Applus+ IDIADA (United Kingdom)

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">In the evolving landscape of the automotive industry, this study presents an innovative approach to developing digital twins for driver profiles, establishing a standardized and scalable procedure for collecting and analyzing driving data on a global scale. The proposed methodology centers on the development of a robust cloud infrastructure, including Data Lake and associated services, designed for efficient storage and processing of large volumes of data from multiple markets and vehicle types.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The research introduces an adaptable procedure for data collection campaigns, applicable to diverse global markets and encompassing a wide range of vehicles, from internal combustion engines to electric and hybrid models. A key feature of this approach is the establishment of advanced data decoding protocols, enabling precise interpretation of CAN network information from vehicles of different manufacturers and models, even when the CAN structure is not previously known.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The study defines standardized parameters for data recording, ensuring comparability across different markets and vehicle types, while developing adaptive analysis methodologies to identify specific driving patterns based on vehicle segment, propulsion technology, and demographic characteristics. This comprehensive approach is underpinned by a framework that ensures compliance with data protection regulations globally, facilitating ethical and legal data management across different jurisdictions.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The anticipated outcomes include the creation of a highly flexible data-as-a-service platform capable of integrating and analyzing driver data worldwide, and the establishment of a standardized procedure for characterizing driver profiles. The development of advanced vehicular data decoding capabilities allows for the inclusion of a wide variety of brands and models, enabling truly global insights into driver behavior.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">This study lays the groundwork for a global understanding of driver behavior, providing automotive manufacturers with a powerful tool to adapt their designs to the needs of users worldwide, accelerating innovation in vehicle design and improving the safety of future vehicles.</div></div>

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Spot-weld joinery plays a major role in maintaining structural integrity of vehicle during an accident scenario. Robust failure definitions are important for accurate prediction of spot-weld failure in crash safety simulations. Spot welds have a complex metallurgical structure, consisting of fusion and heat affected zones. Identifying material failure definitions for huge number of spot-weld joint combinations in a typical Body in White (BIW) of a vehicle is highly challenging.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">In conventional LS-DYNA-MAT100 material model, spot-weld failure prediction accuracy is limited under complex crash loading scenarios, especially angular and bending load conditions. In order to enhance the failure predictions, a novel mathematical failure model is developed by considering instantaneous resultant loading along with bending moment as a key failure parameter to determine spot weld joint failure. A three dimensional failure surface is constructed by incorporating physical test data of tensile, shear, angular and bending load conditions at different strain rates. This user defined failure criteria is capable of predicting spot-weld failure more accurately, considering typical crash loading scenarios.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">Significant amount of physical tests are carried out for spot weld joint combinations and an empirical basis is formulated using regression analysis to generalize the failure surface for a given material and thickness combination. Comprehensive failure database formulation using this approach has avoided extensive number of spot-weld joint physical tests, which are ideally required to cover all the possible joint combinations at full vehicle level. This methodology is one of its kind and addresses the complex challenges in spot-weld failure prediction in crash CAE simulations. This paper talks about the developed failure criteria, approach for global database creation, component and vehicle level test and CAE correlation aspects.</div></div>

Abstract NIFA-funded grant to identify chicken immune molecules, particularly cytokines and chemokines and to characterize their function resulted in new sets of avian-specific immune tools useful in the studies host immune responses after infections and vaccinations. Total 65 new monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been validated for their specificity against avian molecules using several assays including ELISA, immunohistochemistry, Western blot, flow cytometry, qPCR, and cell proliferation. All the target molecules that we selected have shown to have critical functions in host defense against pathogens and include 13 cytokines (interleukin-4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 17F, 21, 22, 23, 26, 34, IFN-α, IFN-κ, TNF-α, CSF-1, and TGF-β) and 3 chemokines (CXCLi2, CCL4 and 5). Functional similarity and dissimilarity were discovered between immune molecules of avians and mammals. These immune reagents will be useful for studies in host-pathogen immunobiology of infections and vaccinations in poultry. (This research was supported by USDA NIFA award number: 2017-67015-26793)

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) is a disruptive technology that has great potential to change the way we live, work and drive. Among so many benefits this technology supports dynamic route guidance, better management of traffic flow and intervenes in potential lifethreatening situations from the driver which has been demonstrated to prevent accidents through auto-collision avoidance features. With the benefits also comes the challenges, and this technology require significant infrastructure. In this context, this research aims to approach the technologies used to develop and validate CAVs features, the tests that are being done and the controlled environments used to perform these tests. To perform this study, Applus IDIADA's capabilities and CAV domain knowledge was utilized. It is presented a vehicle on-board unit (OBU), that encompasses several individual CAV components into on single unit. It makes possible to retrofit connectivity features into non-connected vehicles for research and development purposes, such as vehicle-to-everything (V2X), 5G cellular and global positioning system (GPS) technologies. Finally, this study contributes to the automotive industry exposing the current status of CAVs technology and the challenges to integrate this technology in Smart Cities.

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper compares the application of a non-intrusive on-site component Transfer Path Analysis (TPA) method used to identify interface forces to a previously performed direct blocked forces measurement. The latter is the current practice for determining the load cases related to isolated vehicle components. Force transducers are placed between the investigated source component and a specific rigid measurement rig. The comparison presented aims to answer the question of whether the faster and cheaper TPA method can produce accurate enough interface forces. The TPA method used in this work calculates the force component contributions without disassembly of the interfaces and through the local stiffness of multiple indicator positions per interface combined with operational measurement. The method is based on the application of an inverse matrix model. This approach is applied to a vehicle road noise investigation carried out on a roller bench at different roller speeds. A rough surface single axle roller bench in the same conditions as for the blocked forces method is used. The matrix inversion is carried out by using an overdetermined set of linear equations using an optimum number of degrees of freedom (DoFs). The paper mostly shows the results for the wheel spindle forces and moments at the wheel centre virtual point. The comparison between the inverse method and the direct measurement of loads shows very similar results and phenomena likely to appear in road noise excitation, as component resonances and tyre cavity modes are clearly visible. The matrix inversion method is observed to be a useful alternative if indicator DoFs and reference position selection are performed with care.</div></div>

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">On the 20th December 2018 DENATRAN (Departamento Nacional de Trânsito) published a new resolution that establishes future vehicle performance requirements in pole side Impacts in Brazil (Resolution 751/18). This new resolution gives the option to comply with Annex II (equivalent to UN R.135) or Annex III (equivalent to FMVSS 214). Although this will be applicable to new vehicle registrations from the 1st January 2030, it is possible to anticipate its total or partial adoption.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper will focus on the effect of implementing UN R.135 and, specifically, on the differences found by using the WorldSID (World Side Impact Dummy) 50th Percentile Dummy instead of its predecessor (EuroSID-II) for this test.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The above-mentioned side impact test will consist of a side impact test at 32 km/h against a rigid pole. The tested vehicle will be rotated 75° from the direction of impact and the only vehicle occupant will be a WorldSID dummy in the driver position.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">WorldSID is the latest generation side impact dummy. Unlike EuroSID-II, WorldSID has an excellent level of biofidelity, replicating human kinematics and sensitivity to injury in a much better way than EuroSID II. Because of this and considering that side impact crashes correspond to approximately 25% of the total amount of serious-to-fatal injuries, using this dummy to evaluate occupant protection in side impact scenarios is a remarkable improvement in vehicle safety.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper intends to explain the differences between WorldSID 50th percentile dummy and EuroSID-II as well as indicating the main biomechanic-related topics to be taken into consideration during the vehicle development phase when using WorldSID according to UN R.135.</div></div>

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">The ELVA project (Advanced Electric Vehicle Architectures) was aimed at developing specific vehicle concepts and architectures for electric vehicles where no adaptations of existing internal combustion vehicles were made, taking advantage of the new freedoms in design that electric powertrains provide. The project, characterized by an intensive interaction among the partners, was co-funded under the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme and included in the consortium ika (coordinator), Volkswagen, Renault, CRF, Continental, SAFER and Applus+ IDIADA.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The paper deals with the development of a web design support tool devoted to designers for the definition of the powertrain components that fulfil the main vehicle targets (range, acceleration and maximum speed) complying with the current regulations and market practices. The main advantage of the tool is that it focuses on the design putting together calculations that typically belong to different fields.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The development consisted of two phases. Firstly, the creation of an internal model which interactively represents the vehicle development problem as a set of requirements in terms of weight and battery size needed to fulfil the targets. Afterwards, it was adapted to run in a web server for the variety of inputs combinations within its strict calculating limitations. The web tool has a simple interface to introduce the targets and vehicle characteristics such as battery technology, drag or tire class. It provides values for components sizing, powertrain architecture recommendations and, in some cases, suggestions for inputs optimization. When the inputs do not provide a feasible solution, warning and improvement suggestions appear.</div></div>

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Currently, regulations on vehicle evaporative emissions only focus on the sum of Total Hydrocarbons (THC) without taking into account either the detailed hydrocarbon composition nor other chemicals besides hydrocarbons emitted from gasoline evaporation. As a consequence, this composition, also known as speciation, is not always noted and is even more unknown when biofuels such as ethanol are introduced in the market. Furthermore, these regulations do not differentiate the source of these emissions in the vehicle.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The programme described in this paper is designed to investigate the influence of the addition of ethanol to gasoline on evaporative emissions. It has tried to go one step ahead of these directives obtaining more detailed characterization of these evaporative emissions.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The programme has enabled a list of compounds (methanol, ethanol, aldehydes, ketones and hydrocarbons) to be determined in evaporative emissions among different ethanol-gasoline fuels (E0, E5-S, E10 and E85), applied to Euro 4 and Flexifuel vehicles by three chromatographic methods based on California Air Resources Board (CARB). Additionally, permeation from evaporation emissions has been determined separately.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">This document provides valuable information about the speciation of evaporative emissions and several conclusions have been drawn.</div></div>

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">The ELVA project (Advance Electric Vehicle Architectures) was co-funded by the European Commission's 7<sup>th</sup> Framework Programme. The project was formed by a consortium of seven partners: Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika) of RWTH Aachen University; Applus+ IDIADA; Volkswagen; Renault; Centro Richerche Fiat (CRF); Continental and the Swedish Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre (SAFER).</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The objectives of the ELVA project were to generate, investigate and analyse innovative design concepts for electric vehicles (EV). Also, to deliver new modular architectures with the same level of safety as today's best known practices, while minimizing weight, maximizing energy efficiency, optimizing ergonomics and interior space, all at affordable costs. The level of comfort and performance must also be improved. All of the development strategies were summarized in form of best practices, which have been made available for designers and engineers.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">The project characterized for strong interaction amongst the participants during the design loops. The result was a set of three EV concepts that were developed from zero, i.e. no modification of existing platforms was done.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">A special interactive design tool was developed in the end, where the main attributes of an electric vehicle are associated providing valuable tips on what the main interactions of all vehicle parameters are.</div></div>