More Efficient Testing on Automotive Development, Improving the Accuracy of Fuel Consumption Measurement

Author: Juichi SAITO – The MEXA-ONE, our new Motor Exhaust Gas Analyzer launched in 2012, has become our core product superseding the MEXA-7000 with a surge in the number of shipments since the beginning of 2014. The MEXA-7000 had evolved continually over the nineteen years since its introduction in 1995 to respond to the significant changes that took place in emission regulations, types of fuel and new technology in engine combustion including exhaust after-treatment systems. Responding to the needs and requests from the users all over the world, the MEXA-7000 was finally advanced to version 4 which was introduced at the end of 2011 and continues to extend its record as a long-lived product. The total number of units shipped has reached more than 5,500 and the majority of them are still in use. They contribute to improve the efficiency of engine testing, combustion development and the reduction of exhaust emissions on a worldwide basis including Africa. The total number of MEXA-9000s, the predecessor of the MEXA-7000, shipped over fifteen years was 1,500. Comparing the figures between the two, I think you agree that 5,500 units of MEXA-7000 is an impressive number.

Author: Hiroshi NAKAMURA – Strongly linked with the automotive industry, the history of automotive testing business by HORIBA Group has developed itself along with innovative automotive technologies. Since the first emission measurement system developed in 1964 following the launch of automobile emission control, HORIBA Group has continued strengthening emission control and advancing the emission reduction technologies as well as developing the emission measurement techniques and technologies. In the 2000s when the computerized vehicle technologies like hybrid electric vehicles were advanced, the Group extended the scope of its business operation from emission test facilities to power train test facilities containing transmissions and E-motors, brake test facilities and wind tunnel test facilities to provide solutions for a wide range of applications including the areas of the intelligent transport system.

Author: Professor Jiro SENDA; Assistant Professor Yoshimitsu KOBASHI – Current engine development processes in which computations play an important role have sought for numerical models which can accurately represent phenomena in spray combustion. The authors have developed original sub-models taking into account the effects of extensive spray combustion phenomena including nozzle cavitation, droplet breakup behavior, multi-component evaporation process, spray-wall interaction, soot formation and so on. This paper describes authors’ models while accompanied by phenomenological descriptions and focusing on how to model the phenomena. In addition, the authors’ current work on model development for a model based calibration method is also introduced.

Author: Professor David E. Foster – This article gives an overview of the thermodynamic principles demonstrating that the maximum efficiency theoretically possible with a hydrocarbon fueled internal combustion engine is one hundred percent. From this basis the focus turns to articulating irreversibilities that naturally occur within the processes of converting the chemical energy in the fuel into shaft work. These losses are classified as losses that cannot be eliminated when using the current embodiment of internal combustion engines, and losses that in principle could be reduced through application of advanced technologies. Because power is obtained from the engine via unrestrained chemical reaction, i.e. combustion, we must accept a loss of work potential of between 20 and 25 percent of the fuel’s energy. Other losses, such as friction, heat loss and exhaust energy account for the balance of the useable energy that is not converted directly into shaft work. The interplay between combustion temperature, the ratio of specific heats of the combustion chamber gases, heat transfer and exhaust availability is presented as support for a postulate that the maximum pragmatic efficiency is most readily achieved through efforts to keep combustion temperatures low, which in turn maximizes the direct conversion of the fuel’s chemical energy into shaft work while minimizing the available energy lost to heat transfer and exhaust flow.

Author: Kazuhiro SHIOMI – The control of engine is becoming more complicated over the years for balancing clean exhaust gas with high merchantability in addition to the fuel mileage improvement demand today and is controlled by the computer, ECU (Engine Control Unit). As the example of complexes, there are the implementation of Variable Valve Technology, Direct Injection to Gasoline Engine/Common-Rail Injection to Diesel Engine and so on went with the exponential growth of those control targets, and how optimize the control depending on driving conditions will give the large influence on engine performance. Therefore, the decision making work on the optimum value, [ECU Calibration Task], is becoming the large burden of development and making efficient of the development is strongly requested. The [STARS Calibrate] which is [ECU Calibration Tool] for performing the work efficiently is introduced in this paper. This product is joint developed by HORIBA and Ricardo who is global engineering company, and especially its DoE part is coming from their “Efficient Calibration (ηCAL)” tools.

Author: Hiroyuki IKEDA; Mineyuki KOMADA – Recent automotive vehicles are increasing in sophistication due to the awareness of environment impact. As a result, automatic transmissions with increased gears and CVTs, as well as electrically driven vehicles, HVs and EVs, are expanding. The development of these complex vehicles is making driveline evaluation more important than before. These evaluations focus not only on driveline units, but the power-train system which includes the engine and/or e-motor. This exposition features a flexible driveline test system installed at HORIBA (Kyoto) that can evaluate driveline units, e-motors and powertrain systems. The system recognizes HORIBA’s capability for technological advancements, to find solutions and satisfy customer needs.

Author: Bryce Johnson – Increasingly stringent fuel economy standards are forcing automobile manufacturers to search for efficiency gains in every part of the drive train from engine to road surface. Safety mechanisms such as stability control and anti-lock braking are becoming more sophisticated. At the same time drivers are demanding higher performance from their vehicles. Hybrid transmissions and batteries are appearing in more vehicles. These issues are forcing the automobile manufacturers to require more from their test stands. The test stand must now simulate not just simple vehicle loads such as inertia and windage but the test stand must also simulate driveline dynamic loads. In the past, dynamic loads could be simulated quite well using Service Load Replication (SLR*1). However, non-deterministic events such as the transmission shifting or application of torque vectoring from an on board computer made SLR unusable for the test. The only way to properly simulate driveline dynamic loads for nondeterministic events is to provide a wheel-tire-road model simulation in addition to vehicle simulation. The HORIBA wheel slip simulation implemented in the SPARC power train controller provides this wheel-tire-road model simulation *1: Service load replication is a frequency domain transfer function calculation with iterative convergence to a solution. SLR uses field collected, time history format data.

Author: Norm Newberger; Bryce Johnson – The hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is becoming a sustainable vehicle architecture with the US government pouring 14.4 billion into stimulus projects that support drivetrains of new vehicles that are hybrid or battery powered (BEV). Both the series hybrid and BEV have 100% of propulsion energy coming from electricity. The series hybrid uses an internal combustion engine (ICE) to power a generator that produces electricity. The parallel hybrid powers the vehicle by a mechanical combination of electric motors and ICE. In all cases, the drivetrain needs an electric motor, a traction battery and an auxiliary method of obtaining electricity. These auxiliary power units (APU) are typically a downsized, highly efficient ICE or fuel cells for a zero emissions alternative. Horiba’s Virtual Engine (VE) and Virtual Battery (VB) are HIL products that allow electric motor based drivetrain development without waiting for the new battery pack and ICE to become available. Relevant product features for HEV development are discussed in terms of form, function, and verification with data.

Author: Norm Newberger; Bryce Johnson – The hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is becoming a sustainable vehicle architecture with the US government pouring 14.4 billion into stimulus projects that support drivetrains of new vehicles that are hybrid or battery powered (BEV). Both the series hybrid and BEV have 100% of propulsion energy coming from electricity. The series hybrid uses an internal combustion engine (ICE) to power a generator that produces electricity. The parallel hybrid powers the vehicle by a mechanical combination of electric motors and ICE. In all cases, the drivetrain needs an electric motor, a traction battery and an auxiliary method of obtaining electricity. These auxiliary power units (APU) are typically a downsized, highly efficient ICE or fuel cells for a zero emissions alternative. Horiba’s Virtual Engine (VE) and Virtual Battery (VB) are HIL products that allow electric motor based drivetrain development without waiting for the new battery pack and ICE to become available. Relevant product features for HEV development are discussed in terms of form, function, and verification with data.

Author: Masatomo ISHIKURA – In recent years, automobiles have become essential to our life. They are the modes of transporting people and objects, and are part of our life. However, they also consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels at the same time. In concurrence with this, serious social problems such as air pollution and global warming (due to the effect of carbon dioxide) have occurred. How this consumption can be reduced has been a great challenge. Answers to this include infrastructure improvement involving intelligent transportation system (ITS*1) and electronic toll collection system (ETC). In addition, automotive manufacturers have been constantly improving the fuel efficiency and introducing hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles into the market to reduce the fossil fuel consumption. However, it is also necessary to draw our attention on things more familiar to us, in addition to depending on performance improvement in infrastructure and automobiles. To reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, in other words, address energy saving, it is necessary to improve the driving skills of the drivers and improve the awareness for energy saving. To address this, we must quantitatively evaluate the concept of energy saving, which had been conventionally sensuous, and provide appropriate information to the driver successively. This article will focus on promotion of energy saving operation and describe the results of social experiments in the past. *1: ITS: Intelligent Transport Systems

Author: Tatsuki KUMAGAI – Since reducing the consumption of fossil fuel is imperative, fuel efficiency in automobiles has become an important commercial value. Along with the improvement of fuel efficiency, the CVS method that is a de facto standard for fuel consumption measurement method has been continuously improved, nevertheless, small error factors which were needless to care until recent years, have higher demand for reduction. In addition to the reduction measures have already been implemented in the conventional product, the methods to improve the accuracy of fuel consumption measurement adopted to MEXA-ONE and CVS-ONE will be introduced.

Author: Yasuhiro OGAWA – The four-wheeled drive (4WD) chassis dynamometer has been continually improved by the evolution of power electronics technology and by the inherent design of the chassis dynamometer itself. The need for testing using the 4WD Chassis dynamometer is increasing due to the demand of fuel consumption and emission measurement of vehicles with complex powertrains such as HEVs (Hybrid Electric Vehicles) and PEVs (Pure Electric Vehicles). However, in many cases, the actual performance of 4WD chassis dynamometers has still not actually been confirmed. Accordingly, studies aimed at improvements of the repeatability of 4WD fuel consumption tests have been conducted and some key factors for improving stability and repeatability have been confirmed. It will be shown that most of the vehicle mechanical loss variability is due to the tires and therefore the stabilization of the mechanical losses of the test vehicle is essential for the test reproducibility.

Author: Takashi MATSUYAMA, Yuki ITOGA – Influenced by the trend toward reducing greenhouse gases represented by Kyoto Protocol, provisions on fuel consumption standard is stricter every year in transportation sector as regulations directly contributing to reduction of exhaust gases. As a result, efforts of automobile manufacturers to reduce fuel consumption are made more actively and quickly and therefore the technical development to realize low fuel consumption requires such a fuel consumption measurement system that enables highly accurate measurement. This article introduces our fuel flowmeter which satisfies the request for direct fuel consumption measurement with high accuracy and the important points to fuel consumption measurement at the viewpoints of sensor and measurement system.

Author: Masanobu AKITA – The improvement of fuel efficiency is one of the most important issues in the R&D of powertrain system. The real-time fuel consumption can be determined by AFR (air-to-fuel ratio) and raw exhaust gas flow rate and can be easily obtained without delay time by the in-situ measuring devices which can be installed at the same location. Integrated fuel consumption by this method showed a good correlation with that by the carbon balance method. On the other hand, when a fuel-cut is operated, the difference in transient behavior of the fuel consumption has been also observed due to the response time difference between these two methods. The result suggests that this method has a large potential for measuring the real-time fuel consumption.

Author: Naoto ITO; Rie MATSUOKA – HORIBA TECHNO SERVICE Co., Ltd. (hereinaf ter HTS) became an independent company from HORIBA, Ltd. (hereinafter HOR) in 2000 in order to improve quality of products including service quality for the entire HORIBA group. Nowadays, analytical instruments and customer’s requirement are diversified year by year. Under this environment, HTS has been catching up customer’s requirement globally, and we have been providing service support in response to such a requirement. On the other hand, HTS has established a service structure that has strong relation with local customers in Japan. In this article, we would like to introduce a total picture of business handled by HTS, then we would like to introduce a service activity of Automotive Test Systems (hereinafter ATS) segment, for example how HTS utilizes ISO/IEC17025 certificate to establish high quality service, how HTS can collect reliable data by using ISO/IEC17025. In addition, we would like to explain how HTS has made countermeasure for various requirements of emission analysis and regulation.

Author: Hisashi YAMANOUCHI; Manabu SHIBATA – As the new third stage of the LAQUA Series, the HORIBA Group has developed durable LAQUAact portable water quality analysis meters. Conventional pH meters have low alcohol resistance, and could not be used in places such as food factories, where they would need to be disinfected. There was also the problem that the pH electrodes had a short life time in hydrofluoric acid and alkali samples that dissolve pH responsive glass membrane. To solve these issues, HORIBA developed a pH meter that uses a polycarbonate chassis material with high resistance to alcohol and new pH responsive glass membrane with a strong frame structure containing rare earth elements. As a result, we were able to achieve a portable pH meter with higher durability against physical impact and improved chemical resistance compared to conventional models, and long-life time of pH electrodes for hydrofluoric acid and alkali solutions. This paper introduces these new products and the features and applications of pH electrode for low conductivity samples.

Author: Sumito OHZAWA – The SOx in motor exhaust leading to air pollution is restricted, and a regulation value is becoming severe every year. In order to sufficient performance of the emission gas processing unit especially, reduction of sulfur content in fuel is indispensable. On the other hand, as for the crude oil used as the materials of fuel, there is much sulfur content with high viscosity oil and shale oil are also mined. Management of the sulfur content in a materials stage is important. Sulfur in oil analyzer SLFA-60 is the equipment which targeted management of the sulfur content in a materials stage. The printed circuit board and software were renewed in order to correspond to many kinds of oil.

Author: Yuji NISHIO; Ryota KOSAKA – Measuring and controlling the concentration of oils released into the environment is essential for aquatic conservation perspective. In this paper, our new oil content meter OCMA-500 series with 20% decrease in the usage of solvents and improved usability is introduced. A comparative measurement results between OCMA-505’ NDIR method and n-hexane extract method are also reported, in addition to the measurement results of the comparison of OCMA’s extract solvent. These results indicate that OCMA-500 series is applicable to the measurements of oils which are high volatile and low molecular weight.

Author: Akio ISHII; Tadashi KAWANO – Automatic Total Nitrogen/Phosphorus Monitor TPNA-300 is widely accepted by the market because of its high reliability and low environmental load. TPNA-500 inherits its advantage and is enhanced its maintainability. Main improvement points are two; one is an extension of reagents exchange term and another is a gauge method less detection error due to line stain. In a case of waste water measurement of foods plant, maintenance time could be reduced to less than 1/6 compared with TPNA-300. This reduction of maintenance time will contribute to lowing of Life Cycle Costs*1. *1: Life Cycle Cost: Total operating costs from purchase to disposal.