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utomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.com

March 2011

UKIP M

edia & Events Ltd

Join us at MIRA’s wind tunnel facility as it celebrates 50 years of service, and looks forward to the next 50

www.AutomotiveTestingTechnology International.com

Karl Stracke

GM’s engineering chief is bringing the world together

Gordon Murray has gone “back to the future” in developing his automotive vision

Gordon MurrayAudi bucks current trends, focusing on light weight and hands-on testing

Audi A6

Power houseHas technology taken powertrain testing off the road and into the lab?

Tunnel tour

FocusThis eagerly anticipated launch embodies the ‘One Ford’ philosophy

The future of Audi lies in its electric and hybrid development center

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CONTENTS

004 Ford Focus An international test program for

an international car, courtesy of the ‘One Ford’ philosophy

CONTENTS

008 GMD T25 One of the most talked about development

programs today, laid bare

010 Audi A6 Bigger, safer, and lighter. Find out how

012 Volvo’s big rig When Volvo tests trucks, it doesn’t

do things by halves. Take a look at the world’s largest test rig

014 Awards update What do 2010’s most celebrated names

in automotive testing have planned for the future?

028 Proving grounds Keith Read brings you the latest proving

ground news from around the world

030 Interview: Karl Stracke Achieving the same vehicle development

standards around the globe is the goal of GM’s head of engineering

036 Aerodynamics Welcome to the future of aerodynamics

testing, featuring everything from helium-fi lled bubbles to synthetic jets

042 Tunnel talk As MIRA’s full-scale wind tunnel enters

its 50th year of service, we see how it is adapting to the future

048 Powertrain testing Have powertrain test labs advanced to the

stage where an engine can go from design to sign-off without leaving the building?

056 Site visit: Audi’s EV/HEV labs Audi’s future lies in the technology created

in its new Mechanical Units Center, where EV and HEV dreams come true

062 Interview: Gordon Murray Has the ex-McLaren guru re-invented the

small car, due to some lightweight thinking?

FEATURES

COVER STORY

WHAT’S NEW

www.AutomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.comMARCH 2011 001

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The views expressed in the articles and technical papers are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the publisher. While every care has been taken during production, the publisher does not accept any liability for errors that may have occurred. ISSN 1751-0341. This publication is protected by copyright ©2011. Periodical postage paid at Dover NJ 07801. US Mail Agent: Clevett Worldwide Mailers LLC, 7 Sherwood Ct, Randolph, NJ 07869. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Automotive Testing Technology International, 19 Route 10 East, Bldg 2, Unit 24, Succasunna, NJ 07876, USA. USPS Periodicals Registered Number 018-628.

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PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

068 GPS technology070 Universal and scalable data recorder 073 Products and services directory

You wouldn’t believe it, given the general antipathy toward

cars in the media, but we are in the midst of a motoring epoch. We all enjoyed the power wars of the 2000s, which saw small sedans like the M3 and RS4 fi tted with monster V8s, while under the hoods of their bigger brothers lay extreme 5-liter V10s. However, as much as I would have loved to have seen the Wacky Races creations that may have appeared had the power struggle continued in that direction, legislators have killed the party.

It may be unfashionable to say this in some circles but BMW’s 500bhp 5-liter V10 and Mercedes’ 525bhp 6.2-liter V8 are two of my favorite engines. Who couldn’t love a big capacity naturally aspirated engine with a stratospheric redline? Well, environmentalists I suppose, which is why they’re ending the party. Or are they?

While I enjoy simplicity in motoring, powertrain engineers have ensured that, with smaller capacities and forced induction, not only will cars like the M5 and SL63 still grace our roads, thanks to reduced fuel consumption and emissions, they are doing so while generating even more power and torque. With the M5’s power billed to be up to 570bhp when it’s launched, perhaps I will join the zeitgeist. And lest we worry about power delivery, just consider the

Audi S4. I was not alone in being concerned about its switch from a 4.2-liter V8 to a 3-liter blown V6, but when the new car is blessed with a lightness and urgency its beefi er predecessor was lacking, going ‘green’ suddenly appeals.

It sounds like witchcraft, but of course it’s all down to our white-coated brethren in the powertrain labs. We investigate how they do it in this issue, and whether modern labs are so good that their Sparco-attired colleagues are becoming irrelevant in engine development.

Technology is one direction, but perhaps OEMs are creating work for themselves in the quest for driving thrills. The same lawmakers who are demanding cleaner engines are also insisting on so much safety trickery that modern cars are swelling. Surely if weight is pared down, you can have all the fun with smaller engines, or even more fun with the same engines. To quote Colin Chapman, we should simplify and add lightness.

Chapman would disapprove of modern vehicle designs, and his old friend and spiritual successor, Gordon Murray agrees. He may have found a solution though, which can bring lightweight technology previously only seen in F1, to the masses. And with light weight, who needs power anyway?

Adam Gavine

Contact us at: Automotive Testing Technology InternationalAbinger House, Church Street, Dorking, Surrey, RH4 1DF, UK

Tel: +44 1306 743744Fax: +44 1306 742525Editorial fax: +44 1306 875824Email: [email protected]

Editor Adam Gavine

Chief sub-editorAlex BradleySub-editorWilliam Baker

ProofreadersAubrey Jacobs-Tyson, Frank Millard

Production managerIan DonovanProduction teamCarole Doran, Lewis Hopkins, Cassie Inns, Robyn SkalskyArt directorJames SutcliffeDesign teamLouise Adams, Andy Bass, Anna Davie, Andrew Locke, Craig Marshall, Nicola Turner, Julie Welby, Ben White

ContributorsJohn Challen, Brian Cowan, Alex Geisler, Dave Gorschkov, Graham Heeps, Nick Kurczewski, Peter Lyon, Jim McCraw, Mike Magda, John Miles, Keith Read, Michael Scarlett, Satnam Singh, Dean Slavnich, Richard Stobart, Chris Theodore, Adam Towler

Circulation managerSuzie Matthews

CEOTony RobinsonManaging directorGraham JohnsonEditorial directorAnthony James

Publication managerJason SullivanInternational salesRob Knight

CONTENTS

016 Theodore Supercharging simulation

018 Read Spinning in a winter wonderland

020 Ask the experts Our panel discuss the trials of vehicle testing

024 10 questions Audi’s chassis expert Jörg Starr appreciates

how fun his job can be

026 Ask Alex Our resident automotive lawyer asks

when it is too late to avoid litigation

026 Recall roundup The latest vehicle roundup news

for the fi rst quarter of 2011

084 Testbed legends A tribute to the Mohs Ostentatienne Opera,

a truck-based coupe with a few tricks up its sleeve

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002 www.AutomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.comMARCH 2011

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WHAT’S NEW

www.AutomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.comMARCH 2011

FocuscusocusFFordFordFord

004

WHAT’S NEW

Back in 2008 the Fiesta was launched as the fi rst of a new generation of Ford ‘global cars’. However, the B-segment machine was not immediately

available outside Europe: North America, for example, did not receive cars from the factory in Cuautitlán, Mexico, until 2010, following a program of modifi cations for federal compliance and US market preferences.

Fast-forward to 2011, and the latest Focus is arriving in European showrooms around the time that these words are being printed. The difference this time, however, is that US production is also ramping up in Michigan, and the car will be in US dealerships in a matter of months. Not only that, but almost all components are shared by all versions of the new Focus worldwide, giving the car a consistent look and feel. US Focuses, for example, have some different powertrains and are set up for all-season tires, but they’re otherwise just about identical to the European cars.

“The concurrent launch was the biggest challenge on this program,” says Volker Weinhold, who, as the vehicle engineering manager, led a 40-strong integration team on the project. “We’ve never done that before and I don’t know anybody who’s managed to launch such a big program simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Some 1,500 engineers worldwide were working on the Focus at the project’s peak. That’s a lot of people, but it’s nevertheless remarkable that the development program was completed in just 35 months, given not only the scope of the program, but also the fact that the platform-sharing C-Max was being developed at the same time.

A number of factors were key to achieving this. The fi rst was clear agreement upfront on the requirements, and then checks along the way to ensure they were being met. Weinhold reveals that there was more cross-continental agreement in this area than one might expect.

LEFT: High altitude testing in Austria

BELOW: Rolling road testing at +55°C at Ford’s £26.5 million Environmental Test Lab in the UK


The Blue Oval’s ‘One Ford’ philosophy is embodied in the multinational development program of the new FocusWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

005

“When we first started the specification discussions, everybody believed they had a better specification than the others,” he recalls. “But when we put them on the table, we found no big differences. The simple agreement was, let’s put the best of both into a common specification. We reached that agreement within four weeks. Engineers everywhere talk the same language and sometimes it takes just minutes to understand [one another].

“Later, we had a big meeting at Lommel where we showed the verification prototypes (VPs) to our colleagues from the USA, right up to the senior management level, representing US customers. There were one or two minor tweaks, no more, and they were happy – it was exactly to their expectations.

“That proved to us that we need to meet only once or twice a year during a development program, to drive the car and exchange views on what we like and don’t like, but then we’re aligned. You can now rely on any [Ford] colleague in the world to do the job and when you receive it, it will be fine.”

Another important factor in keeping to time and budget was that responsibility for parts was – and still is – restricted to a single team, based in Europe, from where the entire program has been led.


WHAT’S NEW

Focus BEVThe battery electric (BEV) version of the Focus arrives in 2012. Once again, it’s a transatlantic

development effort, with Dearborn taking responsibility for the powertrain, and Merkenich engineering the sheet metal modifications, to Dearborn’s requirements.

“I wouldn’t have believed that you could distribute this to various areas of the globe and still make one product,” says Weinhold. “But you can!”

006

ABOVE: Ford Europe used a unique steering rig to understand and tune the electronic steering systems

RIGHT: Aerodynamics testing at Ford’s wind tunnel in Merkenich

WHAT’S NEW

“If we make a change on one side then we have to reach agreement that everybody else can live with the change as well,” says Weinhold. “The beauty of it is that we have 85% commonality [across all versions]. The costs would kill us if we all went our own way.”

A third way in which the project team was able to keep the program short was in the most extensive use ever of CAE in a major Ford program.

“These days we’re down to a single prototype phase due to the very strong virtual assessments we do in advance,”

TOP: Electrical testing at Ford Europe’s lab at Merkenich, Germany

“We’re down to a single prototype phase due to the very strong virtual assessments we do in advance. Our process is cut in half”


ADAS A-OKThe new Focus comes loaded with advanced driver

assistance systems (ADAS) such as adaptive cruise control (ACC), traffic sign recognition, lane-keeping aid (enabled by the all-new electric power steering), and a low-speed safety system (LSS), which brakes the car to a standstill to prevent a low-speed impact.

“Driver assistance technologies were an entirely new field of development for us,” says Volker Weinhold, who previously headed up development of the Mondeo’s ACC. “We even built up a new, cross-car-line team in Merkenich responsible for the attributes of these technologies, working closely with electrical engineers.”

He adds that, although Volvo cars were the first within the Ford group to deploy such systems, the research behind them was done within Ford, so the knowledge base remains in-house, despite Volvo’s sale to Geely.

The Focus team was able to build on the extensive development and testing of ACC previously done by

Ford in the USA, but other ADAS developments required additional testing. For example, hundreds of thousands of kilometers were racked up all over Europe to ensure the traffic sign recognition function worked faultlessly with signs in different countries. The system won’t be available initially in North America, but similar tests will be conducted Stateside should the system be introduced.

Meanwhile for the LSS, the team sent cars out on a real-world fleet trial for final verification: “You need to avoid false interventions, such as the car stopping when you have nothing in front of you,” Weinhold explains. “A big benefit of having shown the car so early at motor shows was that we could drive on public roads. We conducted an extensive test program running our vehicles across Europe, and then at the end we gave a small fleet of test cars to Parisian taxi drivers, because that’s a critical situation. We figured, if they have no false interventions then the system must be clean!”

LEFT: Once the vehicle has been soaked at -30°C for 16 hours, it is transferred to a test chamber at the same temperature and placed on a rolling road

Weinhold explains. “Our process is basically cut in half. The most important engineering is in the first phase of the program, when we do all the design virtually and build up the mules to support our CAE modeling capability. Then we make the assessments at the Final Data Judgement (FDJ) gateway. This is our ‘Job One’ for engineering. Generally speaking we should be done at this point, and doing only fine-tuning from there on.”

After FDJ, Focus moved into a nine-month verification prototype stage using around two-thirds of parts from production tooling. According to Weinhold, 90-100 VPs were built, a big reduction on past programs. “Most are still down to safety tests, particularly for the USA,” he says.

Once the team was happy with the VPs, attention then switched to the Saarlouis factory in Germany, where tool trials and pre-production cars were built, around 200 in all, ahead of SOP, which was on December 6, 2010.

That process has been replicated at Wayne in the run up to its own ‘Job One’. The US Focus launch team includes a number of engineers who spent time embedded in the main program in Europe before returning home. Not that the transatlantic cooperation ended there.

“When we were developing something with our partners in the USA, we sometimes had the case that we started the measurement in Europe during the morning,” explains Weinhold. “We then had a telephone conversation at 3pm with our US colleagues because we wanted something urgently. When we got back to the office in the morning the results were there on the computer. It gives you an 18-hour development day.

“A downside is that when I come back to the office in the morning my inbox is full of US-based emails that need to be answered, although when they come to work they see my emails, too! It’s an endless stream of communication, but it works well.” ‹

WHAT’S NEW

Three’s companyT25 features a three-seat layout that will delight fans of Murray’s F1, with even

the ‘rear’ seats comfortably accommodating Murray’s 6ft 4in frame – not bad considering the diminutive car measures just 2.4m long, 1.3m wide, and 1.6m high. A simple yet strong tubular steel Exo-frame creates a safety cell on top of which is – as to be expected – a very light body. The internal panels are semi-structural to aid

stability, and the large forward-opening canopy is non-structural and is made from recycled plastic bottles. The canopy is a clever bit of engineering. Weighing 45kg, little more than a steel car door, it comprises doors, windscreen, and crash beams, all in one easy-to-lift package. The canopy can also withstand 85 tons in 40% offset frontal high-speed crash compression, with zero cabin intrusion, as tested in late 2010.

Rumors abound that T25 will soon be launched,

with a Smart-worrying price tag, and that a production line is limbering up for action at Gordon Murray’s HQ in the UK.

Alas there is no factory, and the car is a mere shop display, a concept not even of a car, but of a manufacturing process known as iStream (see the Murray interview on page 62). But don’t dismiss T25: it could be a new direction in motoring.

The idea of the T25 started life one morning in 1993 when Murray was stuck in traffi c on his daily commute through London traffi c to McLaren’s HQ.

“I looked around me at all these big cars with just one

T25 WORDS BY ADAM GAVINE

Meet the T25, Gordon Murray’s much talked about, but much misunderstood car. We set the record straight


person in them and I thought, ‘One day someone’s going to take my freedom away from me’. Now, I like my freedom, and I love driving, so I started looking into why more people didn’t make A-segment and sub-A-segment cars, and the reason is that they don’t make money.”

In iStream, Murray is confi dent he has found the path to profi tability, and products similar to the T25 could soon be on our roads. “We wanted to build one running prototype of a vehicle of our choice to demonstrate iStream,” says Murray. “It just so happened

that for years and years I’ve had this concept of a little car that would suit UK and European roads and their congestion problems. The car is just a physical entity to sell iStream.”

However, if a company buying the iStream process wants to use the design, it can.

If you would like to make the T25 a reality, the factory can be ready at the same time the

development program is complete – 24 months

008

Above: The instruments are sports car-likeBelow: The 45kg canopy is easy to lift

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WHAT’S NEW

“It’s great fun to drive. Because it’s so light, it changes direction like a go-kart,” says Murray. The fun may also derive from its motorsport-spec development. “For example, for the monocoque section we used very similar programs to those used in designing race cars. It is truly F1 technology and F1 operational thinking for pennies, for all of us to share – not just someone who can afford a US$320,000 sports car.”

We were refused a test drive, not because of the prototype’s estimated US$10 million value, but because it is not in a state in which Murray would be willing for it to be judged: “T25 has had no development. I never let people drive prototypes that aren’t sorted.”

That’s not to say it doesn’t run well, though, as it competed in the Future Car Rally, with Murray at the wheel. “We built and ran it, and it felt good.

There are things we know we’d have to change, and if a customer is interested we would recommend an immediate three-month program just to sort out the dynamics.

“We tested everything in our labs, so we had a pretty good idea that the car would handle as we want, and the ride and handling has proved absolutely right. It drives well, but it could be better.”

If a customer does instruct Murray to advance the car to the full prototype stage, that will trigger a 24-month development program comprising 60 prototypes, hot- and cold-weather testing, durability cycles, etc.

“All that sort of stuff wasn’t in the funding,” says Murray, “and won’t ever happen unless someone writes the program. We’re happy to, but we don’t currently have the funding or time.”

The reason for the lack of time is intriguing. Murray and his team are working on “another six cars with customers to bring them to production and get a licence”.

Even if the T25 never becomes a reality, its spirit almost certainly will. Watch this space… ‹

WHAT’S NEW

product we tested using the longitudinal system and we learned a lot from that.”

The A6 test program was an advance in every way over previous programs, but only by a small increment. For example, the A6 program saw increased use of virtual development. However, for Starr and his team, this just enabled them to start physical tests at a more advanced level – there is no substitute for hands-on testing.

“We use computer programs at the beginning, and fi nish by hand. Especially with chassis testing, you can’t do that by computer, you have to feel it.

“Our test programs don’t get shorter, we just do more fi ne tuning,” he explains.

The physical testing was aided by clever use of test mules. Using special welding techniques, the team was able to mount a previous-shape A6 body to the new chassis in such a way that it exactly replicated the feel and stiffness of the new body. The result of all this development?

“This is the most advanced Audi you can buy today,” says Starr. ‹

diesel guises, feature the higher-spec Quattro sport differential, as used in the S4.

One of the men charged with ensuring the chassis was light yet able to cope with not just 3-liter powertrains, but also future S and RS variants, was Jörg Starr, project manager for chassis development at Audi.

“For the new A6 we used Audi’s longitudinal testing system,” states Starr. “All cars with longitudinally mounted engines are tested in the same way. The A5 was the last

New direction?One technology that’s helping the A6 post

headline fi gures such as 57mpg-plus and 129g/km of CO2 is its electromechanical power steering system. This is the same system used on the A7, which is claimed to benefi t fuel economy by up to 0.3l/100km.

Chassis engineer Jörg Starr is unfazed by the technology. He explains that the steering system is not new.

“We had it in the A3 years ago,” he points out. “What’s really new about this system is the loading points, as we have more forces. We learned a lot during the testing of this.”

The only problem during testing of the system was around energy management. When carrying out parking maneuvers, the steering system drained power needed by other systems, such as the satnav, lights, and HVAC.

Most new models arrive with a fanfare of new

technologies, safety features, and creature comforts, with the small matter of their increased weight usually uttered as a hushed apology. However, Audi’s revamped A6 has a party piece – it is up to 80kg lighter than its predecessor, with the 3-liter TDI quattro model emitting 30% fewer emissions than the outgoing model.

This weight loss is down to a diet of high-strength and ultra-high-strength sheet metal and aluminum components, with much of the body composed of aluminum, and the engine and driveline slimmed down. With a lighter body, items such as the axles and brakes could also be slimmed down as their load demands were consequently reduced.

Safety features could also be optimized for the lighter weight, but the safety test program was as heavyweight as ever. The requirements of the A6 were decided using fi ndings from the Audi Accident Research Unit, which studies real-life accidents involving Audis, and analyzes accident databases. More than 4,000 crash simulations were carried out on virtual

WORDS BY ADAM GAVINE

Audi A6Lightweight engineering has been adopted as a cornerstone principle in the latest A6


prototypes, and robustness analyses were calculated using stochastic simulation methods. To ensure that the new, lighter components were crashworthy, an extended series of simulation and validation subcomponents tests was undertaken.

Another feature Audi is keen to promote is the latest all-wheel-drive technology that features in the A6, with a crown gear center differential and a torque-vectoring function. The range-topping 3-liter V6 models, in both gasoline and

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WHAT’S NEW

The time savings, compared with the testing of axles and suspensions out on the test track, are invaluable. The shorter test duration on the rig also makes it possible to release new features and products much sooner.

Without test rigs and test tracks, it might take fi ve to 10 years to test a new, lighter axle design, according to Volvo. On the proving ground, the test process would take six to 12 months, whereas the test rig can complete the same test in two months. Moreover, the rig offers greater precision.

“Our measurements are precise to within about 1%,” states Skoog. ‹

subjected to the stresses encountered during real-life operation (see Making Tracks box, left), with the data then entered into the test rig to create duplicate inputs. The rig is operated from a control room with a signal amplifi er and control electronics where programming of the various driving environment profi les is dialled in. Once all the installations and control programs are ready, what remains is monitoring and adjustments during the course of the test.

“It’s similar to working in mission control at a rocket site,” says test engineer Emil Skoog, who is responsible for the rig.

With profi t margins as low as 2%, many European

haulage fi rms are keen to increase the load capacity of their trucks. To meet this demand, Volvo is investing heavily in weight-optimizing its trucks from the wheels up. This work calls for an exceptional test rig.

“Volvo has the world’s largest test rig for axles and suspension systems. No other rig can deal with such massive forces as our rig can,” reveals Göran Johansson, head of Volvo Trucks’ department for durability testing of axles, suspension units, steering and brakes.

Volvo’s new weight-optimized materials and designs had to be

WORDS BY ADAM GAVINE

To increase payload capacities for its demanding customers, Volvo has developed what it claims is the world’s largest test rig

Real-life tests are done at Volvos’ proving

ground in Hällered, Sweden.“We put trucks through

as many different operating environments as possible to replicate our customers’ everyday operations around the world,” explains test engineer Magnus Larsson. “There are potholes, hills, washboard surfaces, sharp bends, acceleration and braking sequences…

“While all this is going on, we record the vehicle’s progress in the form of digital signals, which we copy and convert into a program that we replicate in the test rig.”

Making tracks

Volvo’s big rig

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WHAT’S NEW

014

EYE Lighting

Hardware Innovation of the Year

Having won its category, Horiba’s engineers have

not been resting on their laurels. For 2011, Horiba has added additional functionality to Virtual Battery with a short-term current and voltage availability predictor which increases BMS flexibility. The advanced Virtual Battery Simulation Solution continues to be an excellent option to shorten development times and reduce costs for OEM and powertrain development partners, leading universities, and on-road truck manufacturers. While it is common practice for EV, PHEV, and HEV powertrain developers to approximate battery voltage in the lab, this type of simulation lacks real-world accuracy. Horiba’s Virtual

Battery removes the physical battery from the powertrain test cell and safely provides complete current, power, voltage, and thermal performance.

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Engine Test Facility of the Year

McLaren Automotive’s technical director, Dick

Glover, has seen the ultimate reward for his efforts in

developing the MP4-12C supercar: it is now being introduced to the market and will be distributed through a new international network of dealerships. Manufacturing of the car is due to commence in May 2011, in a bespoke Norman Foster-designed factory, the £40 million (approx US$64.1 million) McLaren Production Centre, which sits alongside the company’s Technology Centre in Woking, UK, where initial models are currently being assembled.

Glover’s work does not end there. Our Person of the Year is currently working on variants of the MP4-12C, due for launch in coming years. A version featuring hybrid technology is rumored to be in development.

Person of the Year

They’ve been crowned the best in their respective fields, so what’s next for the winners of our 2010 Automotive Testing Technology International Awards? Read on to find out how the best are getting even better…

The best get better

Left to right: Rex Tapp (executive VP and general manager) , Norm Newberger (manager of drivetrain research and development), and Ken Mitera (general manager, ATS)

Glover’s development work on MP4-12C is being praised in initial road tests

Dick Glover, McLaren

Horiba

CAE Innovation of the Year

Winning this category has been a great boost for EYE

Lighting International of North America, with even more interest being generated for its SUV-W151 super-acceleration UV chamber.

The chamber is impressing customers with its ability to provide acceleration factors that are more than 10-times that of xenon chambers. In addition, the chamber can deliver more than 30-times natural sunlight

UV energy, meaning that it can simulate three years of outdoor exposure in just nine days.

Tom Salpietra, CEO of EYE Lighting, says, “We are pleased that Automotive Testing Technology International recognized our technology. The automotive industry has some of the most rigorous testing in the world, and we believe our UV weathering chamber can also be used to improve the quality of products in other industries.”

Our Engine Test Facility of the Year has reported

a very successful first year as a service supplier, with its F1-spec equipment attracting several customers.

Speaking at the end of 2010, TMG’s first year of operation as an open facility, Jens Marquardt, who was general manager of business development until the start of this year, stated, “This has been a breakthrough year for us. We faced many challenges in 2009 when our F1 participation ended, but we met them with courage and optimism. Now our hard work is delivering results, so we can look back with satisfaction on the last 12 months.

“However, although we are on course to meet our year-one goals, we still have challenging targets ahead of us in year two so there is no respite in our efforts. We must continue to grow our third-party business by demonstrating the quality and range of our services.”

Targets for 2011 include expanding TMG’s range of services and delivering yet

more large long-term projects for both external clients and the Toyota family.

There has also been some restructuring at TMG, with Marquardt leaving to become head of BMW Motorsport, being replaced by Sebastian Janssen. In other departments, Pascal Vasselon, formerly general manager of chassis, takes on a new role as technical director. Ludwig Zeller is to take on extra responsibility within the electric and electronics department, in order to strengthen TMG’s position in EV technology and support services.

ATTI’s Graham Heeps gave the award to Peer Pfeilmaier, head of engine R&D


Following its double victory, Aries Ingeniería y Sistemas is

proud to announce that it has been working on three new full-scale crash test facilities, which will be ready to use in early 2012. Two well-known car manufacturers and one official institute are relying on Aries technology to take a step forward with their own full-scale crash test capabilities.

The state-of-the-art technologies put in practice at Aries Ingeniería y Sistemas’s flagship crash test

installation (Chery Automobile’s facility) have captured manufacturers’ attention due to the high accuracies obtained, which, in combination with all subsystems integration, define a new reference within the sector.

Aries Ingeniería y Sistemas has expressed its gratitude for this magazine’s recognition, and is making a strong commitment to keep developing its products in order to exceed customer expectations.

Currently in the middle of its busy season, our Proving

Ground of the Year is enjoying healthy bookings at all its facilities. “Because we have such a good booking situation, we have made a big investment,” explains Jonas Jalar, owner of Arctic Falls. “We have bought 40ha of land that is perfect for making a new winter test proving ground. It is a fenced area with some infrastructure in place such as optical fiber, electricity, etc.”

The company has also built a new vibration test track, designed to excite a frequency sweep with the vehicle traveling at constant speed.

This can be used for tasks such as locating rattle and noise problems in the interior.

Investments are also being made in new equipment for measuring tire noise inside vehicles in both cold and warm climates, and Jalar and his team are looking into the possibility of measuring stud force from studded tires in static mode.

“With this equipment we could help customers to optimize the relationship between stud protrusion, stud force, ice grip, and noise in the vehicle,” states Jalar.

The services the company offers are also being expanded; it now offers complete vehicle testing.

Proving Ground of the Year

Chery Automobile is happy with its crash test facility, supplied by an award-winning company

Arctic Falls

Crash Test Facility of the Year, Company of the YearAries Ingeniería y Sistemas

OPINION

It’s been almost three years since I presented in this journal my vision

of end-to-end engineering simulation by applying my ‘Zeroth Law’ for product lifecycle management (PLM): one set of data, shared by all in real time; in the way each individual needs to see it. Unfortunately, it seems that little progress has been made in the intervening years, despite the availability of tools that could make such a vision a reality.

That is not to say that great strides in simulation have not been made, examples of which are given in this issue. A recent tour of Detroit’s North American International Auto Show showcased many new technologies that have been brought to market with the aid of advanced simulation: direct injection and variable valvetrain engines, new transmissions, safety systems, and vehicle electrification. Engineers will tell you that the new simulation tools are easier to use, quicker, and more accurate. Software suppliers will tell you that they are answering their customer’s needs – and they are!

So why am I disappointed? It’s because simulation can be used to supercharge the entire product development process, enabling products to be developed more quickly, at lower cost, and with higher quality. I believe the ‘Great Recession’ de-emphasized the need for speed, as programs were delayed or cancelled. Smaller staffs had to hunker down to execute the business at hand, leaving little time to think about how to do things more efficiently.

Don’t believe me? Ask Takeshi Uchiyamada, newly appointed head of Toyota’s R&D: “On the front lines of manufacturing, improving efficiency is a daily activity… Then I came to research and development and found that nothing similar was being done. The recent slump provides a perfect opportunity to “engage in activities aimed at improving R&D productivity”. He is projecting a 30% improvement by 2012.

If you ask PLM developers such as Dassault, they will tell you that new tools are available, but it is hard to get customers

to see the big picture. You see, in the complicated world of vehicle design few, if any, engineers in large companies understand the end-to-end process. Smaller companies and the numerous startups don’t have the time or resources to reinvent the process. To improve, one has to understand the current process and redesign it before using simulation tools to make the process more efficient.

So what is the answer? First: a little benchmarking of fast-moving industries, such as smartphones would provide insight into more streamlined processes that take advantage of the latest simulation technology. I believe the next step is to target a program and a team assigned to define the current process, map out the new improved process, and then implement the production program from beginning to end. Hopefully, it won’t take another three years to see my vision fulfilled. ‹

Chris Theodore has more than 30 years’ experience in automotive development, including stints at each of the Big Three

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Whenever I ask engineers if simulation can totally replace physical testing,

there nearly always appears to be a powerful reluctance to say either yes or no… It comes across as much more than a question of being genuinely unsure about whether virtual testing can, or will, take over completely. It seems to be a case of the head wanting to say yes while the heart wants to say no. Or, quite possibly, it could be the other way round. It doesn’t really matter.

Either way, I’m still firmly convinced that for all the speed and savings in time and costs that simulation and virtual proving appear to offer a beleaguered automotive industry, there is no substitute for driving prototype vehicles in real-world conditions. And I’m not just advocating proving grounds, whose facilities can expedite development due to the ability to repeat tests over and over again. No, I’m talking about the real ‘real world’. Public roads, where vehicles will live their lives, serve their purpose and succeed or, quite possibly, fail.

This came home to me recently when, for the second winter in succession, the UK suffered exceptionally cold conditions and heavy falls of snow, with the result that the transport system almost came to a halt. It wasn’t just the roads that were paralyzed, but railways and airports, too. However, it’s the effect on road transport that concerned me most.

Now, compared with territories where deep snow and ice is a regular seasonal hazard, the UK didn’t have that much snow. What it did have was a fleet of vehicles, and their drivers, seemingly totally ill-equipped to deal with the conditions. And the country’s government wasn’t much help, with the transport minister actually saying that winter tires – perhaps THE single most effective way of overcoming some of the hazards of low temperatures and snow – were not suitable for vehicles in Britain! Some insurance companies even suggested that motorists who fitted winter tires might invalidate their cover because the tires ‘constituted a modification of the vehicle’.

Fortunately, the tire industry – which has been promoting the virtues of winter tires after last year’s snowy conditions – very quickly set the record straight. And a lot of UK drivers will now be thinking about buying a set of winter tires for future hard winters. Not a bad idea when you consider that a two-wheel-drive vehicle running on winter tires has better all-round traction and grip than a 4x4 on summer tires.

Many 4x4 drivers discovered during the snow that even with each wheel connected to the engine, they were no better off than most other motorists. Pictures in the media of crashed vehicles showed that a high percentage were 4x4s – a result, perhaps, of a false sense of security on drivers’ part?

My own front-wheel-drive car, which has traction control but is not fitted with winter tires, proved surprisingly capable in the conditions. It proved to me that technology can – and does – have an important role in providing better vehicles.

Clearly it’s all but impossible to design a car that is brilliant in all conditions. I saw large 4x4s on very wide summer tires struggling to get grip, while a 50-year-old Land Rover on narrow ‘M+S’ tires happily negotiated the same stretch of road without, the driver assured me, the need to engage all-wheel-drive or diff locks! I also saw, quite frighteningly as it was on a collision course with my own car, an Audi TT whose ABS system had confused the driver, who was trying to stop her wayward coupe. “It seemed to accelerate,” she told me, unaware that ABS doesn’t help in such conditions.

But do you know what has upset me most during our snowy period? When the snow started to melt and the roads became filthy, the design of door closures resulted in the transfer of mud to one’s legs.

Many years ago, companies such as Volvo, Saab, and Rover designed their cars so that the door sill was protected and was kept clean. I don’t see that sort of thinking design much today. And if we overlook such basics, what else is being overlooked? ‹

Keith was communications manager at MIRA before becoming an industry commentator

“It seems to be a case of the head wanting to say yes while the heart wants to say no. Or, quite possibly, it could be the other way round”

spinning in a winter wonderland

OPINION


‘The most important dates for your diary in 2011’

‘Die wichtigsten Termine für Ihren Kalender 2011’

I am impressed with the Expo. There are a lot of good ideas here.

We have to look at the ideas of suppliers and other OEMs. We want to be the best

so we have to think about everything

Dr Gerrit Kiesgen, general manager, BMW

’

‘


ASK

TH

E EX

PERT

SWhat is the most difficult aspect of developing a vehicle?

AudiJörg Starr

project manager, chassis development

“Electric steering needs a lot of power. This is a problem during parking, when the engine is at very low revolutions and at the same time the 1,000W stereo, headlights, etc, also all need power. In discussion with

our electronics department, we overcome this issue with energy management, maybe sending power from the stereo or heater to the steering during parking.”

LotusRichard Hill

chief engineer, vehicle development

“Timing and test scheduling. With the drive to compress development and validation cycles and reduce the number of physical prototypes to a minimum, scheduling the necessary tests within the

availability of suitable level prototypes is becoming more and more difficult. Prototype multitasking and careful control is a necessity.”

PorscheDr Michael Leiters

hybrid development

“The electric car is probably the future, but the biggest problem is battery technology. If you’re in California it’s fine – always 25-30°C and no problems. But if you’re in Sweden or England, the batteries

just don’t work very well at the moment at cold temperatures.”

ToyotaYutaka Matsumoto

project general manager

“I think there should be some consensus between the law makers – different markets, new laws, and various governments sometimes all look for different things, which is not easy for

the car makers.”

020

‘Bigger and better than ever before’

‘Noch größer,noch besser’

’

There are many manufacturers of machinery and parts, and it is

very interesting. I didn’t think it would be so large. It is such

an interesting place

Bernd Eberle, project manager,

BMW M GmbH

‘ASAM (Association for Standardisation of Automation and Measuring Systems) will once again jointly host the Open Technology Forum at Automotive Testing Expo Europe 2011.

Following the huge success at Automotive Testing Expo last year, ASAM has put together a comprehensive three-day Open Technology Forum with presentations from leading OEMs and Tier 1 and 2 suppliers.

The Open Technology Forum is free of charge to attend, and will commence each morning of the show.

www.testing-expo.com

Europe’s leading automotive testing, evaluation and quality engineering trade fair

May 17, 18 and 19, 2011Stuttgart Messe, Stuttgart, Germany

AUTOMOTIVE TESTING EXPO EUrOPE 2011Abinger House, Church Street,

Dorking, Surrey, rH4 1DF, UKTel: +44 (0) 1306 743744

Fax: +44 (0) 1306 877411 email: [email protected]

rUNNING AT THE

NEW MESSE STUTTGArT,

lOCATED by THE AIrPOrT

register for your FrEE entry pass/badge NOW online at

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THETUTTGArT, rT ‘Focused’ ‘relevant’ ‘Unmissable’

‘Zielgenau’ ‘relevant’ ‘Ein Muss’

’ It is useful, with a lot of exhibitors.

It gives us some ideas

Vincent Jacquier, mechanical chief engineer,

PSA Peugeot Citroën

‘

Why did you end up working in the automotive industry?My mother told me that when I was three I knew the name of every car I saw, from an Opel Kadett to a Mercedes-Benz. I have always been interested in cars and knew I wanted to work with them.

What was your career path to your current job?I started as a mechanic in the aircraft industry. I didn’t want to be a car mechanic as I thought being an aircraft mechanic was a better job. I wanted to be an engineer, but fi rst I wanted a practical job in engineering because I think it’s better to be an engineer who can use his hands. Then I began to study mechanical engineering, especially chassis technology, at TU Dortmund

University. My fi rst [automotive] experience was at Mercedes-Benz, then Smart, and for the last four years I’ve been with Audi.

Why did you choose chassis development?I’m interested in motorsports, and I raced motorcycles when I was young. With motorsport experience you fi nd you can be much faster if you have the right chassis setup, and so my interest developed in chassis topics. But I don’t want to move into motorsport just yet. At the moment I’m responsible for sporty car chassis such as the R8, which is fun.

What are the biggest challenges of your job?Being responsible for chassis

development, the biggest challenge is to get the right balance between all areas of vehicle development. We discuss body development, electrical development, and engine development, and try to get the right balance between all these departments to get the absolute best for the car. That’s one of the biggest challenges. Sometimes the chassis department wins, sometimes not. But I don’t just want the chassis department to win: I want the best for the car.

What is the best lab to real-world test ratio?Chassis work is always carried out on the road, but we do a lot of testing in the labs, especially for testing component durability. Fine-tuning is always done on the road, though.

10 Q

UES

TIO

NS

Jörg Starr


Project manager, chassis development, Audi

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What could legislators do to make your working life easier?CO2 targets will keep getting higher. You can see this with the new A6 – to meet legislation we reduced the CO2 emissions and made sure the car was lighter. Legislation does not create problems, though, just challenges that make us work better. Everyone wants to reduce CO2 emissions, but in my opinion, I want to have fun when driving a car. This is still possible with lower emissions.

What is your favorite place in the world to test cars?I love testing in Sweden because some of the surfaces have nearly zero friction. It is a lot of fun to drive on snow and ice.

Is your skill on ice due to natural talent or training?

I’m not a natural, it’s down to training. I have a little bit of talent but it’s mostly training. If you have a good trainer and a lot of kilometers with him/her, you’ll become a better driver.

What are your plans for the future?We have a small project inside our chassis development department, called Chassis 2020+6. This is a very fun project, with a young team of engineers. We think about the car of the future, and what customers will need. It’s a lot of fun. You can do crazy things and create ideas, even though you might not know how to make them real. I am very interested in working on cars for the future. In 20-30 years’ time perhaps there will be no gasoline engines – perhaps no wheels! Anything is possible.

If someone had said 20 years ago that everyone would have a cell phone today, you would have said it was impossible. Now almost everyone has one. My friend’s daughter, who is aged 10, asked me if it was true that 20 years ago cell phones didn’t have cameras. She couldn’t believe that 20 years ago we didn’t have cell phones at all, just one fi xed telephone on a table at home.

Will test programs be quicker to complete in 2020?I don’t think they will be quicker. We will use more data and computer testing, so we will start physical testing at a more advanced point, but this testing will take the same amount of time. It’s fi ne-tuning, which you can’t do by computer. You have to feel the car.

10 Q

UES

TIO

NS

“In 20-30 years’ time perhaps there will be no gasoline engines – perhaps no wheels! Anything is possible”


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ALE

X G

EISL

ER

Alexander M. Geisler is a partner at Duane Morris. He has 20 years of experience in the automotive sector

and is retained by OEMs, Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, test facilities and engineering companies. He is our

resident legal columnist. �lex can be reached at�lex can be reached at [email protected], +44 207 786 2111

(London) and +1 215 979 1000 (Philadelphia).

Ask Alex

In the time-honored tradition, I am going to start by rephrasing the question. When is the first

chance to avoid litigation? The answer is, in old parlance, while gathered around the drawing board. I continue to draw disapproving glances and the occasional raised eyebrow from the engineering community by asserting that the best way to avoid litigation is to make better cars. That implicates pre-eminent design coupled with excellent testing and outstanding build quality. Now, to be fair, a great many manufacturers aspire to and achieve all of those things and still get sued. Which brings us back to: when is it too late to avoid litigation? To this question, the answer is – never.

It is axiomatic that quality assurance, product enhancement, and safety monitoring never stop. This is why product evaluation starts, in earnest, with product release. It is also why so many manufacturers look closely at warranty statistics, operate safety committees, and so on. All these measures are forms of litigation avoidance.

Then it comes to the letters of complaint. Naturally these reflect the full range of personality types, from those with legitimate grievances to those with significant personality disorders, whose biggest problem is a vulnerability to being beguiled by the media and the internet. And that’s just the lawyers. Plainly, unless and until the court seals the complaint, it is never too late to avoid litigation. And even then, when litigation is afoot, it is never too late to think about settlement.

Can a case really settle on the steps of the court? Of course – and a depressing number of cases do just that. I have even known cases to settle after the trial, in the time lag when the evidence is in but before the judgment is given out. This is a part of the case which soccer pundits would probably call a ‘corridor of uncertainty’.

I have even settled a case after the draft judgment had been circulated by the trial judge; the parties simply agreed to their own terms and persuaded the judge not to ‘hand down’ his findings formally. After all, for most manufacturers, it is not just the emerging judgment that causes cold sweats at night, it is the potential knock-on consequences of it.

When is it too late to avoid litigation?

ALE

X G

EISL

ER

Alexander M. Geisler is a partner at Duane Morris. He has 20 years’ experience in the automotive sector and is retained by OEMs, Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, test facilities, and engineering companies. He is our

resident legal columnist. �lex can be reached at�lex can be reached at [email protected], +44 20 7786 2111

(London) and +1 215 979 1000 (Philadelphia).

recall roundupThe latest automotive recall news for Europe and North America during the first quarter of 2011

Ask Alex

Make Model(s) Concern

Fiat 500, Grande and Evo Punto, �barth 500 and �barth Evo Punto

Wrong airbag may deploy in a collision

Mercedes-Benz

Sprinter, Viano, Vito Oil may leak

Jeep Cherokee Front suspension arm may separate

Citroën C2, C3, C3 Pluriel, C8, Dispatch III

Lights may fail without warning

Dodge Caliber �ccelerator pedal may fail to return to idle

�ston Martin

DB9, V8 Vantage, DBS Coupé

Steering may be affected

Rolls-Royce

Phantom Possible reduction in brake servo assistance

Iveco Stralis Steering control could be lost

Proton Gen-2 and Neo Short circuit may occur

Mercedes-Benz

�tego Fuel tank may leak

Tesla Roadster Short circuit may occur

Volvo V60, V70, XC70, S80, XC90

Wheel may become loose

Renault Master Rear axle may fail

Mercedes-Benz

C-Class, E-Class Power-assisted steering may leak oil

Peugeot Bipper, 207 Engine may fail

Toyota Lexus IS220d, IS250, GS300, RX300

Brake master cylinder may fail

BMW 5, 6, 7 Series Possible reduction in brake servo assistance

Volvo S80, V70, XC70, XC60, S60, V60

Engine may cut out

Land Rover Discovery 3 TDV6, Range Rover Sport TDV6

Fire may occur

Fiat 500, Panda Loss of steering control

Ford Focus 1.6 diesel automatic

Risk of fire

Mercedes-Benz

Vito, Viano Rear window may detach

Volvo S80, V70, XC70, XC60

Engine speed may increase without warning

Nissan Micra, Pathfinder Engine may stall and fail to restart

Peugeot 308 Brake may be inadvertently applied

Mazda Pickup Gearbox may not perform correctly

Ford S-Max and Galaxy Panoramic roof panel may detach


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Dana divests proving ground

PUNE – Work has started in India on a US$20

million technical center for Dana Holding Corporation. The new facility is Dana’s 15th technical center globally and will provide design, testing, and analytical support for each of Dana’s primary markets: automotive, commercial, and off-highway. It is expected to be operational by the end of 2011.

The project was launched with a ground-breaking ceremony in December. “A ground-breaking [ceremony] is typically about putting down roots,” said Dana’s chief technology and quality officer, George Constand. “But, given our widespread presence in India, today’s ceremony is really about extending our local roots. This new technical center will enable Dana to serve the expanding needs of one of the world’s strongest growth markets.”

Meanwhile, the 320-acre former Dana Corporation test track and technical center site in Whiteford Township, Michigan – on the market since 2007 when the company was in bankruptcy protection – has been sold for US$1.95 million. Once the jewel in Dana’s technology crown, the site was opened in 1969 with two test tracks – a two-mile concrete oval and a 3.5-mile circuit with cobblestones, mud holes, and other features designed to simulate off-road conditions. Purchased by local development company MITRP, the site is likely to become a business park.

GARYSBURG – Progress continues at the newest

proving ground in the USA, the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research, as phase one approaches the first anniversary of the first customer taking to its tracks.

The two-mile road course and buildings are complete, and high-tech safety systems have been installed. In addition, the entire range of the Hunter chassis equipment – including a ‘no-touch’ tire-changing station, a road-force dynamic balancer, and an 18,000 lb capacity alignment system – have been fitted.

The center’s advanced IT infrastructure is complete, with WiFi going live across the entire site and video

cameras fully activated. As Automotive Testing went to press, a GPS base station was due to be installed for accurate positioning data as well as a timing loop for recording lap times.

COO Simon Cobb said the center was keen to move on to the next phase. “We’re talking to private investors and that’s looking quite promising, although it’s early days.”

Almost 400 drivers have used the center since March 2010 and 745 visitors have been welcomed to the site. Cobb says that eventually there will be a grand opening, but he’s not saying when. “We want to be able to demonstrate full capability when we formally open.”

› Aberdeen Test Centerwww.atc.army.mil

› ACTSwww.acts.de

› Arctic Falls ABwww.arcticfalls.se

› Arctic Testing Serviceswww.arctictesting.fi

› Arjeplog Test Centerwww.arjeplogtestcenter.com

› ATP Papenburgwww.atp-papenburg.com

› Boschwww.bosch.us

› CERAMwww.ceram-mortefontaine.fr

› Cooper Tire & Vehicle Test Centerwww.tvtc.us

› Dayton T. Brownwww.daytontbrown.com

› Defiance Testing & Engineeringwww.defiancetest.com

› IDIADAwww.idiada.com

› Gerotek Test Facilitieswww.gerotek.co.za

› Keweenaw Research Centerwww.mtukrc.org/school.htm

› Magna Steyrwww.magnasteyr.com

› MIRAwww.mira.co.uk

› MGA Researchwww.mgaresearch.com

› Michigan Proving Groundwww.testprofessionals.com

› Millbrookwww.millbrook.co.uk

› Nevada Automotive Test Centerwww.natc-ht.com

› PMG Technologieswww.pmgtest.com

› Prodrivewww.prodrive.com

› Prototipowww.prototipo.org

› Smithers Winter Test Centerwww.wintertesting.com

› Southwest Researchwww.swri.org

› Southern Hemisphere Proving Groundwww.shpg.co.nz

› TNO Automotivewww.automotive.tno.nl

› Transportation Researchwww.trcpg.com

PRO

VIN

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ROU

ND

S

ÄLVSBYN – Arctic Falls, winner of the 2010 Automotive Testing

Technology International Proving Ground of the Year Award, has been buying land to expand its facilities for winter testing.

CEO Jonas Jalar said completion of the strategic land purchase in Sweden would enable Arctic Falls to meet demand from customers. “We have bought Nattbergs Plantskola, an area with unique possibilities for creating a winter proving ground for testing heavy vehicles or tires,” he revealed. “We are inviting interested companies to discuss this opportunity. We want them

to let us know their wishes – and we will provide our expertise and experience in building and developing the test facilities.

“The area has good conditions for heavy vehicle and tire testing. It is located in Älvsbyn, where we have ‘real’ winters with both snow and cold. There are good land conditions for tracks, and an infrastructure that includes electricity, fiber optics, and fencing, etc. It has everything needed to build a cost-effective and efficient winter test facility.”

In a separate development, a Frequency Sweep Excitation Test Track has been constructed by Arctic Falls at the Vitberget Proving Ground.

Proving ground directory

FURTHER GROUNDS ARE LISTED AT WWW.AUTOMOTIVETESTINGTECHNOLOGYINTERNATIONAL.COM

If you would like your facility to be included in the Automotive Testing Technology International proving grounds directory, please contact Jason Sullivan on: +44 1306 743744, or email: [email protected]

NCCAR approaches completion

LONDON – If recent results at MIRA are

anything to go by, the automotive industry is accelerating out of recession. In his Christmas address to employees, CEO Dr George Gillespie described a year of recovery, full order books, healthy staff bonuses, and excellent future prospects.

As well as proposals for a new office complex on the 750-acre site, company executives have managed to secure rights to acquire areas of land adjacent to its boundary that will help to accommodate future developments. One of the key new buildings will be a state-of-the-art control tower to organize and monitor proving

ground activities. And for the increasing numbers of customer engineers visiting the site, MIRA is planning to incorporate a hotel within its US$395 million overall investment program.

Meanwhile, engineering director Graham Townsend is scouring the industry for top-flight personnel. “We have 50 vacancies at the moment and are having to look hard for the right people,” he said.

Positive times at MIRA


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INTERVIEW



INTERVIEW

A little more than 12 months after taking over from Mark Reuss as General Motors’ (GM) vice president of global vehicle engineering, German-

born Karl Stracke has already forged a reputation as a revealing interviewee. In that time, this Corvette-driving, Harley-riding, Nürburgring-loving, self-confessed ‘car guy’ has made headlines by criticizing the outgoing Chevrolet Cobalt in front of the press. The Detroit News reported him saying, “Look at this car, it’s horrible. How did this get through so many people?”

In comments repeated to Automotive Testing Technology International at this year’s Detroit Auto Show, Stracke hinted that the next generation of GM range-extender engines could be something more radical than an inline-four – perhaps a turbocharged twin or a rotary. And he’s also scotched rumors that the next Corvette will be mid-engined, and indicated that a hybrid powertrain could make sense for future sports cars.

Having spent some time in his company, I can vouch for Stracke’s straight talking. But it’s accompanied by a passion for his job and for the challenge GM has set itself to build the world’s best vehicles.

“When I get up in the morning I want to work hard during the day to deliver the best cars for General Motors,”

he says with sincerity. “We have a clear mission: to design, develop, make and sell the best vehicles in the world. We’ve never had this vision before, our ‘slogan’ ran for a couple of pages. Now we have one sentence and it’s no different for the engineers in Korea, China, Brazil, at Holden [in Australia], in Rüsselsheim, or wherever we design products.

“We want to create the best vehicles in every segment going forward, and this is taken very seriously now. In the past, we had a ‘mediocre’ strategy, we always wanted to be in the middle of the segments. There wasn’t a winning mentality in the company; nor was it in the leadership. So was it a big mistake that some people left? No, it was the right thing to do. Now we simply want to win in every segment, with every product that we bring out. We want to win in terms of quality and reliability, engine performance, the interior, aerodynamics and mass, with [the best] fuel economy as the outcome. We want to provide customers with a much more attractive package than in the past.”

A fully integrated global engineering setup is key to GM reaching that goal. It is no coincidence that Stracke held a number of senior vehicle development positions in Germany and the USA prior to being appointed to his current post.

GM’s engineering chief, Karl Stracke, wants each of his global development centers to develop vehicles to the same high standards. And he has big plans for ChinaWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

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“We have a clear mission: to design, develop, make and sell the best vehicles in the world. We’ve never had this vision before, our ‘slogan’ ran for a couple of pages”

031

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“Our global engineering organization is very nicely connected now,” says Stracke, summing up what has been achieved already. “The engineers can talk to each other 24/7. We have ‘mass creation’, so that when a guy creates something in one region, people in the other regions can see it immediately. We are also closely knitted together in terms of simulation, and have been for some years.

“This process [of integration] has been ongoing for some time but we’ve now refined it in terms of who does what. We have aligned creative responsibilities to the engineering centers. For example, within Europe it’s purely the Delta [compact] platform. In North America, we have the [mid-size] Sigma, and also the majority of the truck architectures. In Brazil we have the mid-size truck program and in Korea the small-car architecture. In China, we’re considering a small, emerging-market platform that is a possible global architecture for the future.”

However, GM has yet to reach the point where the quality of the product is the same, regardless of which of

the company’s development centers in the world it emerges from – as Stracke acknowledges.

“We have recently changed our integration strategy because we need to be stronger in terms of how we integrate the car,” he reveals. “That was still a weakness because in the design and development of a vehicle, it’s the integration that makes a difference. The integration piece is a core competency of a [car] company.

“Take the Volt. Our requirements were very clear – we didn’t want to hear anything when you drive.”

He drops his voice to a whisper: “There needs to be silence in the car!”

“And we achieved that,” he continues. “But you need to drive the requirements down to the subcomponents in order to understand what noise level is acceptable or not. So your intelligence is not just in designing a brake system, an engine, or an interior, but how you make these operate with each other.

“I think the strength of our organization is the capability

Queen B

There has been another major new appointment

at the General, in the form of Mary Barra, who is now senior vice president of global product development, in charge of design, engineering, program management and quality of vehicles for GM’s 11 brands around the world. With more than 36,000 members, her team will also manage global strategic product alliances.

“Knowing that today’s global customer expects even more from their GM vehicle means we have to work harder than ever to exceed those

expectations,” says Barra. “I’m excited by the opportunity associated with this new challenge and pleased to be joining such a strong team with deep technical knowledge and experience.”

Barra, who joined GM in 1980, has moved to this role from the position of vice president of global human

resources, which she accepted in 2009 to initiate change in the company’s culture during the largest restructuring in GM’s history. Prior to that, she was VP of global manufacturing engineering, with past positions including plant manager, executive director of competitive operations engineering, and director of internal communications for GM North America.

Barra will report to Daniel Akerson, himself recently promoted from CEO to chairman, and will also serve on GM’s Executive Committee.

“Knowing that today’s global customer expects even more from their GM vehicle means we have to work harder than ever to exceed those expectations”

ABOVE: Stracke next to a Cadillac CTS, an example of GM’s widening reach around the world

INTErVIEW

033


resources quite so aggressively toward electrification. In Europe I see a 5-8% market share for electric vehicles by 2020; in North America, maybe 5%.

“In terms of electrification, I’m not happy where I am, I’m just at the beginning. But even so, I consider GM to be at the leading edge of electrification technology. We’re very proud of Volt because, with the exception of LG’s battery chemistry, it has all been developed internally. I have a capability within my company that basically nobody else has in terms of electric motors, power control software and the like. I have hundreds of software engineers now, so we have all the knowledge internally now of how to do power controls, for example.

“We have a clear, diversified alternative propulsion strategy to move away from a dependency on fossil fuel,” says Stracke. “We start with EREVs, going to electric vehicles and many more hybrid vehicles (two-mode and four-mode). We will see the hydrogen vehicle coming along very soon too. We’re not giving information about dates, but we’re working on it and we will be very competitive in terms of when this car will come out.” ‹

Born again… and again

For evidence of how GM’s global development strategy

is working in practice, look no further than Buick, whose US model line-up has been revitalized by the introduction of models based on platforms used by GM elsewhere in the world. Sales were up 52% in 2010, making it the USA’s fastest-growing car manufacturer.

The latest recruit is the Verano, an Audi A3-chasing compact sedan that shares its platform with the Chevrolet Cruze, its sheet metal with the China-only Buick Excelle, and its Watts-link rear suspension with the Opel/Vauxhall Astra, but has an

interior, powertrains, and NVH performance specific to the North American market. Pre-production cars are currently being built, ahead of a market launch before the end of 2011.

According to Jim Federico, vehicle chief engineer for Verano, GM’s recent upheaval makes it hard to put a firm start date on the Verano project, but a US version of the compact platform was always in the plan.

“By utilizing global architecture, we know we have a product that will do very well at autobahn speeds, for example,” says Federico. “That brings a lot of qualities down even to the

US road systems. Each launch that happens [on the platform] makes the next one easier.”

Federico, who previously headed up the Insignia/Regal and LaCrosse programs, adds that the learning from the other recent Buicks have been fed into the Verano’s development, particularly in terms of NVH performance, where his engineers are cementing a reputation for quiet vehicles. They’ve compiled a portfolio of more than 50 Buick Quiet Enablers, from a European-style stiff body, to thick, acoustic laminate glass and liquid-applied sound deadening.

“By utilizing the global architecture, we know we have a product that will do very well at autobahn speeds”

of our engineering centers to integrate it. How we do it is to have core expertise developed mainly in Europe and North America, and have those guys jump in and help the other regions to execute cars, because my capability level is not the same all around the globe. I expect each area to be fully competent in everything, but they are not there yet, so they borrow from other centers to get the same standards around the globe.

“In the past we left them alone. For example, in Korea we said ‘OK, you do this small car and deliver it to the other regions’. Wow – what a mistake! The problem was that the integration level was not good enough for highly mature markets such as western Europe, and in the competitive tests we were ranked second, third or fourth. We were not winning! I want to win going forward so we have modified our strategy, integrating the sales area much more with the core competencies of my best experts.”

Once its engineering centers are all producing vehicles to the desired standard, GM will be well placed to reap the benefits of having engineering operations close to local markets. China is the prime example.

“I can react immediately to market needs from a customer point of view in China,” says Stracke. “We now have 2,000 engineers at PATAC [GM’s Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center in Shanghai] designing the Chinese vehicles for me.

“Why? Because they are closer to the customer. I want to be close to the customers; if I’m not, I don’t know what’s expected there so I don’t know what requirements to put into my programs going forward.”

GM China does not yet have the capability to engineer hybrid and electric vehicles, but it will do, according to Stracke. The GM China Advanced Technical Center is home to more than 70 labs and 300 staff, and is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Stracke thinks electric vehicles could comprise 20-30% of the car market in China by 2030, so it’s no wonder that GM is betting big on its alternative powertrain engineering. The Chevy Volt is the torch-bearer!

“The Volt costs US$41,000 right now, minus a US$7,500 tax break. That’s probably not a sustainable situation – you can sell maybe 40-50,000 cars at that price, but not more. We want to sell more, so the pressure is on to bring the

technology quickly to the second and third generations in order to take the cost out.

“China knows it can never catch up on gasoline and diesel engines, so it is supporting electric vehicles very aggressively in its whole supply industry to try to leapfrog the industry in the segment,” he acknowledges. “They feel they can lead in the future, whereas other organizations, such as the European Union, have not directed their

“I want to be close to the customers; if I’m not, I don’t know what’s expected there so I don’t know what requirements to put into my programs going forward”

INTErVIEW

034

AERODYNAMICS

The latest thinking in aerodynamics involves large volume airfl ow visualization, synthetic jets, and helium bubbles, according to Gianluca Orso-Fiet from MIRAWORDS BY KEITH READ

Fresh airFresh airwww.AutomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.comMARCH 2011036

AERODYNAMICS

With acute pressure on OEMs to drive down fuel consumption in the face of rising oil prices – not to mention the parallel focus on CO

2 emission

reduction offering dual benefi ts of cutting global warming and improved fuel economy – R&D specialists in many disciplines are pushing the frontiers of technology. Not least of those challenged with the task of making cars cleaner and more frugal are fl uids engineering teams such as those at MIRA, which, in addition to its physical test facilities, is working hard in the virtual world. One of the newest techniques under development that is showing promising benefi ts, especially for vehicle stability, is large volume airfl ow visualization (LVAV).

“We started looking at LVAV four years ago as part of a research project,” explains MIRA’s senior aerodynamicist, Gianluca Orso-Fiet. “During normal vehicle development, steady-state measures are taken with sampling over one or two minutes. But, having updated the data-acquisition system in the tunnel to increase the sampling frequency

and period, we are able to look at fl ow in more detail and also see how aerodynamic forces change with time.”

Data gathered from LVAV is also vitally important for the validation of CFD work: “LVAV provides us with a better understanding of the fl ow structure in the vehicle wake. We get a more detailed understanding of the critical fl ow, enabling us to develop measures to reduce drag. The main idea is to get an insight into the fl ow structures in the wake, which we haven’t really had until now. To date, the standard approach within the industry has been to use steady-state simulation of the wake. But the wake of a normal vehicle is highly transient.”

One of the challenges for aerodynamicists is the fact that air is invisible and they cannot easily ‘see’ what’s going on. Wind tunnels detect forces like downforce and drag, but never explain how those forces are generated. To reveal the fl ow structures involved, fl ow visualization is required. Existing techniques – wool tufts, fl uorescent paint, smoke wands, laser doppler anemometry (LDA) or particle image

An imposing shot of MIRA’s FSWT, where cutting-edge aero measurement techniques are being introduced


velocimetry (PIV) detect only what is happening on a surface, or in a small slice of the flow. MIRA’s system uses helium-filled bubbles and Hollywood-spec Vicon motion-capture cameras, and is designed to provide aerodynamicists with a large-section view in 3D.

The system works by seeding the wind tunnel airflow with neutrally buoyant, 3mm bubbles that serve as targets to be tracked by a 12-camera array. Provided a minimum of two calibrated cameras see a bubble, a three-dimensional fix is obtained using stereo-photogrammetry.

Each bubble is tracked, revealing where flows originate from and how they interact with the bodywork and other structures within the flow field. The system is capable of tracking hundreds of bubbles in real time, giving a much greater understanding of how a vehicle’s aerodynamic properties are generated. An in-house code converts the motion-capture data into the correct format required by commercial post processing software. This has unlocked the capability to compare virtual and experimental data sets simultaneously in the same software environment.

“Improvements in wind tunnel measurement techniques can have a wider impact on aerodynamic development,”

says Orso-Fiet. “Often CFD results are validated against the force data generated by a wind tunnel balance, which could be just a small contact point under each wheel. When there are discrepancies between the two sets of results, it is difficult to tell where the differences lie as the CFD data may have 100 million discreet data points and the wind tunnel only four. Comparing only the global forces is a blunt tool. By understanding the wider flow field, and superimposing this data on the CFD predictions, we can see how the two compare.”

LVAV is just one technique that MIRA is using to help improve vehicle aerodynamic efficiency.

“We’re looking at vehicles on the market today and investigating new areas of development where there is the potential to reduce drag,” says Orso-Fiet. “Will there be any surprises as a result of our research? Possibly the vehicle shape, and I guess we’re moving toward a more streamlined shape as a general trend. However, you have limitations because of the styling of the vehicle, and functionality. So we’re looking at some specific areas such as wheel-arches to improve the flow in that area. Cooling intakes are something else we’re looking at; also the under-floor, where we can work to make it as smooth as possible and incorporate a gentle diffuser for reducing drag and creating as small a wake as possible.

“The wake is mainly where we have dissipation of energy, resulting in drag. The smaller the wake, the smaller the wasted energy. We’re looking into new approaches such as air jets, or synthetic jets, to modify the flow structure in the wake. Synthetic jets induce vibration, which puts energy into the flow. You can change the flow


“Crosswind stability is very important for large commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses”

TOP AND ABOVE: Thermal management simulation forms part of the work at the lab

RIGHT: Large volume airflow visualization (LVAV) in the full-scale tunnel at MIRA

AERODYNAMICS

038

structure with that energy. Jets can be from pumped air or from small membranes, which vibrate.

“Vortex-generators are a big thing at the moment. They are not new – one of the Mitsubishi Evo models used vortex generators above the rear screen in order to keep the flow attached to the rear screen and enhance performance of the rear wing. The generators energize the flow and, in the case of the Mitsubishi, they keep the flow attached.”

Such devices, and their input, are quite small. But several brought together could make production cars much more aerodynamic. The average Cd figure today is between 0.28 and 0.29. Some very good models achieve 0.25.

“These are figures that, 25 years ago, would have been seen only on concept cars,” says Orso-Fiet.

But with all or many of the developments that MIRA is looking at brought together on an average production car, Orso-Fiet believes figures of 0.21 to 0.22 are probable.

“And over the next five to 10 years, a Cd figure of 0.20 is realistic,” he states.

However, with what Orso-Fiet calls ‘a radical change’ – such as wheel fairings – the figure could drop below 0.20, which is what today’s concept cars are achieving. He also predicts changes in style and dimensions, with drivers opting for smaller cars with narrower tires.

“The fashion toward wider tires has been a negative as far as aerodynamics is concerned,” he explains. “Against that, when you buy a car you want one that looks good – one you like to look at!”

MIRA’s fluids engineering teams are conscious of the impact that aerodynamics have on the thermal management of the vehicle. This is particularly the case when it comes to hybrid and electric vehicles in the future.

“Hybrids and EVs are raising different and new thermal management challenges because we have to take air

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AERODYNAMICS

through the components,” explains Orso-Fiet’s colleague Dr Martin Jones, who is manager of fluids engineering. “Heat exchangers have to be managed in an efficient way, rather than simply put where they fit and hoping they will get some air flow. Also, motors and batteries need cooling.

“Hybrid components built into conventional vehicles will need cooling as well as the i/c engine. That will mean more heat exchangers – meaning more drag – giving us the object of continuing to reduce the drag coefficient alongside the introduction of these new components. It’ll certainly keep us in a job for a few years!”

Vehicle stability will continue to be an important focus for aerodynamicists too.

“Crosswind stability is important for large commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses,” says Orso-Fiet, who recently has worked on the stability of a guided bus in strong winds. The bus was linked to an automatic driving system, following sensors in the road.=

“The operator needed to know what would happen to the bus if it were caught by a strong gust of wind. We had to provide the data that enabled the company to program the system to cope with strong crosswinds.”

Orso-Fiet believes that there will be more aerodynamic work to do if, and when, convoy systems are introduced, allowing vehicles on expressways to join a ‘crocodile’ of vehicles. While drag, and therefore fuel consumption, would be reduced, such convoys could well see changes in the aerodynamic influences on individual vehicles in the convoy and their stability.

Vehicle fuel economy is generally measured over a low-speed urban cycle. However, Jones points out that normal usage is much more likely to be at higher speeds.

“This is where the aerodynamic benefits really show up,” he emphasizes. “A lot of the work we’re trying to do reflects itself in the urban cycle and the fuel economy figures that are quoted for that. However, we are looking to develop solutions that work under far more realistic duty cycles because once the vehicle goes past 60mph (100km/h), it’s all about aerodynamics…

“The percentage of the energy required to move the vehicle through the urban cycle is quite small. But at 60mph (100km/h), aerodynamics become the overriding factor. And that’s not really reflected very well by the cycles that are currently used to quantify fuel economy. There was an extended part added to the urban cycle a few years ago, but it’s still a relatively small part of the overall cycle. Perhaps it’s time for more realistic drive cycles.”

Jones considers the new European drive cycle (NEDC), with four low-speed urban cycles and one cruise cycle, to be probably the most realistic at the moment. However, he would like to see the cycle’s requirements include more high-speed driving.

“I know that most of the mileage I do is at 60 or 70mph on motorways,” states Jones. “Perhaps it’s time to look at all the mileage that’s done by the population and work out how much of it is at high speed. Because of the rate at which you cover distances on a motorway, it can quickly dwarf the smaller bits of commuting you do [at low speed] each day.” ‹

ABOVE: Photo of the LVAV bubble flow over on a Discovery 3

ABOVE RIGHT: The motion capture data being analyzed in the CFD post processor

RIGHT: CFD analysis of streamlines in a race car brake duct

AERODYNAMICS

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WIND TUNNELS

standardGold


WIND TUNNELS

It’s not often that a site visit in this magazine involves a test facility that recently celebrated its golden jubilee – some 50 years of continuous

contribution to automotive R&D. Usually it’s the very latest state-of-the-art facility that comes under the microscope. But, ironically, it is the age of MIRA’s full-scale aerodynamic wind tunnel (FSWT) that contributes to some of the many features that keep customers knocking at the door of the UK’s only commercially available FSWT.

“It was opened in 1960 and continues to this day to be a facility offering cost-effective solutions for a broad range of customers,” comments Dr Martin Jones, manager of fl uids engineering at MIRA. “As a result, it is very heavily used. On a single shift, operating fi ve days a week, we’re approaching 100% occupancy. Additional demand means that we occasionally run evening and weekend shifts to accommodate customers. There is always the option to run extra shifts rather than turn customers away.”

Whereas a state-of-the-art European FSWT – and there are several available – costs almost US$30,000 a shift, MIRA charges around one-quarter of that. Yet the tunnel is able to provide the vast majority of customers with exactly what they want due to a program of continuous investment and improvement, and due to the former aircraft hangar in which it is housed.

The basic wind tunnel – as designed and built by MIRA engineers in the late 1950s – has not changed much. But its current control system, data-acquisition system, and the overall capabilities and services offered would be unrecognizable to those responsible for its conception and construction. And the re-clad hangar matches the many contemporary buildings built on the company’s 670-acre proving ground and automotive engineering site, developed over the past 65 years on a former World War II Royal Air Force base.


ABOVE: Fastback lines of the Sunbeam Rapier, launched in 1967, were honed in the FSWT at MIRA

RIGHT: The aero work carried out on this Aston Martin Le Mans racer led to the design of the 1970s V8 Vantage road car

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In this semi-closed-loop tunnel, with air drawn through the working section by four Avro Lincoln aircraft propellers driven by four English Electric 250kW electric motors, the maximum wind speed is 80mph (130km/h). Consideration is being given to increasing this to 93mph (150km/h) but the benefi t-versus-cost fi rst needs to be established with customers, whose views are being sought.

One restriction MIRA faces in raising wind speed is the hangar building. Fast-moving air beats against the walls of the building, producing pulses. And although pulses at current speeds are barely measurable, and are therefore acceptable, larger pulses from higher wind speeds would not be. “We do need smooth, steady airfl ow in the test section,” says Jones.

To raise wind speed to around 155mph (250km/h) – the rate many rival wind tunnels offer – would require a new facility with a potential investment budget well in excess of US$40 million. The business case for such an investment

WIND TUNNELS

and a full moving ground are also being looked at, although the cost-versus-benefi t of the latter could make it prohibitive. To have a full moving ground would deprive the FSWT of some of its fl exibility, which is seen as one of its many attractions. “We have to cater for a broad base of customers, and we believe a full moving ground would be inappropriate for many of our clients and activities,” explains Jones.

The tunnel’s data-acquisition equipment has been regularly updated, particularly over the past few years, with the latest investment being an Aerotech ATE high-speed system for taking transient measurements. A 62-channel PSI pressure measurement system has also been

“We have to cater for a broad base of customers, and a full moving ground would be inappropriate for many of our clients and activities”Dr Martin Jones, manager of fl uids engineering, MIRA

LEFT: The FSWT is housed in a former aircraft hangar

BELOW: The tunnel’s Avro Lincoln-derived propellers provide another aviation connection

is diffi cult to make at the moment, especially when MIRA is earmarking US$400 million for a massive redevelopment of its offi ces, laboratories, and proving ground control tower, as well as the creation of a new technology park. However, nothing has been ruled out. And one thing is for sure: if a new FSWT were to be built, it would have to be an aero-acoustic facility – something many customers would fi nd benefi cial.

Other improvements currently under consideration include better boundary-layer control with a suction system. Currently, MIRA’s aerodynamicists use a trip fence, which, arguably, produces more accurate results than some suction systems. Small wheel-rotation devices

ABOVE: Full scale does not only mean cars – HGVs can also be accommodated

045


installed, and the tunnel control system has been switched from manual to fully computerized operation.

An ongoing development in the tunnel is an innovative fl ow-visualization system. It uses motion-capture cameras to trace, in 3D, the fl ow of tiny, neutral-buoyancy helium-fi lled bubbles over the surface of vehicles (see also page 36). The same 12 cameras are also used in some of the tunnel’s

increasing non-automotive work. Such projects can include tracking the movement of debris torn from buildings in high winds.

MIRA’s wind tunnel is 15.2m long, 7.9m wide, and has 4.42m headroom. The cross-section is 34.93m2. The balance is a MIRA design, with its precision parts machined in MIRA’s own workshops, and proprietary load cells used. On top of the balance is a 360° turntable, although vehicles are normally rotated only 180° in each direction.

The dyno rolls are 1.525m in diameter and 813mm-wide, and are able to take a load of 10 tonnes. Maximum speed is 80mph (130km/h) and the maximum power is 275kW. Today the dyno is used mainly for brake cooling work and assessment and not for power measurements as there is no control of the ambient temperature. Controlled-temperature powertrain cooling work is now undertaken in one of MIRA’s fully climatic wind tunnels. But a 250kW heat-dissipation rig is available for early cooling pack installation work and front-end air fl ow validation in this versatile and interesting FSWT. ‹

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InsidePOWERTRAIN TESTING

Will advances in simulation packages, engine dynos, and data acquisition soon enable engineers to develop new powertrains purely in the lab environment?WORDS BY JOHN CHALLEN

The need to cut costs, time, and the manpower dedicated to an engine test program is an ever-present prerequisite. Powertrain engineers have

been able to take advantage of sophisticated simulation and modeling tools, but in recent years there have been stumbling blocks that threaten to slow things down and increase costs, exacerbated by the need to bring to market alternative powertrains. Not dealing with solely tried-and-tested components, such as injector systems and intake ports, simply means more work, new parts under the skin of the vehicle, and a new set of problems.

These constant challenges are things that, as head of engine and powertrain development at Porsche AG, Dr Hans-Jakob Neusser has had to deal with in recent times.

“Customer demands on a vehicle have increased,” he states. “Years ago, the main issues were power, torque, and fuel consumption, but now we have to consider the engine’s sound, suitability for daily use, and durability. The more complex a system is, the more work you need to do on virtual prototyping and component test bench work. With EVs the workload will not be doubled, but it does require a different kind of work, within the system interaction.”

Porsche takes every powertrain in isolation, but adopts the same structure for development, explains Neusser.

“First is design work, and simultaneously we do virtual analysis of everything from the components up to total vehicles. The aerodynamics are also done by simulation of virtual prototypes.”

j objob

“For alternative powertrain work, I would say there is a 50:50 split between lab and total vehicle work, but I see it moving further toward the test rig”Dr Hans-Jakob Neusser, Porsche AG

RIGHT: Ensuring a 911’s engine makes all the right noises, while staying within the law

048

InsidePOWERTRAIN TESTING



Bench testing follows after the fi rst parts are processed, using rapid prototyping. Here Neusser’s team checks for durability and operational behavior in the lab. Only when they have confi rmation of these aspects does the project move to optimization of the system and integration into prototype and pre-production vehicles.

“As the dynamic driving behavior of a hybrid powertrain is different to that of a conventional engine, many elements of the test program have to be altered,” says Neusser.

“The quality of the conventional adjustment and calibration work can be infl uenced by the electrical parts. This work can be done by virtual prototyping, transferring it to bench testing, and then fi nally validating it in the fi nal vehicle. For alternative powertrain work, I would say there is a 50:50 split between lab and total vehicle work, but I see it moving further toward the test rig.”

For comparison with a conventional powertrain test program, Neusser explains that for V8s, the mechanical test program was done 80% in the lab, with thermodynamic and application work closer to a 50:50 split.

The rise of computer power is also something that Mazda’s program manager in the powertrain development division, Yasuhiro Harada, is keen to discuss.Constant? Dynamic?

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POWERTRAIN TESTING

“When developing an all-new engine, we use computer simulation exhaustively from the conceptual phase in order to design the basic structure”Yasuhiro Harada, Mazda

050


“It seems likely that most of the development process will rely on simulation,” he predicts. “Actual engines will be used just to verify the results of computer simulations and to help improve the accuracy of theoretical models.”

Famed for its short vehicle development times – sometimes as short as 12 months for a mid-cycle facelift model – it seems that the same rate of development could be at work in Mazda’s Hiroshima’s powertrain test facilities, aided by some advanced lab-based technologies.

“Our latest bench-testing process involves a dyno that can simulate everything from different road surfaces to the forces from the transmission and other vehicle components,” explains the Mazda man. “This dyno enables us to test the full range of driving styles and road conditions, just as if we were actually out driving in the fi eld. We can also set weather and atmospheric conditions as desired.

“When developing an all-new engine, we use computer simulation exhaustively from the conceptual phase in order to design the basic structure. Even when the development process enters the detailed design phase, various aspects including performance, reliability, and NVH, are simulated with a computer.”

Harada says that more than half the specifi cations of an engine are determined using computer simulations, but stresses that this theoretical modeling is not intended to be a replacement of actual, real-world testing.

“It is generally accepted that testing methods will become more computer-based. But I also expect that the most notable change will be a shift toward a qualitative improvement of development and testing methods. For example, there is currently a big emphasis on taking real-world tests and recreating them theoretically.”

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: A Mazda2 undergoing EU powertrain testing; Setting up a thermic test at Renault’s Lardy powertrain facility; Renault’s powertrain facility can simulate many different conditions; The new cold bench at Lardy

POWERTRAIN TESTING

051

BOOTH1950


Harada does not think this is the smartest choice, “It is trying to make technological advances by simply replicating actual tests using computer models. Computer models have a more important role. We use them to try out new ideas, create new designs, and also to optimize existing ones.”

Renault has made a recent investment in a powertrain facility in Lardy, just outside Paris, as the French manufacturer concentrates more on engine testing in the lab. The new site features state-of-the-art engine and chassis dynos, as well as altitude and climatic chambers, and sophisticated HIL capabilities.

Pierrick Cornet, manager for the powertrain tuning department, says, “The aim for us is to stay as long as possible in the lab, because it means reduced planning and R&D costs and we can offer more proposals for our customers, in terms of reducing emissions.

“We try every day to move from tracks to chassis dyno, and from testing to simulation,” he continues. “We use offl ine engine tuning, with one car on which we can evaluate standard conditions such as speed and altitude; and all the tests are made on chassis dyno. We then have some specifi c models for the database, which should be on the real-life drivers. This is where we can check to see if our tuning is OK.”

One of the major capabilities at Lardy is the ability to simulate the load with the transmission, vehicle, and road data, then feed the test bench with this information.

“Once correlated to good customer usage, rig testing can, to a large extent, be used for design verifi cation at powertrain system and engine subsystem level”Daniel Kok, Ford, UK

(derivative) engine. For a brand new engine, we need to have collaboration between the simulation and reality and then it is easy to simulate.”

It is an issue that divides powertrain engineers. Across the water from Cornet is Daniel Kok, a Ford powertrain engineer based at Dunton Technical Centre in the UK, which was runner-up in the Engine Test Facility of the Year category of the Automotive Testing Technology International Awards 2010. Kok has a different stance.

“Once correlated to good customer usage, rig testing can, to a large extent, be used for design verifi cation at powertrain system and engine subsystem level,” he says, adding that formal verifi cation tools can help with robust sign-off of powertrain control software.

“But with new feature contents, for example in vehicles with stop/start or hybrid-electric powertrains, we see a steady increase in the use complexity to which a vehicle is subjected. For this reason, the fi nal product validation will continue to rely on testing the vehicle and its powertrain in a representative real-world environment.”

Race-ready simulationIt seems the lab development of a race-car engine poses as

many problems as one for the road. However, in developing the V12 for the Superleague race series, MCT relied heavily on computer power.

“Things we would normally do, such as optimizing the intake systems before we started pouring metal on the fl ow rigs, we just didn’t do,” says Dave Bedborough, MCT’s technical director. And we didn’t run a single-cylinder engine to see if that would produce what we thought it would – all the work was based on electronic data.”

Bedborough says the brief MCT was given for the engine was just that – brief.

“The engine had to have 750bhp, and needed to be no longer than 700mm,” he reveals. “They gave us the chassis it had to fi t in, which compromised the auxiliary layouts on the side of the engine, and I set about generating numbers for power output, bore, and stroke, which we put through 1D code.”

When it was all put together in the design package – UniGraphics was the main weapon of choice – Bedborough says he was happy with the outcome.

“We tried to have one person in command and other people working in specifi c areas, responsible for bottom end, heads, and intake system, and CAD-wise it came together very nicely.

“I wanted to make the V12 a good-looking engine, and 3D CAD allows you to do that,” he adds. “We ran Abaqus FEA and stressed all the major components to ensure we didn’t get any failure modes.

LEFT A non-fueled hybrid spin cell at GM’s in-house powertrain facilities

“This setup enables us to simulate the drive cycles for homologation as well as simulating weather conditions from -10°C to +30°C,” explains Cornet. “From testing to simulation, specifi cally for engine management software, we use HIL validation. The software in engine ECUs works on real-time conditions with simulation and is connected to models and real parts. From the ECU we can then make thousands of simulation changes.”

In reality, there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward yes or no answer as to whether the future of engine development lies solely in the lab, but most agree that it will be validation work, not development work, that is done outside the lab.

“By 2020, we plan to carry out the majority of our engine development through computer simulation models,” confi rms Mazda’s Harada. “We will still use actual vehicles and engines for development, but it will be limited to verifi cation and fi nal tuning.”

Renault’s Cornet, meanwhile, is a little more certain: “I think it will be possible but it will depend on whether it is a grandmother engine (fi rst in a new family), or a child

053

POWERTRAIN TESTING


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Ford’s US rival, GM, has a very different outlook. Fabio Mallamo, engineering group manager for diesel engines at GM Powertrain, states a clear “yes” in answer to the question of simulation, for oil-burners, at least.

“All the steps involved in the development process, from establishing targets through defi nition of the system to system calibration, can be effectively executed using software tools,” he believes. “The fi nal result is a software package capable of driving all development activities. The software for the analysis of the combustion process and of the engine performance is, in fact, integrated with tools for the virtual calibration of the system and with tools that can predict all the relevant engine outputs as a function of the system architecture and technology contents.”

Mallamo describes the products used at GM Powertrain as ‘smart tools’. “They are easy-to-use, quick (faster than real time, in most cases), accurate, and reliable, even with limited input data,” he says. “Such a comprehensive software package also makes it possible to do system robustness analyses and risk assessments at different steps of the development process. For instance, it is possible to evaluate – directly from the desk and in the very early stages of development – the probability that a vehicle drawn from the production line will pass the relevant legislative tests, leading therefore to a correct defi nition of the engineering targets (and margins with respect to the legal emission limits) to be considered during the development activity.” ‹

Back on track

Millbrook is in the rare position of being an

independent proving ground that has ever-increasing laboratory space. Andy Eastlake heads up those labs for Millbrook, and maintains that the real world will always play a vital role.

“You can go further with development in the lab with chassis and engine dynos, but we think of the labs extending onto tracks,” he says. “I recently had a team driving around the USA, getting in-fi eld driveability, altitude, and on-road data, because you can’t fi nish that job in the lab.”

Eastlake believes there is still a need to feel how a vehicle drives, which, he points out, is diffi cult to re-create in a laboratory. But the Millbrook man admits there is arguably more pressure for results when you leave the confi nes of the engine test lab.

“If you take a vehicle out on the road, you have to get more and more information from the test, and the same is true for the lab,” he says.

Many manufacturers use the real world for engine validation rather than strict development, but Porsche’s Neusser admits that the Stuttgart-based car maker still has quite a reliance outside the lab.

“Such a comprehensive software package also makes it possible to carry out system robustness analyses and risk assessments at different steps of the development process”Fabio Mallamo, GM

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POWERTRAIN TESTING

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SITE VISIT


Automotive Testing Technology International pays a visit to Audi’s electric and hybrid vehicle development laboratoriesWords By graham heeps

SITE VISIT

It won’t have a hybrid or electric vehicle of any sort in its range until the Q5 Hybrid goes on sale at the end of 2011, but Audi has invested heavily

over the past few years in the infrastructure necessary to develop EVs and HEVs. The company will of course tap in to work done elsewhere within the Volkswagen Group, but it also wants to make sure that its vehicles live up to Audi customers’ high expectations: in the words of Frank van Meel, the fi rm’s head of electromobility strategy, “The electric car must not be a rolling disclaimer – it is fi rst and foremost a car.”

The Mechanical Units Center (building T23) lies in the technical development zone in the northwest corner of Audi’s Ingolstadt site. The fi rst phase of this building was completed in 2007 at a cost of €60 million (approximately US$81 million), and houses 450 people. Last year, a new 14,000m2 wing containing a development and test center

for electric drive systems was added at a cost of €65 million (approximately US$87.7 million), bringing a further 390 staff to the facility – 340 of them at workdesks, plus 50 at workstations directly at the testbeds and rigs.

The building brings the different areas of activity for electrifying the powertrain together under a single roof. Engineers from the drive systems department complete their design work on items such as electric motors and control software at the desks on the upper fl oors; once a component is ready for test, the activity moves down to the fi rst fl oor.

During our visit, we see a number of dSPACE HIL rigs in action, testing ECUs in isolation, the communication and interplay between the various control units in the powertrain, and introducing other electronic hardware components to the mix, such as a steering wheel with a steering angle sensor for ESC input.

MAIN IMAGE: Dyno testing. Engineers from Drive Systems test the electric driveline, while their colleagues from Electrical Systems & Electronics handle the high-voltage batteries

ABOVE: The Q5 hybrid powertrain, as tested in the electromobility labs

BELOW: The Q5 hybrid undergoing road testingroad testing


We then move on to view rigs on which batteries and electric motors can be tested in parallel, with AVL Dynolution, and Cincinnati Test Systems equipment. Each rig can be enclosed in a climate chamber to vary the temperature from -30°C to +130°C (-22°F to +266°F). “These are conditions we could have in the vehicle later on and we want to know at an early stage whether this electric motor is going to be usable or not,” comments our guide, Dr Richard Schmidmeier, who is the project manager for the powertrain center.

On our way to the ground fl oor we pass the vehicle bay, which is spotlessly clean and fl ooded with light. Once we get downstairs, we arrive at the home of the powertrain testbeds, where both electric and ICE components come together.

The fi rst lab we see brings the drivetrain together out of the vehicle, with hub dynos taking the place of road wheels and a simulator standing in for the battery. A Q5 Hybrid drivetrain is in the ZF Test Systems and Kratzer Automation-equipped facility at the time of our visit.

There are different testbed setups for front-wheel-drive and Quattro AWD models, but whatever the confi guration, full road use simulation is possible, including gradients and various speed/power profi les. “Function optimization

SITE VISIT

“We are widening the range in which the facilities can work and showing how they can be used for road cars”

Audi’s e-car skunk works

The e-performance project house was

established in January 2009 as an external think-tank to address Audi’s questions of electric mobility.

Its core team of about 30 mostly young people is networked with all other departments in the company and maintains close contact with external professionals from universities, start-up companies, and research institutes. Partners include RWTH Aachen, the Technical Universities of Munich, Dresden and Ilmenau, Leibniz

University in Hanover, Fraunhofer, and Bosch.

In late 2009, a three-year parallel research project began. Also called e-performance and with the goal of developing an electric car, it was backed by a double-digit million subsidy from the German Ministry of Education and Research. According to Audi, the project’s focus is constructing a matrix of components for electric driving – from the battery to the electric motor. The new components should be suitable for at least three vehicle categories: A1-sized compact cars,

full road use simulation is possible, including gradients and various speed/power profi les. “Function optimization

BELOW: The A1 e-tron is claimed to deliver 148.7mpg and 45g/km CO2


SITE VISIT

BELOW: High-voltage plug connections being checked following testing in a climatic chamber

and durability are the focus of the tests at this stage,” says Schmidmeier, and they can be set up to run 24 hours a day, all year round, with no operator present at weekends.

The tour then moves past a test vehicle storage area to the full-vehicle testbeds located nearby. An Imtech altitude simulation chamber allows Audi’s engineers to reproduce a drive that is akin to Grossglockner in Austria or Pike’s Peak in the USA, up to a simulated height of some 4,200m (13,780ft) above sea level.

Cold starts or hot-weather running can be simulated in the rolling road climate chambers, where temperatures as low as -42°C (-43.6°F) and as high as +60°C (+140°F) can be reproduced, for vehicle speeds up to 162mph (260km/h). Airfl ow simulators reproduce drag, further enhancing the accuracy of the test results.

Across the road from the Mechanical Units Center, in the basement of building T20, are the test labs of Audi’s Electronics Center, where engineers from the Electrical Systems & Electronics department have two system test rigs for high-voltage batteries at their disposal.

Dr Reinhard Putzinger, from the battery development department, takes us down to the basement in the car-sized lift to show us the rigs, which were installed a couple of years ago.

mid-size models, and sports cars.

Development is said to be proceeding according to defi ned structures, but not rigid thought patterns. Free and creative thinking is encouraged just as much as classical engineering. The issues include: How can the heat loss by the body and the whole vehicle be reduced? How can pedal feel in recuperative braking be simulated and applied? Are new battery cooling concepts conceivable? And how can torque vectoring be integrated in the DSC of e-vehicles?

ABOVE: A single-rotor Wankel engine and 15kw electrical generator extend the car’s range

ABOVE: Final checks are carried out by development engineers before testing of the electric motor can begin on the test rig


SITE VISIT

With an electrical output of 150kW each, the systems enable the testing of batteries with voltages up to 500V and maximum currents of 500A. In order to keep the energy consumption as low as possible, the discharged energy from the battery can be fed back into the grid.

The test rigs consist of switch cabinets which contain

SITE VISIT

“The rigs’ power electronics make it possible to emulate any conceivable driving or load profile”

power electronics, control, and monitoring computers, with Kratzer again involved, as well as one climate chamber each. The chambers, supplied by Weiss Umwelttechnik, enable simulation of ambient temperatures of -40°C to +80°C (-40°F to +176°F), and are gas-tight and protected against explosion.

“The rigs’ power electronics make it possible to emulate any conceivable driving or load profile,” says Putzinger. Beyond the basic function tests, the rigs are designed to carry out more detailed electrical studies into aspects such as how a particular battery’s performance changes with age. The tests also consider safety and the verification of suppliers’ performance data, while DC/DC converters and charging equipment can also be evaluated in the lab. A special cooling test rig determines the effectiveness of air and fluid cooling for the battery.

The tour is at an end, but there’s just time to hear a little more about Audi’s hybrid and electric vehicle plans before leaving Ingolstadt. A variety of new models and powertrains are in the pipeline. The Q5 Hybrid’s introduction later this year will be followed by the A6 Hybrid (which shares much of its powertrain architecture) in 2012. On the electric side, a 20-car fleet trial of the A1 e-tron (which has a Wankel range extender) is underway in Munich, with the first limited-volume production electric vehicle – the R8 e-tron supercar – due before the end of next year. Clearly, Audi’s engineers are going to need all of the capacity that their impressive test facility has to offer. ‹

ABOVE: Inspection of the high-voltage plug connections on a battery at the battery test rig in the center

LEFT: Dr Reinhard Putzinger, from the battery development department


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INTERVIEW

They say you should never meet your heroes. People cite rudeness or arrogance as unexpected traits in their idols, but meeting Gordon Murray

is disappointing for another reason. Expecting to meet a mad eccentric, I was instead met by an affable, modest, motoring enthusiast. He wasn’t even wearing one of his famed fl oral shirts, and he made me a coffee.

Many people, had they created the McLaren F1, would be insufferable, but mention this milestone car to Murray and he simply says, “The F1 wasn’t anything particularly trick – it was just Formula 1 technology applied to a road car. Six weeks to make a monocoque – who cares? £74,000 for the monocoque – who cares? It wasn’t particularly clever, it just happened to be the world’s fi rst carbon fi ber road car, that’s why it got a lot of attention.”

That’s not to say he doesn’t love his F1, but you’re more likely to see him driving a far more modest car. “I’ve always liked small cars, and I’ve always been an advocate of light weight. My everyday car has been a Smart since they came out. I started with a fortwo, and for the past eight years I’ve had a Roadster. That’s what I like, and that’s all I need.”

However, mention the future of motoring, and you see the genius within Professor Murray. In 1998, he had the idea that a factory could separate the vehicle assembly process, with the powertrain, wiring harness, brakes, suspension and other components fi tted directly to the

chassis, and pre-painted body panels fi xed to the chassis in the fi nal stage. This process, known as iStream, could be the biggest advance in volume car manufacturing since the Model T Ford assembly line, according to Murray, and requires factories only 20% the size of typical facilities.

He offered the idea to McLaren in the early 2000s, but was told that the company’s focus would remain on low-volume sports cars. Undeterred, he set out on his own in 2004, taking a team of 22 engineers with him and setting up an offi ce 10 miles away in the next town. With backing from MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, he received funding to kit out his workshop, coincidentally sited next to an old McLaren building, with all the equipment needed to create prototypes of the T25 in-house. T25 is designed to illustrate to potential iStream licensees what his methods can achieve, but remember, the car is just an iStream sales tool, unless a customer wishes to buy that particular design.

“We suffer enormously from being misunderstood as the people who are going to manufacture the T25,” complains Murray. “This is quite natural as people like to talk about cars, but they don’t like to talk about manufacturing systems. We wanted to build one running prototype of a vehicle of our choice to demonstrate iStream. It just so happened that for years I’ve had this concept of a little car that would


Gordon Murray has a clear vision of the future, one in which cars will be lightweight and affordable, and more fun to drive. He also has a couple of tricks up his sleeve…WORDS BY ADAM GAVINE

was told that the company’s focus would remain on low-volume sports cars. Undeterred, he set out on his own in 2004, taking a team of 22 engineers with him and setting up an offi ce 10 miles away in the next town. With backing from MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, he received funding to kit out his workshop, coincidentally sited next to an old McLaren building, with all the equipment needed to create prototypes of the T25 in-house. T25 is designed to illustrate to potential iStream licensees what his methods can achieve, but remember, the car is just an iStream sales tool, unless a customer wishes to buy that particular design.

“We suffer enormously from being misunderstood as the people who are going to manufacture the T25,” complains Murray. “This is quite natural as people like to talk about cars, but they don’t like to talk about manufacturing systems. We wanted to build one running prototype of a vehicle of our choice to demonstrate iStream. It just so happened that for years I’ve had this concept of a little car that would

“I’ve always liked small cars, and I’ve always been an advocate of light weight. Personally I have always driven small, light cars”

lightlightLeading Leading

INTERVIEW


suit UK and European roads and their congestion problems. The car is just a physical entity to show people. You can’t sell an idea just by talking to people.”

iStream is a product of F1 thinking, substituting the expensive, intensive process of stamping steel with a cheap, simple, composite technology. Murray was a pioneer in using hand-layed pre-preg carbon fi ber in F1 back in 1978, but at the time it was an aircraft technology and was, “hugely expensive and amazingly time consuming”.

Composites were not much simpler to work with when the F1 was launched in 1992. However, when Mercedes set

INTERVIEW


“I don’t want to do any of that rubbish, I really don’t. I just want to do a pure, pure supercar again, like the F1 was”

Gordon’s laboratoryEnter the workshop at GMD HQ and there is a range of

fabrication and test equipment, both old and cutting edge, which Murray himself describes as “a strange mixture”.

Timber and clay is still used for quick mock-ups of items such as seating bucks and door jigs, while on the other side, “the latest greatest structural rapid prototyping machines” from Stratasys are used for castings and structural materials. This means that following a design meeting, parts can be created overnight, ready for the following day’s work.

GMD staff can machine all their own body panels using a fi ve-axis machine, as well as all tooling and pressing for suspension parts, etc.

“We never go outside for any development unless it’s a cold chamber or crash test – we have all our own rigs here. It’s cheap and confi dential, and if we promise someone a car in 14 months, we know we can do it. We have a compliance rig and can test and benchmark cars. We set our targets for kinematics and camber stiffness and physically test here and put the results in the computer to correlate it,” explains Murray.

production of the SLR at 700 per year, a new way of infusing resins and pre-forms and putting them in molds was devised, reducing monocoque components to seven, and cycle times for a monocoque and body shell to a couple of days. Today, McLaren is pressing single-piece carbon fi ber tubs for the MP4-12C in a matter of hours – a technology Murray worked on prior to his departure. The technologies involved in iStream, however, are “a whole new world”.

“The three things that stop you using composites in high volumes are material costs (you can’t use carbon fi ber as its ludicrously expensive compared to steel or even aluminum); the process time; and the fact that attaching point loads to a composite structure is incredibly complicated,” says Murray. “When you’re hand-making a few sports cars and have lots of time, it is easy to place load spreaders or inserts in a composite that you just CNC drill afterward. There might be 40 such point loads in a monocoque to pick up suspension, engine mountings, etc.

“If you’re trying to make something in two minutes you can forget carbon for material costs, you can forget normal composites for process time, and you can certainly forget trying to spread point loads into that composite. What

TOP: Murray’s swansong for the 20th century. The F1, nearly 20 years old now, can still humble modern supercars

BELOW: An electric version of the T25 passed the EEC 40% offset deformable barrier front high-speed impact test, with zero cabin intrusion

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iStream effectively does is to solve those three things for high volumes.

“We have a really simplistic low carbon, steel tube frame that picks up the point loads. We have developed a new material which is not carbon, but is an F1-type composite where we can modify the matrix volume, the glass fi ber content volume, the skin thickness, the core thickness… and we can co-press inclusions like an F1 car, so we can have uni-directional fi bers for crash loads. We have the same sophisticated program used to design F1 and Le Mans monocoques, but we’re using really low-cost materials that we’ve nicked from other industries.

“We just put it together in a different way, which gives us iStream,” says Murray. “That’s what we’ve patented and that’s what we’re selling. So for the fi rst time you’ve got a composite monocoque that you can make in two minutes for a very low tooling cost and a very low industrial cycle time, which is very light, and increases safety levels. We’re doing two things at once. Normally, to save weight, car companies spend money – we’re saving money to go lightweight. And normally to increase safety you spend money, but we’re increasing safety levels with less weight.”

Over 50 companies from over 20 countries have approached Murray about iStream in the last 12 months, but intriguingly, only 12 of them have been automotive OEMs. The others have been companies looking for a low-capital door into car making, with no need for existing infrastructure. Murray says they will need just 10% of the investment the average OEM would require to make a new car. This means they “don’t put themselves against the might of Toyota, VW or Ford, as they’re not competing. No one in their right mind would try to make a stamped steel car where these companies are players.”

Murray is actively working with three companies at present, including a US$50 billion retail outfi t that sells electric bicycles and scooters in its stores, and wants to move into EVs. With nothing suitable on the market, it sees in iStream a cost-effective way to make its own cars.

Moving up a level, two countries have approached Murray, looking to manufacture their own small, lightweight vehicles for their domestic markets, with low


INTERVIEW

investment and infrastructure, to help reduce congestion and pollution in their cities. Enquiries have ranged from single-seat rental cars, all the way up to buses. There is also some interest from potential customers in using the T25 design, but Murray is not precious about it.

“When it’s sold it could be a Ford, a Renault, a Virgin, a Sony, a Dyson – we don’t care” he says. “If you want to change the styling, we don’t care. If you want to change the motor or gearbox, we don’t care. Our mission in life is to sell licenses. If somebody comes along and says ‘we love the cost saving, the energy saving, the weight saving and the safety, but we want a six-seater limousine’ – I think they’d be stupid to be honest, but they can have one.”

One thing you can be sure of is that once an iStream license is bought, a customer can have their design in production as soon as their factory is ready. This is another element where Murray’s F1 background shows – vehicle development is carried out in parallel rather than series. The requirements of the program are decided, and then proving grounds and test facilities are triple or even quadruple booked in order to save time and money.

The NanoOf all the cars on the market today, Murray fi nds Tata’s Nano one of the

most intriguing, although he is keen to point out that it has no similarities to the T25.

“The Nano is extremely clever but is born from a completely different set of market circumstances from the T25 and is a completely different solution. To be honest, if someone said to me, ‘your market segment might demand up to 500,000 cars a year, and that car can remain unchanged for years’, you would use stamped steel, not iStream.

You’re not looking for ultimate levels of light weight or safety – you’re looking at producing something with current technology, but reducing everything down to the minimum possible cost by leaving stuff off the car and by optimizing volume gains. That’s what the Nano is, and it’s very clever. It just doesn’t have stuff. If you want a good comparison with the Nano, it’s the McLaren F1. Some of the lightness in the F1 came

just from not including the nonsense – ABS, power brakes, etc. The Nano’s the same. It’s the Austin Healey sprite 59 principle – it had no bonnet, no boot, no hinges, no latches, and it was perfect. The concept between these cars is almost identical.

“But all this is nothing to do with the T25, which is designed for the sophisticated European market, where people expect aircon and six loudspeakers but they would still love to have low retail costs and running costs. That’s what iStream does.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Murray shows how the T25 can help solve urban parking problems; The team has over 300 years of man-hours working in the automotive industry; Murray’s HQ

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“At a circuit or facility we can do things four-times quicker than an OEM because we do more than one bit of testing. If we’re testing the durability of a car as a whole, we also test vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, and internal airflow and so on during the cycle, and we write our development programs with that in mind,” says Murray.

The result is a fully comprehensive 24-month test program at as little as a quarter of the cost of a typical OEM test program. “The program is written in an amazing amount of detail and is then optimized. We don’t skip anything – we just maximize the booked time at a facility. These principles come from F1… it teaches you to get the most out of the time you have available, and we just carried that over, which is why we can be cost-effective.”

The design process can be equally fuss-free, again due to Murray’s background: “We carried over the concept we used to design McLaren cars. We use a 6m drawing board and full-size printouts. We gather round that board every week and argue about problems and real estate. If someone wants to move a battery, instead of moving it independently, they have to do it publicly. This saves so much time.

“For example, the F1 was probably the last car in the world to be designed on paper, and we only had one design


Mercedes-Benz SLR McLarenVisit McLaren’s HQ today and you will see one of Murray’s

biggest projects – the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. However, it is not his proudest achievement.

“The SLR wasn’t a focused car. I’m not saying it was bad – I’m just saying it was born out of a committee. We had our ideas, Mercedes-Benz had theirs, and with all sorts of people putting their oar in to the content, style,

and vehicle dynamics, we just ended up with a car.

“I’m still very proud of the car from an engineering aspect though. The chassis is still the strongest that’s ever been built from a crash point of view. From an engineering, production, and technique point of view, it broke a lot of new ground so I’m still very proud of it. But it was nowhere near as focused as the F1.”

McLaren MP4-12CMurray has surprisingly little interest in McLaren’s

latest project, the MP4-12C. “I probably know less about

it than you, except for the monocoque, which of course I was working on before I left,” he says. “We were looking at around four hours for it to set, and we were debating whether to have it as one piece or three pieces – from a scrappage point of view, if you made a mistake on a pressing you’d have to scrap a whole monocoque, rather than just a third of it.

“The car I designed, which was called Project 8, is completely

different now. I had a small NA V8, they’ve gone for a turbo; I had a tiny transversal gearbox, they’ve gone for longitudinal; the style I drew was different; I had pure suspension, they’ve gone for electronic. I’m sure it will be a good car though.”

“One of the reasons the T25 has been brought to prototype so quickly is that we weren’t re-doing stuff”

clash, with a production element. With SLR we worked 100% on CAD and ended up with a clash detection department, fixing hundreds of clashes.

“We’ve gone back to the future here. We use CATIA V5 and all our inputs and outputs are in CAD, but the design of the car is fixed full size, and we don’t have clashes. One of the reasons the T25 has been brought to prototype so quickly is that we weren’t re-doing stuff.”

With Murray’s love of F1 techniques you might imagine he misses the sport. However, you would be wrong.

“Not in any way, shape or form. I did it for 20 years and that was enough. F1 then was open to innovation on a scale that was satisfying. There is still a massive amount of innovation, but it’s all in the detail – tiny improvements in aero, etc, and I really wouldn’t find that satisfying.”

No, for Murray there are two main projects on the horizon once he has a few iStream licensees under his belt. The first will certainly please followers of his work.

“I definitely have one supercar left in me, and the team wants to do it too,” he says. “It won’t be anything like the supercars at the moment – the Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches, or the MP4-12C – it will hold all the values the F1 had, but will be in a different direction which ignores horsepower and top speed. As the F1 was a swansong for the 20th century, I’d like to do something for the 21st century.

“Some buyers convince themselves they need the big numbers, and they won’t choose our supercar, but more people see beyond that, as they did with the F1. We didn’t sell the F1 on top speed. We didn’t even do a top speed run until we stopped selling the cars because I didn’t want to – it was never part of the agenda. I like to think most people bought the F1 because it was the pinnacle of engineering, using modern materials, and was also a pure drivers car that didn’t pretend to be anything else.

“A lot of supercars now try to be all sorts of things. They try to be well-engineered, with the latest trick suspension and electronics. They try to be track day cars, and they try to be status symbols, and that goes with a lot of baggage – size, complexity, and weight. I don’t want to do any of that rubbish, I really don’t. I just want to do a pure, pure supercar again, like the F1 was. And I think there are enough people out there to move in a different direction again.”

The second project takes Murray back to his current passion: “We’re already working on iStream 2 and 3. iStream 2 will be ready in four years, and iStream 3 is a long-term project that is 8-10 years away. We’ve even had people from other industries, such as architects looking at iStream. We don’t have to be automotive, but right now people are looking for weight saving, increased safety, and multiniche vehicles with different powertrains at lower volumes. This is a perfect picking ground for us.” ‹

ABOVE: While the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren wasn’t Murray’s favorite project, he was very proud of the strength and stiffness of the chassis, as well as the carbon fiber technologies used

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The challenge for automotive engineers is how to test a variety

of factors, such as safety, dynamics, and performance, accurately and effectively in a range of conditions. The quality of the sensors used is vital, due to the high costs involved in operating and testing a prototype vehicle.

Before 2002, automotive companies used fifth wheels, radar sensors, microwave sensors, and optical systems to provide speed and distance measurements during proving ground testing. Fifth wheels were the original way of measuring braking distance and performance, but these are difficult to fit, easy to damage, and suffer from a number of mechanical limitations that affect accuracy, such as skipping and bouncing. Radar is very accurate, but it’s only possible to measure speed from a stationary point directly in front of the target vehicle, which places limits on testing. Microwave sensors get around this limitation as they can be placed on the vehicle itself. However, they suffer from high measurement noise, and are very sensitive to the height they are mounted above the road, with readings affected by surface water and snow. Optical sensors have proved a popular replacement to the fifth wheel in the past due to their size and accuracy, but these also take a long time to fit, tend not to work consistently in wet conditions,

distance. This led to the VBOX (Velocity Box) GPS datalogger, which could measure high-accuracy data without any of the downsides associated with the previous technologies.

GPS position relies on precise measurements of the distance from the receiver to the satellite, and therefore suffers from numerous effects that can reduce the quality of the signal. However, GPS velocity can be measured using a more accurate method. Measuring the change in signal from the satellite (Doppler effect), errors that usually affect GPS have little influence over signal quality, and the resultant velocity measurement is incredibly accurate.

Racelogic faced some initial skepticism to the new technology. When it first introduced VBOX to the test

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GPS technologyGPS is now essential in automotive testing, and VBOX GPS dataloggers are now used in almost every vehicle test department in the world

RacelogicTel: +44 1280 823803

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.velocitybox.co.uk


VBOX systems fit to test vehicles in seconds due to their non-contact datalogging

Engineers on track rely on the flexibility and accuracy of VBOX GPS dataloggers

and can be easily knocked off during testing. Before the year 2000, these were the only options, as until then the US government scrambled the GPS signal for civilian use. With accuracy of just 100m, the satellite technology was useless for automotive testing.

When this Selected Availability was disabled, GPS became accurate to 3m overnight. Racelogic, an electronic engineering company based in the UK, then decided that there was a future for high-speed, high-accuracy GPS in vehicle testing – using satellite signals to measure speed and

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departments of the major OEMs in 2002, engineers spent a long time satisfying themselves that the results matched their existing methods. One of the reasons for this is that satellite-derived data is accurate only if the view to the sky is not obstructed. If trees or buildings obscure the reception then dropouts can occur, leading to ‘noisy’ data.

However, after many tests by different interested companies, it turned out that VBOX was in fact more accurate than any previous method, and quickly became a favored instrument due to its size, ease of use, and versatility. GPS has now become the most popular way to measure vehicle dynamics and performance due to the high accuracy, ease of fitment, flexibility, size, and ruggedness. Racelogic’s VBOX dataloggers are in daily use in almost every OEM test department around the world, both at proving grounds and on the road.

When the acceleration and fuel economy group at Chrysler proving grounds were looking for instrumentation to replace its existing optical sensors, it decided that GPS technology would give them the most accurate results, and they already knew of the advantages Racelogic’s VBOX gave on open test tracks. However, Chrysler needed to run tests on a tree-lined track, with a two-lane overpass,

which would interrupt the GPS signal. This was solved by using Racelogic’s IMU Integration, which uses high-sensitivity inertial measurement data from an IMU integrated with GPS to ensure that positional and dynamic accuracy is maintained, even when view to the sky is obscured.

For MIRA, a UK-based provider of engineering development and research services to the worldwide automotive industry, VBOX is the only technology that works consistently in all conditions. Previously, the test facility had used fifth wheels, radar, microwave, and optical sensors. Its engineers now use VBOX for all kinds of testing on various types of dry and wet surfaces with varying levels of grip. This includes performance testing, handling analysis, circuit and driver analysis, fuel economy testing, tire verification, durability,

and testing of ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems).

Brake testing is a popular use for GPS dataloggers in the automotive and tire industries. Racelogic’s flagship VBOX 3i accurately samples speed and g-forces 100 times per second, along with a brake trigger input accurate to two nanoseconds. Using Racelogic’s in-house-developed algorithms and calibration techniques, the braking distance of a vehicle can now be measured to within ±1.8cm. This level of accuracy is essential, given that improvements in braking systems and tires mean that differences in performance are increasingly subtle. As brake stops are one of the most dynamic maneuvers in automotive testing, every centimeter counts.

With Racelogic’s introduction of multicamera video and graphic overlay technology in 2008 with the launch of the Video VBOX range, engineers now also have the ability to overlay this high-accuracy data in real time over footage showing multiple camera angles on the vehicle, making for even more flexible and efficient testing. ‹


ABOVE: Fifth wheels and other testing methods posed limitations to engineers

ABOVE: Measuring change in signal from the satellite (or Doppler effect), makes GPS data highly accurate

ABOVE: Racelogic’s VBOX turned out to be more accurate than any previous testing method, and quickly became a favored instrument for engineers due to its size, ease of use, and versatility

Integrating video with accurate data has opened a new dimension in data acquisition

ABOVE: VBOX works with PC analysis software, either live or after testing

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QuantumX is the new-generation DAQ system for stationary

and mobile testing. It meets industry’s demands for maximum fl exibility and quality, and it substantially reduces the time required to develop a design concept into a manufactured product.

Engineering and testing departments in the transport industry not only demand high-quality data acquisition, but also highly effi cient test procedures, instrumentation and software tools for test-bench and mobile applications.

Validation and verifi cation of systems, components or complete vehicles are established constituents of modern development cycles. Mobile data acquisition can be used for data collection and input into models for virtual simulations and tests. Laboratory or bench tests are generally used for functional development and performance testing of components or complete assemblies. Mobile testing is also frequently applied for fi ne-tuning functional parameters and fi nal verifi cation.

The QuantumX system from HBM has now fi rmly established itself in test-bench applications, where it has proved to be highly reliable, (for example, at BMW’s R&D center in Germany). Due to its scalability, its potential for distributed confi guration and its universal inputs, QuantumX offers the maximum fl exibility for

continuously changing requirements.

The universal amplifi ers can measure any physical quantity ranging from pressure, force, temperature, displacement, acceleration, speed, strain, torque, current, voltage and CANbus messages. The QuantumX modules offer state-of-the-art signal conditioning, supporting over 15 different transducer technologies per universal input. Specialist modules are available for temperature, voltage and CANbus messages.

HBM has pioneered many innovations, such as isolated channels, six-wire technology, carrier frequency and auto-adjustment routines, and strain gauge bridge applications with incomparable noise immunity. It is now possible, for instance, to plug in a sensor and obtain fi rst measurement results in a few seconds. Parameters can be set on every input, individually, in a quick and

An entire DAQ job can be easily confi gured to collect data by just pressing the start/stop button on the device or through an intelligent trigger.

Data can be stored at a maximum rate of one megasample per second (MS/s) on a removable, specially protected, CompactFlash card. The data can also be transferred via Ethernet to a PC, either directly by cable or wirelessly.

HBM has extended and enhanced QuantumX through cooperation with users, and has accomplished countless operational hours in mobile and stationary testing, proving its performance and robustness.

For over 60 years HBM has successively developed high-quality DAQ products that use the most advanced technologies. These systems provide higher productivity by enabling users to work faster, more precisely and with greater effi ciency. ‹

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Universal and scalable data recorderA data recorder with data storage rates of up to one megasample per second enables faster, more precise and more effi cient work

HBMWeb: www.hbm.com/quantumX

easy way using TEDS technology in the sensor, the connector or via the integrated sensor database, which hosts all datasheets electronically. A cost-effective upgrade of TEDS in existing sensor connectors is becoming popular. TEDS dramatically reduces set-up times and ensures consistent quality, due to the calibration data it can store.

HBM is now introducing the QuantumX CX22 data recorder, which captures high-quality results acquired from distributed QuantumX DAQ modules. The data recorder’s operating software offers an autostart confi guration and a wide range of intelligent trigger functionality.

The on-board data processing unit reduces post-process work, as well as the amount of data stored on the internal memory by means of functions such as virtual channel calculation, frequency analysis, min-max values, time-at-level and many more.

ABOVE: HBM’s new CX22 data recorder offers automotive engineers data storage rates of up to one megasample per second


EXHIBITOR

WINDTUNNELSTEST FACILITIES

We involve the customer very closely in the process from the very beginning of the project development till the successful handover of the entire facility.

MCE Stahl- und Maschinenbau GmbH & Co KGTEST FACILITIES & ENTIRE SYSTEMS4031 Linz, Lunzerstraße 64, Austria

The client does not need to

and can rely on the project

Reference projects such as: the

as assembly structures for the

earth illustrate the capability

handover of the entire facility.

BUILDINGTECHNOLOGY

SUBSYSTEMMANAGEMENT

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PROJECTMANAGEMENT

TELL US YOUR VISION AND LET US MAKE IT HAPPEN!

> INNOVATIVE PLANT ENGINEERING

> SYSTEM INTEGRATION

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Meggitt Sensing SystemsTel: +1 949 493 8181

Web: www.meggittsensingsystems.com

Sensors and instrumentation for automotive testing

503Meggitt Sensing Systems specializes in the design and manufacture of a complete range of Endevco

piezoelectric, piezoresistive and variable capacitance (VC) accelerometers, as well as piezoresistive pressure transducers and acoustic sensors, for automotive testing applications, including modal and structural analysis; vehicle and powertrain NVH; interior noise; ride quality; component durability testing; transmission testing; and legislative and safety testing, including anthropomorphic test devices and crash testing.

For ride quality, the Endevco model 7290E VC accelerometer is recommended, due to its exceptional low-frequency measurement capabilities and accuracy over temperature.

For crash testing, the model 7264G DC response accelerometer is an industry gold standard, due to its low mass of 1.4 grams and damped response. This sensor is rugged to 10K g shock and is used for vehicle front, side and rear impact testing. For automotive component durability testing, the model 35A ISOTRON triax is specified, due to its low mass and low impedance output. For interior noise and NVH testing, the model EM46AQ, a combined ½in random incidence microphone and preamplifier, offers wide dynamic range and TEDS capabilities. Endevco sensors and instrumentation are accompanied by a five-year product warranty and are available with a full range of signal conditioners, cables, and accessories.

505Silicon Designs specializes in the design and manufacture of rugged industrial-grade MEMS capacitive

sensing technologies with integral amplification for automotive testing, including NVH, drivetrain, powertrain, vehicle suspension and handling, crash-event detection and airbag performance.

The popular automotive model 2260 is tailored for zero-to-medium frequency applications and offers high-drive, low-impedance buffering for precision measurements. The accelerometer produces two analog voltage outputs and features a four-wire connection, supporting both single-ended and differential modes. Signal outputs are fully differential about a 2.5V common mode voltage. Sensitivity is independent from the supply voltage of +8 to +32V. At zero

acceleration, the output differential voltage is nominally zero VDC; at full-scale acceleration, the output differential voltage is ±4VDC.

The sensors feature onboard voltage regulation and an internal voltage reference, which eliminates precision power supply requirements. The sensor is relatively insensitive to temperature changes and thermal gradients. Self-calibration is quick and easy. Within standard range (2-400 g), most accelerometers continue to operate after sustained exposures of up to 10K g shock and with limited exposure to temperatures above +200°C. Carefully regulated manufacturing processes ensure that each sensor is made to be virtually identical, enabling users to swap out modules with minimal modifications.

Silicon Designs, IncTel: +1 425 391 8329


Web: www.silicondesigns.com

MEMS sensing technologies for automotive testing

Dytran InstrumentsTel: +1 818 700 7818


Web: www.dytran.com

Automotive and off-highway NVH sensors

504Dytran Instruments has recently expanded its dynamic sensing technology offerings for automotive

and off-highway NVH. These low-noise accelerometers, available in IEPE or charge mode types, feature choice of sensitivity, optional TEDS capabilities, and customized sensor and cabling options. All models offer lightweight designs and ceramic shear construction, with sensing elements packaged in hermetically sealed, welded titanium housings, for reliable operation in harsh or dirty environments.

Among the new offerings is the Dytran 3333A series, a family of single connector IEPE triaxial accelerometers weighing just 2.3g, designed to operate in temperatures up to +121°C. The Dytran 3333A series is offered in three models, with available measurement ranges of 50, 100 and 500g and with a frequency response of 0.31 to 10,000Hz (+15/-10%). The sensors feature a specially designed single M4.5x0.35 four-pin connector and adhesive mounting.

As the connector offers an overall mass that is approximately 20% smaller than the traditional industry standard ¼-28 four-pin connector, the sensors feature a more flexible, lightweight cable, a smaller connector diameter, and an overall lower mass. For larger channel count applications, Dytran also offers the 3097A series, a miniature cubic accelerometer family with optional TEDS capabilities, weighing just 4.3g, and available in three ranges between 10 and 500g with a broad frequency response and a 10-32 side connector.

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Inertial / GPS System for

Vehicle Dynamics Testing

GPS synchronized

easy to use

fast set-up

low data latency

· Vehicle Dynamics Testing

· Functional Safety Testing

· Adjustment of Chassis Systems

· Comfort Analysis

· Tyre Testing

· Deceleration / Acceleration Testing

· Road Survey and Monitoring

· Highly Precise Positioning

· Verification of Simulation Models

· Steering Robot Guidance

· Driver Assistance Systems Testing

GeneSys Elektronik GmbH

www.genesys-adma.de

77656 Offenburg · Germany

Tel. +49 781 / 969279-0

Tel. USA +1 401-284-3750

[email protected]

GeneSysElektronik GmbH

506The ACS Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) model is a seamless process that provides a single source for

complete test facility design and construction, equipment specification, selection and procurement, and complete systems integration and commissioning. Recognized benefits of the IPD process include early identification of project scope and cost, accelerated project delivery, improved quality and functionality, and project cost savings.

Our staff is vertically integrated specifically for the single source delivery of engine and vehicle test facilities. Work assignments range from designing and delivering new corporate technology centers to upgrading and renovating single test cells. Our capabilities extend to custom test equipment design, fabrication and installation, test data management, and operations and maintenance support.

Success is achieved by utilizing our fundamental knowledge of building design and construction combined with expertise in industry regulations, testing technology and applications, and the ability to fully integrate building and test systems. Working as an extension our client’s staff, our project work

extends to multiple locations throughout the world.

ACS is an integrated design and construction services firm that specializes in the single source delivery of high-performance engine and vehicle test facilities.

ACSTel: +1 608 6631 590


Web: www.acscm.com

Streamlined delivery of technology centers and test cells

EXHIBITOR

AFT Atlas FahrzeugtechnikTel: +49 2392 809-0


Web: www.aft-werdohl.de

Modular expert for rotational analysis

507The PikesPEAK high-speed datalogger from AFT Atlas Fahrzeug-technik GmbH can also be used for

the analysis of rotational systems. It records all relevant signals, including engine speed, engine order, oscillation angle and further settings of the test object, in the vehicle or on the test-bench, with a time resolution of 100ps. With the online or later offline analysis of the measurement results, the user is able to determine the dependencies of the individual system components. Its 16-bit analog measurement resolution can be set to a user-specific voltage range.

Another feature of the datalogger, which provides engineers with further flexibility in the measurement setup, is the option of connecting the individual components of the measurement system using Ethernet topologies. This therefore enables various de-centralized measurement modules to be controlled centrally by the

datalogger and a connected PC. The use of Gigabit-Ethernet enables an immediate, non-dissipative transfer of the measurement data.

Like PikesPEAK, the OpeRa software for rotational analysis is based on several years of experience. It displays the physical values over time, speed or angle. OpeRa contains the necessary order filters, order analyses, vibration analyses, and angle difference calculation.

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Brüel & KjærTel: +45 7741 2000

Web: www.bksv.com

Accelerated vibration lifecycle testing

508With constant pressure to shorten product design cycles, accelerating

traditional vibration test times is a critical consideration. Fortunately, Brüel & Kjær and HBM-nCode offer products that reduce vibration test times without exposing vehicles or components to unrealistic vibration.

Traditional Gaussian random test signals cannot accurately represent the ‘peaky’ vibration signals seen in real-life use. To address this, the LDS LASERUSB Vibration Controller offers non-Gaussian random vibration through its Kurtosis Control software. The ability to tailor kurtosis allows for accelerated fatigue testing that saves time, as testing with high kurtosis delivers more time at high acceleration levels. For a durability test lasting many hours, high-kurtosis testing delivers more fatigue damage than a Gaussian random test.

So how do you accurately simulate the conditions that brought about your measured field data? nCode GlyphWorks software by HBM is the only commercial software that makes it possible to quantify the fatigue of vibration testing and subsequently create a representative PSD or swept-sine shaker vibration test. nCode GlyphWorks enables the combination of multiple time or frequency domain data sets into representative test spectra that accelerate the test while matching the fatigue damage seen in the field data. As HBM is a sister company to Brüel & Kjær under the Spectris umbrella, accelerated test spectra exported from nCode GlyphWorks are easily imported into Brüel & Kjær controllers.

EXHIBITOR CottaTel: +1 608 368 5600


Web: www.cotta.com

Compact, high power, high-speed test stand transmission

509Cotta has developed a new high-speed transmission for use

in test stand applications. Designed originally for testing aircraft components, Cotta’s SN2105 compact transmission is finding increased application in automotive testing. The SN2105 features a nominal power rating of 200hp and over-speed ratios up to 5.5. The single-input/single-output transmission features a cast-iron case and parallel shaft design with single stage gearing. Featuring a standard output speed of 18,000rpm, Cotta believes the SN2105 is a candidate for the most cost-effective, true high-speed test stand transmission on the market.

Cotta designs and manufactures a full line of high-speed transmissions used extensively in the R&D and production testing of commercial and military aircraft components such as generators, constant-speed drives and pumps. The company also manufactures industrial and specialty transmissions, available as both speed increasers and decreasers, for use in a wide range of non-aviation applications, including automotive testing, specialty vehicles, industrial equipment, and process machinery. Transmission models are available in a wide range of output speeds (up to 80,000rpm). Modified-standard and custom models are also available to match specific requirements.

D&V ElectronicsTel: +1 905 264 7646


Web: www.dvelectronics.com

Inverter/controller and electric motor testing

510D&V Electronics has broken new ground in the field of inverter/controller and electric motor testing with the EPT-350, a totally new concept in inverter testing for the hybrid electric vehicle

(HEV) market. D&V has designed and manufactured six of these testers, optimized for the endurance testing of inverters for the next generation of electric and hybrid vehicles.

The test stand electrically loads an HEV inverter/converter product with dual 65kW three-phase motor output control and provides regenerative braking energy back into the product as is seen in HEVs. This tester will be used by engineers to validate the design of an HEV inverter/converter power electronics product. These testers will be used to provide the longest and most severe drive schedules used currently in the industry.

A rapidly growing number of HEVs manufactured around the world are being built and will be tested in the future, utilizing test systems from D&V. The company continues to assist the automotive industry in making huge strides in advanced product evaluation. D&V specializes in the design and integration of mechanical, electronics, data acquisition systems, and software applications to produce these test machines at the highest level of performance and technology.

DewetronTel: +43 316 30700


Web: www.dewetron.com

Universal and high dynamic automotive test system

511The DEWE-2600 from Dewetron is a modular mixed signal recorder for synchronized data acquisition and powerful analyses of multiple sensor and data types. The system accepts

connection of any analog sensors, encoders and digital inputs, and offers popular automotive interfaces like CANbus, FlexRayTM and XCP. Synchronized video – up to four cameras – is a standard feature. Using the isolation amplifier modules and high sampling rate, it is a perfect fit for power analysis and other new challenges coming up with e-drive systems. One example is testing the frequency inverters efficiency.

With optional RTK2 DGPS it is able to record precise position and speed data, and by adding an INS system, motion states can also be measured precisely. Such configuration enables testing of driver assistance systems, and functional safety tests demanded by ISO-26262. Of course any vehicle dynamics analyses can be performed adding the required sensors.

The systems hot-swappable batteries guarantee continuous operation.

EXHIBITOR

075www.AutomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.comMARCH 2011

Dipl.-Ing. Herwarth Reich GmbHE-Mail: [email protected]: +49 (0 ) 234 9 59 16-0

-Kupplungen.dewww.

We do not know whether you see the letter „B“ or the number „13“... But

when it comes to the design of a coupling for your transmission system, you will not be fooled.

Competencyin Power Transmissionapplication

Competency In-house rubber production

Very Large range ofTOK test bench couplingsup to 130 000 Nm

In-house research,development and design

In-house torsionalvibration-calculationsof multimass systems

customised solutions for prototypes, small- and largescale production series

EFFE

CT 2

visit us in Stuttgart

Stand 1835

11-02 Anzeige Drittelseite_optis1 1 04.02.2011 14:46:40

En’UrgaTel: +1 765 497 3269


Web: www.enurga.com

Spray angles in automotive injectors

513Urea or fuel is often sprayed into the exhaust stream to reduce the emissions from automotive engines.

There are two characteristics of the spray formed by these injectors that have a significant impact on their performance. The two important characteristics of the spray are spray angle and the total drop surface area in a plane. The spray angle is important to ensure that the droplets do not impinge the sides of the exhaust tube, resulting in a less than desirable performance. The total drop surface area is the single spray characteristics (rather than drop sizes, mass fluxes, or velocity) that has a maximum correlation with the local evaporation rate of the sprayed urea or fuel.

The SETscan Optical Patternator from En’Urga Inc is the first of its kind to be used to directly provide both the spray angle and the planar total drop surface area. The full planar information on the spray drop surface area density, as well as the spray angle, can be obtained in less than a few seconds using the SETscan Optical patternator. The optical patternator takes minimal technical expertise to operate in a production environment. These considerations make the SETscan Optical Patternator the optimal method for the quality audit of injectors used in exhaust systems.

Manner-SensortelemetrieTel: +49 7424 9329-0


Web: www.sensortelemetrie.de

Sensortelemetry

514Manner has developed a new valve telemetry product, designed for the online measurement of dynamic

valve temperature profiles on car motors under operating conditions. The distinctive feature of this product is the miniaturized telemetric measurement amplifier with its special form.

The ring-shaped telemetric measurement amplifier with integrated antenna (outside diameter 20mm, inside diameter 7mm, height 4mm) is mounted directly onto the valve plunger. Due to its 2g weight, the retroaction on the valvetrain is negligible. The valvetrain’s spring plate serves as the carrier. The system operates with robust thermocouple elements which can withstand high acceleration forces and are simple to mount. The temperature- resistant telemetric measurement amplifier can be deployed at ambient temperatures of up to 160°C and operates on a purely digital basis with 12-bit resolution.

The pick up, mounted at a generous distance, scans in the measurement values on a non-contact basis and transmits them via cable to the stationary evaluation unit. The valves may rotate during operation. A characteristic of this product is that continual signal is not required.

GeneSys ElektronikTel: +49 781 96 9279-0


Web: www.genesys-offenburg.de

Determination of altitude and position in vehicle testing

EXHIBITOR

512One prerequisite of driving as part of vehicle development is to precisely determine the vehicle’s position.

In such applications, the automotive dynamic motion analyzer (ADMA) from GeneSys Elektronik delivers optimized and highly precise data.

To ensure precise positioning, even under difficult GPS conditions, GeneSys Elektronik now presents its ADMA-PP post-processing software, which enables optimization of ADMA data recordings and inclusion of GPS correction data after the test drive. The software’s core is a Kalman filter, which combines GPS and inertial data. While the real-time option continues to be provided by the ADMA system, offline calculation has two advantages. Firstly, GPS correction data can be downloaded from the Internet for the required test run. This facilitates installation work for the measurement process

compared to the real-time mode, where GPS correction data must be supplied via a radio or GSM link or an RTK network provider. Secondly, ADMA-PP is able to calculate position solutions forward and backward along the time axis, which improves positioning accuracy. The package is rounded off by an auxiliary module with a barometric altitude sensor.

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AFT Atlas Fahrzeugtechnik GmbH · Gewerbestr. 14 · D-58791 Werdohl

[email protected]

www.aft-werdohl.de

four thermo-couple inputs per unit

4MeasureOnAir

MillbrookTel: +44 1525 404242


Web: www.millbrook.co.uk

EV development in the UK

516Millbrook, a leading vehicle test and development organization, is championing electric charging points

after playing a key role in the East of England’s successful electric vehicle infrastructure bid. The EValu8 bid, which secured the green light and up to £2.9 million in funding in December 2010, will see the installation of 1,200 electric charging points across the East of England. To demonstrate its commitment in leading the EValu8 Bedford cluster, and to raise awareness of the bid, Millbrook has installed two electric charging points on its site. The company will work with developers to trial and verify new technologies and infrastructure to enable to UK to take important steps towards electric vehicles being a viable alternative for consumers.

“The EValu8 bid has already secured over £7 million in funding from various sources, which will ensure that, by the end of 2013, all local businesses and residents will be no more than 25 miles away from a charging point,” says head of laboratories at Millbrook, Andy Eastlake. “This is a fantastic initiative, and something that we at Millbrook are championing, along with fellow industry members including Cranfield University, and the Nissan Technology Centre, as the provision and access to charging points is a key enabler in the mass uptake of EVs.

EValu8 will link up with existing projects to provide a wide integrated network of plug-in points, with retail outlets, public car parks, railways stations, local businesses and residential streets already identified as prime locations for plug-in points.

515 Moog Industrial Group has provided the high-dynamic motion control system portion of the new driving

simulator installed at Daimler’s driving simulator center, which is part of the Mercedes-Benz Technology Center, in Sindelfingen, Germany.

The Moog electrical motion base is a hexapod consisting of six moveable legs. It has six degrees of freedom: The top platform moves in x, y and z directions, and rotates over all three axes. The entire motion system is mounted on the lateral rail, which makes possible the simulation of sideways movements that a hexapod on its own cannot simulate because of stroke limitations of the actuators. The system is driven along the rail using linear motors.

Inside the dome there is a full Mercedes-Benz car model where test drivers seat and view a 360° projection screen showing real-life traffic scenes, with moving pedestrians, oncoming traffic and buildings.

The complete motion system of the hexapod and lateral rail is controlled by Moog real-time software. From the driver’s input to the pedals and steering wheel, the Daimler vehicle models calculate position, velocity and acceleration data. Moog software translates this information to movements in the hexapod and lateral rail to ensure the driver’s sensory expectations are matched. Consequently, driving the simulator feels just like driving a normal car.

With its high-speed electric motion system on a 12m (39.37ft) long rail for transverse movements and 360° screen, the dynamic simulator is the most advanced in the automobile industry. The system as integrated by Daimler engineers also features energy recuperation.

Moog Tel: +31 252 462 000

Web: www.moog.com

Motion system and software project for Daimler

EXHIBITOR


Econ Technologies is a leading developer and manufacturer of vibration test products, measurement systems, and industrial measurement instruments.

State-of-the-art solution of measurement and test -

Econ TechnologiesTel: +86-571 88178376 Fax: +86-571 88178385 Email: [email protected] www.econ-group.com

Premax presents a state-of-the-art large scale solution for vibration data collection and monitoring,

MIMO modal analysis, and MISO vibration control. It adopts embedded kernel QNX operating system

to assure the real-time performance in measurement and test, which helps customers out of worry

about loss of data. While PXI structure creates Premax excellent synchronization and fl exibility with

different types of input, wave source output and I/O modules. Multi Premax can be combined via

Ethernet LAN to build a large scale measurement system with hundreds or thousands of channels.

Econ Technologies is a leading developer and manufacturer of vibration test

is just what you want!Application:➩ Vibration Data Collection and Monitoring➩ MIMO Modal Analysis ➩ MISO Vibration Shaker Control

is just what you want!

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ESPeak SolutionTel: +49 911 37 57 200


Web: www.peak-solution.de

Resource planning for automotive tests

517Peak Solution is focused on the design and implementation of integrated software applications for the planning, description, evaluation and

documentation of tests.To provide better

support for the process of scheduling tests, we offer the peak resource planner (PRP). Based on definable test types, a date for a test is scheduled in a calendar and all resources involved in the test, such as test stands, test equipment, units under test, are marked as allocated. In doing so, the resources necessary to perform the test for a specific test type can be specified. Each resource comes with a calendar which can be used to determine its availability. Although the description of resources can change over the course of time, the application does not have to be modified from a programming perspective.

In combination with our modules for measurement data management (MDM), you can centrally manage test descriptions and measurement results from different test facilities in a standardized format based on ASAM ODS. In addition to the measured data, the associated meta information is also stored in the database. This may, for example, be the structure and condition of the test specimen and the configuration and environmental conditions for the test.

This way, you can achieve a transparent scheduling of tests and a better capacity utilization of the resources, as well as re-locate the wide range of information within the scope of its context and make it more useful for evaluations.

For more information and a live demonstration, visit us at Automotive Testing Expo Europe, June 17, 18, 19, 2011, stand 1850, Stuttgart, Germany.

Race TechnologyTel: +44 1773 537620


Web: www.race-technology.com

High accuracy speed sensor

518Race Technology’s popular SPEEDBOX product has been upgraded to include fixed latency CAN messages and forward/backward detection. The overall system accuracy has also

been improved even further, particularly under difficult GPS conditions.The SPEEDBOX is a very high accuracy, low latency GPS+inertial

transducer suitable for interfacing with a wide range of data acquisition and logging systems. The principal outputs of the SPEEDBOX are vehicle speed and distance travelled. Other outputs include position, gradient, heading and acceleration. Optionally the SPEEDBOX can be fitted with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and/or an GPS compassing to allow the measurement of vehicle roll, pitch and yaw angles and rotation rates.

The SPEEDBOX combines 20Hz GPS data with data from its three-axis accelerometer to calculate speed and distance at a true 200Hz with no interpolation.

Re-SolTel: +1 248 219 5256


Web: www.re-sol.com

Diesel flow measurement system

519Re-Sol has developed the new RS438-200 diesel flow measurement system, as part of its RS400 Mobile Fuel System family. The system is designed to cover a wide range of diesel

and biodiesel applications. The fuel measurement sensor is based on the Coriolis principle. A preheating circuit ensures that engines with little recirculation flow can reach the required fuel temperature in a short time.

The integrated vapor separator can be switched from open to closed-loop mode to accommodate best transient behavior and best vapor separation. Ac pumps are selected to assure long durability. The outlet pump is VFD controlled. Options include a variety of interfaces (Ethernet, AK, CAN) and also stainless steel regulators and solenoid valves. The system can be packaged with or without enclosure.

RUAGTel: +41 41 268 38 01


Web: www.ruag.com

Wind tunnel rain tests

520Every driver on the roads today is disturbed by wet road conditions. A sudden change of the precipitation

environment can be quite dangerous, especially when traveling at high speeds. Next to the more obvious aquaplaning phenomena, safety is also influenced by maintaining adequate forward, side- and rearward visibility, even during the most adverse weather conditions. Water accumulations and flows on the car body surface are primarily influenced by defining its outer shape and optimizing its wiper systems.

In the RUAG Large Wind Tunnel in Emmen, Switzerland (LWTE), rain conditions are simulated for full-sized cars under the repeatable laboratory conditions of a wind tunnel at wind speeds up to 240km/h. A spray

rig upstream of the car seeds the air flow with water droplets of the necessary size and quantity. At the same time, it generates additional turbulence so the flow conditions are representative of those encountered on the road.

To enhance the visibility of the soiling flow on the car’s surface, a fluorescent dye is mixed into the spray water before being ejected into the test section. With multiple UV lamps

mounted in the test section walls, the car is optimally illuminated from all angles and the test findings are recorded with a number of remotely controlled video and still cameras which are operated from the control room.

Next to drag, lift and cooling flow optimization, the engineering field of ‘soiling’ is another important, but often overlooked, area of aerodynamic car design.

EXHIBITOR


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Unholtz-DickieTel: +1 203 265 3929


Web: www.udco.com

Vibration testing of EV/HEV hardware

ARAITel: +91 20 3023 1111


Web: www.araiindia.com

Symposium on international automotive technology

523SIAT 2011 was inaugurated on January 19, 2011. In the 33 technical sessions of SIAT 2011, held concurrently in five halls, there were 33 keynote papers and 122 technical papers

presented. The deliberations were focused on the key areas such as vehicle engineering, automotive safety, alternate fuels, emissions, NVH, power plants, materials and CAE. SIAT 2011 was attended by about 1,300 delegates from all over the world.

The grand exposition SIAT EXPO 2011 was open to automotive personnel and interested public and provided a great opportunity to share and disseminate information and conduct business. About 140 exhibitors, occupying 168 stalls from all over the world participated in the SIAT Expo. More than 10,000 visitors visited SIAT EXPO 2011.

The second edition of ‘Technology Theatres’ was organized during SIAT 2011 by eminent technology and service providers including MTS, ATS, MIRA, Romax, SWRI and ARAI. The ARAI Technology Theater received an overwhelming response with more than 80 delegates participating. ARAI’s new development initiatives were presented during the Technology Theatre.

The SIAT 2011 event concluded with the valedictory function chaired by Shri Srivats Ram, president of ACMA.

G.R.A.S.Tel: +45 4566 40 46


Web: www.gras.dk

Precision surface microphone

524G.R.A.S. is introducing the new 40LS, the first ¼in precision surface microphone in the world. This ¼in prepolarized pressure microphone is designed for mounting on flat and curved

surfaces. It is optimized to reduce self-generated turbulence, and the small diaphragm diameter enables almost ideal point measurements.

The combination of these features ensures an unsurpassed frequency range and optimum spatial resolution, as well as the ability to measure very high levels. The built-in CCP preamplifer with TEDS capability enables use of long, lightweight cables and is ideal for multichannel applications.

40LS is rugged and stable, with a diaphragm of stainless steel alloy and a housing of high-grade stainless steel that can withstand adverse weather conditions.

Specifications of the 40LS include nominal sensitivity of 1.8mV/Pa, a dynamic range from 50dB(A) to 164dB, a frequency range of 5-70kHz, and an integrated TEDS with plug-and-play functionality.

40LS is ideally suited for the automotive industry (wind tunnel testing, on road testing), the aerospace industry (examining true surface pressure, turbulence, aerodynamic noise, etc under real flight conditions/in wind tunnels), and wind turbine industries (testing of turbulence related noise).

G.R.A.S. is a leading manufacturer of high-quality measurement microphones for the most demanding industrial and environmental applications.

Reich-KupplungenTel: +49 234 959 16-0


Web: www.reich-kupplungen.de

Coupling technology

522Test benches are used for many applications in power transmission engineering to determine the

properties of specimens in research, development, manufacturing and quality assurance.

Reich-Kupplungen, with its broad range of flexible coupling elements, adaptive designs and connection shafts provides standard solutions for a wide variety of different tasks and applications including prototype engine testing, research and development of processes and materials, and quality-, serial- or lifespan-testing.

Customers benefit from our over 60 years of experience in engineering and manufacturing of highly flexible coupling systems. We hold the complete process from layout and design to machining and manufacturing, including the rubber-metal bonding in our hands.

Our standards can be complemented by specific customized designs to provide optimized, tailor-made solutions according to your requirements.

If you are interested in specific topics please contact us, or visit us at Automotive Testing Expo Europe, Stand 1835

521The recent surge in crude oil and gasoline prices and new government

mandates have increased the automotive industry’s focus on developing vehicles that reduce our dependence on petro-fuels. This development effort has led to major innovations in hybrid, electric and fuel cell vehicle technologies. Hundreds of engineers are involved in these new vehicle development programs which provide new opportunities for OEMs and their respective suppliers.

Unholtz-Dickie, a leading supplier of vibration test systems, is also contributing in support of these vehicle development efforts with new, application-specific systems for product testing. Road induced vibration and shock are mechanical environments that effect the performance of power train components and electrical subsystems. Using large table electrodynamic shaker systems operating to 1,000Hz, test engineers can utilize time-compression vibration techniques to simulate the full service life of a vehicle in the test lab. Vibration profiles and thermal cycling schedules can also be combined for maximum environmen-tal testing synergy and overall testing efficiency.

Unholtz-Dickie’s completely air-cooled K170-24C-3 shaker rated at 17,000 lb-force (75.6kN) with 3in pk-pk stroke (76mm) is configured with a massive 72in x 72in (183cm x 183cm) removable guided head expander for vertical axis testing, and a 72in x 72in (183cm x 183cm) bearing-guided slip table for horizontal axis test-ing. The entire shaker/head expander/slip table hardware set is integrated onto one common platform/base assembly (see picture above). The resulting test system can reliably handle large UUTs that must be subjected to long duration, robust vibration profiles and shock pulse waveforms.

EXHIBITOR


ACS Inc .....................................................................41Affi liated Engineers Inc .............................................61AFT Atlas Fahrzeugtechnik GmbH .............................77AOS Technologies .....................................................24Application Engineering Inc .......................................40Aries Ingenieria Y Sistemas SA .................................17ASAM e.V ..................................................................20Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) .....80Automotive Testing Technology Online Reader Enquiry Service .................................. 82, 84Automotive Testing Expo Europe 2011 .........19, 21, 22Berndorf Band GmbH .............................................. IBCBrüel + Kjær ..............................................................25Continental Tire North America Inc ...........................51Cotta Transmissions .................................................46D & V Electronics Ltd .................................................55Dewetron GmbH ........................................................67Dytran Instruments ...................................................27Econ Technologies ....................................................78En’Urga Inc ...............................................................12FAIST Anlagenbau GmbH ............................................9FGB – Fertigungsgeratebau A Steinbach GmbH ........52Fundacion Cetena (CITEAN) ....................................72G.R.A.S. Sound + Vibration .......................................29GeneSys Elektronik GmbH ........................................74HBM - Hottinger Baldwin Messtechnik .....................11

IMTECH Deutschland GmbH & Co KG ........................47Jacobs Technology Inc ..............................................61KMT – Kraus Messtechnik GmbH .............................15LEMO SA ...................................................................83LMS International .....................................................IFCMAHA-AIP GmbH & Co KG ........................................27Manner Sensortelemetric GmbH ...............................54MCE Stahl – und Maschinenbau GmbH & Co KG .......71Meggitt Sensing Systems – Measurement Group .....39Millbrook Proving Ground ..........................................29MOOG .......................................................................13Mustang Advanced Engineering ..................................3PCB Piezotronics ...................................................... 41PCO AG .....................................................................72Peak Solution GmbH .................................................71Race Technology Ltd .................................................32Reich Kupplungen .....................................................76Re-Sol LLC ................................................................35Rototest AB ............................................................OBCRUAG Schweiz AG .....................................................47Seoul Industry Engineering Co ..................................67Silicon Designs..........................................................35Single Temperiertechnik GmbH .................................50The Battery Show 2011 ...........................................83Unholtz-Dickie Corp ..................................................32Windshear Inc ...........................................................44

Aries Ingeniería y Sistemas Tel: +34 915 70 27 37


Web: www.aries.com.es

Award-winning safety test systems

ASAMEmail: [email protected]

Web: www.asam.net

Quality driven by standards

EXHIBITOR

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INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

525Aries Ingeniería y Sistemas (Aries) is a global leader in passive safety test systems for the automotive

industry. In 2010, the company supplied state-of-the-art test systems around the world, especially in Asia, with steady growth and guaranteed success in new projects planned for 2011.

Aries has built a strong reputation by developing high standards of systems in the vehicle testing fi elds. Pedestrian, interior, and full-scale crash testing are areas in which Aries’ know-how prevails as the industry reference.

New projects, such as various full-scale crash facilities and universal launchers, are ongoing and will be ready for startup in the near future. Aries also focuses on developing new systems for the market needs, such as ejection mitigation, arising from new testing regulation and future industry trends like active safety systems proliferation. Aries has developed a balloon car which is a turnkey solution for active safety that includes the target vehicle to test advanced drive assistance systems (ADAS).

526Initiated by Germany’s major OEMs and Tier1/Tier 2 suppliers, ASAM e.V. provides a platform to create

an environment for engineering, simulation, testing and automation that supports free interconnection of devices and software applications and seamless exchange of data.

Driven by the common goal to master the complexity of data models, interfaces, and syntax specifi cations, OEMs and suppliers are joining forces to warrant quality and effi ciency through common and reliable standards in the areas of: vehicle ECU development; data

exchange, acquisition and management; testbed automation; analysis of measured data; and simulation.

This collaboration proved to be very effective for both parties. It allows the early identifi cation of any need for standardization, to take both group’s requirements into consideration, to jointly work on a standardized solution, and to release innovative and sustainable standards quickly. ASAM e.V. makes sure that leading companies will actively participate in that process and guarantee a speedy development of cutting-edge technology.

EXHIBITOR


SM

A ratchet screw system enablesquick and secure coupling of the connectors.

An innovative solutionfor harsh environments

very high contact densityratchet screw coupling mechanism6 different sizeslightweight aluminium shell2 to 114 contactsoptimum space savingoil and fuel resistant IP 68high shock and vibrationresistancevibration absorbtion flange

MOTORSPORT CONNECTORS

M SERIES

LEMO SA - Switzerland

Phone: (+41 21) 695 16 00Fax: (+41 21) 695 16 02 [email protected]

ANN_AU_90x250_en_b_Testing Technology 11.02.11 12:19 Page1

... steel belts from Berndorf Band!

Fast ... ... faster ...

Berndorf Band GmbHA-2560 Berndorf, AustriaPhone: (+43)2672-800-0 Fax: (+43)2672-84176 [email protected] www.berndorf-band.at

Steel belts from Berndorf Band have been used for automotive testing applications for many years.

It began with tyre test belts, leading to the construction of wide rolling road belts for wind tunnel testing.

Speeds of almost 300km/h and the need for extremely accurate running properties place exceptionally high demands on steel belts.

Berndorf Band is the leader in the development and manufacturing of high-speed belts. This results in signifi ant advances in the quality and performance of our products.

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Do not adjust your page, the proportions of the car you see here are real. Two things may help explain the styling: it was

designed by the Mohs Seaplane Corporation of Madison, Wisconsin, USA, and it was based on an International Harvester Company truck chassis. Believe it or not, the appropriately named car was in production between 1967 and 1979. However, the design was not quite as stupid as it looks…

Reality check

Mohs’ imagination did not stop with the

Ostentatienne Opera, and in 1973 the SafariKar was devised, a true premium SUV conceived for hunting animals. The car is quite remarkable, featuring not only a folding hard top, but large side doors that slid outwards.

Again based on an International Harvester truck chassis, the SafariKar had room for eight hunters, with three bucket seats up front, a three-seat bench in the rear, and a further two jump seats at the back, although these were intended for parade use (yes, really). The interior could also be arranged to sleep two adults and two children.

SafariKar

To aid stealthiness, the car was not merely painted metal, but instead used cast Tenzalloy bulkheads, heavy-gauge aluminum sheet, polyurethane foam, and a wipe-clean matt black Naugahyde skin. Options included four-wheel-drive.

› The truck chassis was an integral safety feature of the car, with its steel beams running the length of the vehicle’s sides for impact protection. This ruled out side doors, so a single, rear-entry door was devised, which incorporated an integrated skylight. The door was a huge feature, with its hinge mounted at the windshield header. When the door was opened, a step lowered in the rear bumper to ease entry into the vehicle. However, it

is unclear how passengers would escape in the event of a rear collision.

› The heavy-duty 3m-long wheelbase truck chassis was required in order to support the car’s 5,740 lb (2,600kg) weight. Similarly, the 7.5 x 20in Denman tires (a not uncommon size now) had to be fi lled with nitrogen to cope with the loads.

› The specifi cation list was remarkable, still exceeding even that of a Maybach. Items included:

a refrigerator, a safe, a two-way radio system that could be linked to home and offi ce, sealed-beam tail-lights, a 110V converter, a butane heater, a walnut instrument panel inlaid with 24-carat gold, velvet upholstery, and ‘Ming Dynasty’ carpeting.

› To help hustle the car’s bulk, another refi ned feature from International Harvester was fi tted: a 304in3 V8 engine. A 549in3 V8 was also offered to the customer

wanting a little more, but this added a further 360 lb (163kg) to the car’s weight.

› The car is 248in long, 90in wide, and 69in high (6,299 x 2,286 x 1,753mm).

› Designer Bruce Mohs (also owner of the eponymous seaplane operation) was very keen on safety, and fi tted the sedan with ‘safety bucket seats’. Presumably this just means the car had bucket seats, rather than the bench seats that were popular at the time.

FAR LEFT: The car attracted few buyers, partly because of its price tag, which went up to US$25,600

LEFT: Stepping into the rear-entry door to Mohs’ vision of a safe, luxurious haven

Mohs Ostentatienne Opera

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