mechanical engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, will try to break the collegiate human-powered land speed record of 61.5 mph Oct 1-6 in Battle Mountain, Nev.
Seated in a bullet-shaped bicycle, Bouchard will be pedaling down a remote highway in Battle Mountain that is said to be one of the straightest, fastest and smoothest surfaces in the world.
Like a NASCAR driver, Bouchard is working with a talented crew to make sure his vehicle is sound. Members of the team include aerodynamics designer Andrew Sourk, a senior in aerospace engineering from St. Joseph, Mo.; team leader Craig George, a senior in electrical engineering from St. Joseph; and composite specialist Matt Brown, a senior in mechanical engineering from Rolla. Bouchard, who is from Camdenton, Mo., is the chief engineer.
Bouchard, Sourk, George and Brown are all members of UMR’s Human-Powered Vehicle Team, which won East Coast and West Coast championships in collegiate human-powered racing last spring. The Battle Mountain endeavor is a separate challenge that was born out of the larger team’s success.
Human-powered vehicles are recumbent bicycles with aerodynamic shells. All summer, the four-man UMR team has been designing and building a new vehicle for the record-breaking attempt. Recently, Bouchard and his crew took the new bike to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they tested it in a wind tunnel. They are also planning to test it at Gateway International Raceway in St. Louis.
Battle Mountain has been the site of many record-breaking performances by professional, collegiate and amateur riders. The records are sanctioned by the International Human-Powered Vehicle Racing Association.
“Our forecasted performance is looking extremely optimistic,” Bouchard says, “and we are confident that we will break the current record.”
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Missouri-Rolla.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Making Cars Smarter Than You

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823180503.htm

Science Daily — Cars already automatically lock doors when they sense motion and turn on warning lights if they detect potential engine problems.

But they are about to get smarter.
The augmented cognition research team at Sandia National Laboratories is designing cars capable of analyzing human behavior.
The car of the future they are developing may, for example, deduce from your driving that you’re become tired, or during critical situations, tell your cell phone to hold an incoming call so you won’t be distracted.
The project started about five years ago with funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Four years ago Sandia partnered with a major commercial automobile manufacturer, and three years ago did actual experiments on European roadways.
“We utilized data that already existed on the car’s computer to collect a wide range of physical data such as brake pedal force, acceleration, steering wheel angle, and turn signaling,” says Kevin Dixon, principal investigator. “And specialized sensors including a pressure sensitive chair and an ultrasonic six-degree-of freedom head tracking system measured driver posture.”
Five drivers were fitted with caps connected to electroencephalogram (EEG) (brainwave) electrodes to gauge electrical activity of the brain as they performed driving functions.
The researchers collected several hours of data in unstructured driving conditions that were imputed into Sandia software, referred to as “classifiers,” that categorized driving behavior. These classifiers could detect certain driving situations such as approaching a slow-moving vehicle or changing lanes in preparation to pass another vehicle.
The system detects the difficulty and stress of the task the driver is attempting. It then tries to modify the tasks and/or environment to lower the stress and improved specified performance parameters.
Similar experiments were conducted for off-road driving where conditions were much less structured than typical roadways.
“The beauty of this is that we aren’t doing anything new or different to the car,” Dixon says. “All the software that can make the determination of ‘dangerous’ or ‘safe’ driving situations would all be placed in the computer that already exists in the car. It’s almost like there is another human in the car.”
More recently, the researchers conducted experiments at Camp Pendleton with Marine Corps personnel driving a modified military vehicle. Once again the driver and a passenger sitting in the passenger’s seat were fitted with EEGs. The software classifier determined how difficult the driving situation was and who the best person of the two was to perform a task. For example, during a difficult driving maneuver, it might be best for the passenger to receive radio transmissions in order to not distract the driver
“Every year tens of thousands of people die in automobile crashes, many caused by driver distraction,” Dixon says. “If our algorithms can identify dangerous situations before they happen and alert drivers to them, we will help save lives.”
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Sandia National Laboratories.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Drive-by-wire And Human Behavior Systems Key To New Urban Challenge Vehicle

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070810194840.htm

Science Daily — Virginia Tech's entry in DARPA's Urban Challenge is moving forward to the qualifying rounds, thanks in part to a custom-designed drive-by-wire control system and unique navigation software that makes the vehicle's driving decisions almost human."VictorTango," a team of Virginia Tech engineering and geography students, is among 36 semi-finalists selected by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to vie for the $2 million Urban Challenge prize. Qualifying rounds begin Oct. 26 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif., and the final event will take place Nov. 3.

Urban Challenge teams are attempting to develop vehicles that can maneuver a 60-mile course of simulated military supply missions in less than six hours -- with no human intervention allowed past the starting line. The vehicles will have to obey California traffic laws, merge into moving traffic, navigate traffic circles, negotiate intersections, and avoid a variety of obstacles.VictorTango has converted two Escape hybrids donated by Ford Motor Co. into autonomous vehicles by outfitting them with a "drive-by-wire" system, a powerful computer system, laser scanners, cameras, and a GPS (global positioning system), said Patrick Currier, a mechanical engineering (ME) graduate student. The students dubbed the vehicles "Odin" after the chief god in Norse mythology."The drive-by-wire system allows the computers to control the throttle, brake, steering, and shifting and to drive the vehicle," Currier said. "This system was custom developed by the team and is unique in that it is completely hidden from view, enabling Odin to retain full passenger capabilities." TORC Technologies LLC, a company in Virginia Tech's Corporate Research Center founded by alumni of the university's robotics program, has worked with VictorTango to develop the software for the vehicle's computer system. VictorTango and TORC developed Odin's sophisticated navigational software, which is modeled on human behavior. "To successfully navigate in an urban environment, Odin processes all of the sensor information, classifies the situation, and then chooses a behavior, such as passing another vehicle, staying in the lane, or parking," Currier explained. This "human-like" system makes Odin capable of choosing the best course out of millions of possible courses, he said.The team has outfitted Odin with four computers that perform specialized sensor processing and hardware interface tasks and two powerful servers that provide the primary computing power. Three laser scanners mounted on the vehicle's bumpers can scan a combined 360-degree field of view 12.5 times per second to detect obstacles. "These scanners are capable of detecting and tracking cars at a distance of up to 100 meters and are Odin's primary method of detecting other vehicles," Currier said.Four more laser scanners are mounted on Odin's roof rack -- two to detect small obstacles such as curbs and potholes and two to check the vehicle's blind spots when it changes lanes or merges into traffic.Two cameras mounted on the roof rack serve two purposes -- they enable Odin to sense its location and identify its proper position in the traffic lane, and can also positively determine if an obstacle detected by the scanners is another vehicle.Odin's GPS has been coupled with an inertial measurement unit and wheel speed sensors to measure movement in all directions. "This system provides Odin with accurate position, even if the GPS signal is temporarily lost," Currier said."Odin is now capable of driving on a marked road, following moving traffic, passing stopped vehicles, handling four-way intersections, and performing three-point turns," Currier said. The vehicle is being fine-tuned so that it can merge with moving traffic, pass moving vehicles, and park. Currier is one of 10 graduate students on the Virginia Tech team, which also has included as many as 50 undergraduates. The students are guided by four faculty advisers, three of them from Virginia Tech -- professor Alfred Wicks and assistant professor Dennis Hong of the College of Engineering's ME department, and geography department chair Bill Carstensen of the College of Natural Resources. The team's founding adviser, Charles Reinholtz, a former Virginia Tech Alumni Distinguished Professor of ME and engineering education and now the chair of ME at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, continues to work with VictorTango. In October 2006 VictorTango was one of only 11 "track A" teams chosen to receive $1 million contracts to develop autonomous vehicles capable of conducting simulated military supply missions in an urban setting. In all, 89 teams from universities and industry entered the competition in 2006. In addition to the $1 million from DARPA and the two Escapes from Ford, the Virginia Tech team received a $100,000 grant from Caterpillar and additional sponsorship from National Instruments and several other corporations. VictorTango qualified for the semi-finals during a site visit DARPA judges made to Virginia Tech earlier this year. The team's vehicle successfully demonstrated its fully autonomous capabilities, driving a road course and interacting with human-driven vehicles.DARPA is sponsoring the Urban Challenge as a more sophisticated follow-up to the two Grand Challenge competitions, which were held in 2004 and 2005 in the Mojave Desert. Virginia Tech competed in both of those contests, and the university's two entries placed eighth and ninth in 2005. "The Urban Challenge will be far more difficult to navigate than the open desert in the Grand Challenge," Currier said. "In the Grand Challenge, the vehicles followed a GPS 'bread crumb' trail and the obstacles they maneuvered around were static. In the Urban Challenge, vehicles must obey the rules of the road and avoid moving traffic."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Virginia Tech.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com