Improvement of wear resistance of cast iron blocks

Four-stroke engines splash oil on the bore wall for lubrication and cooling. To scrape off the excess oil, the contact pressure of the oil control ring is set

high. This decreases oil consumption. Hence, the bore wall should have higher wear resistance. To raise durability, a hard gray cast iron containing phosphorus (P) is often used (high-P cast iron in Table 2.2). Figure 2.16 shows the microstructure of high-P cast iron. The increased P crystallizes from the melt as hard steadite. It has a chemical composition of Fe3P. The curious shape of steadite stems from its low freezing point. The iron crystal solidifies first. Then, the residual liquid solidifies to form steadite in the space between the iron crystals. This alloy composition has good wear resistance because of high hardness, but low machinability. Hence, instead of using this composition for an entire block, it is typical to enclose it as a wet or dry liner in a normal cast iron block (2 in Table 2.1) or aluminum block (3 and 5 in Table 2.1, described later).

The mileage required for commercial diesel engines is very high, being as much as 1,000,000 km. These engines have high combustion temperatures. Engines requiring very long durability use additional heat treatment on the bore surface. A nitrided liner4 is often enclosed to increase hardness. A phosphate conversion coating on the liner also prevents corrosion. Instead of  enclosing a hard liner, interrupted quench hardening by laser or induction heating can also be applied to the bore wall of the monolithic cast iron block.

READ MORE.......

The science and technology of materials in automotive engines

Hiroshi Yamagata

Woodhead Publishing and Maney Publishing

on behalf of

The Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining

CRC Press

Boca Raton Boston New York Washington, DC

WOODHEAD PUBLISHING LIMITED

Cambridge England

for more details and updates about automotive-technology-guide please visit.........

www.automotive-technology-guide.com

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www.automotive-technology-guide.com

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Speech interfaces: UI revolution or intelligent evolution?

Speech interfaces have received a lot of attention recently, especially with the marketing blitz for Siri, the new speech interface for the iPhone.

After watching some of the TV commercials you might conclude that you can simply talk to your phone as if it were your friend, and it will figure out what you want. For example, in one scenario the actor asks the phone, “Do I need a raincoat?”, and the phone responds with weather information.

A colleague commented that if he wanted weather information he would just ask for it. As in “What is the weather going to be like in Seattle?” or “Is it going to rain in Seattle?”.

Without more conversational context, if a friend were to ask me, “Do I need a raincoat?”, I would probably respond, “I don’t know, do you?” — jokingly, of course.

Evo or revo?

Are we ready to converse
with our phones and cars?

Kidding aside, systems like Siri raise an important question: Are we about to see a paradigm shift in user interfaces?

Possibly. But I think it will be more of a UI evolution than a UI revolution. In other words, speech interfaces will play a bigger role in UI designs, but that doesn't mean you're about to start talking to your phone — or any other device — as if it’s your best friend.

Currently, speech interfaces are underutilized. The reasons for this aren't yet clear, though they seem to encompass both technical and user issues. Traditionally, speech recognition accuracy rates have been less than perfect. Poor user interface design (for instance, reprompting strategies) has contributed to the overall problem and to increased user frustration.

Also, people simply aren't used to speech interfaces. For example, many phones support voice-dialing, yet most people don't use this feature. And user interface designers seem reluctant to leverage speech interfaces, possibly because of the additional cost and complexity, lack of awareness, or some other reason.


"Relying heavily on speech can lead
to a suboptimal user experience..."
As a further complication, relying heavily on speech as an interface can lead to a suboptimal user experience. Speech interfaces pose some real challenges, including recognition accuracy rates, natural language understanding, error recovery dialogs, UI design, and testing. They aren't the flawless wonders that some marketers would lead you to believe.

Still, I believe there is a happy medium for leveraging speech interfaces as part of a multi-modal interface — one that uses speech as an interface where it makes sense. Some tasks are better suited for a speech interface, while others are not. For example, speech provides an ideal way to provide input to an application when you can capitalize on information stored in the user’s head. But it’s much less successful when dealing with large lists of unfamiliar items.

Talkin' to your ride
Other factors, besides Apple, are driving the growing role of speech interfaces — particularly in automotive. Speech interfaces can, for example, help address the issue of driver distraction. They allow drivers to keep their “eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” to quote an oft-used phrase.

So, will we see a paradigm shift towards speech interfaces? It's unlikely. I'm hoping, though, that we'll see a UI evolution that makes better use of them.

Think of it more as a paradigm nudge than a paradigm shift.

---

Recommended reading

Situation Awareness: a Holistic Approach to the Driver Distraction Problem
Wideband Speech Communications for Automotive: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 

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Honing, lubrication and oil consumption

Cast iron has been successfully used for monolithic blocks. This is because the casting process can mass-produce large complex shapes. The cylinder bore must have high dimensional accuracy. Honing is the finishing process used to give accurate roundness and straightness. It is performed after the fine boring process. Figure 2.10 shows a micrograph of a honed bore surface.

The honing whetstone carved the crosshatch pattern. During engine operation, the groove of the crosshatch holds lubricating oil. The resulting oil film generates hydrodynamic lubrication Figure 2.11 is a picture of a honing machine. The tool shaft installs a honing head with a segmented whetstone at its end (Fig. 2.12). The whetstone grinds the bore by exerting an expanding pressure. The vertical motion of the head together with revolution generates the crosshatch pattern. The sharpness of the whetstone determines the profile of the crosshatch. A dull honing

stone with an excess pressure gives an unwanted over-smeared surface. Ideally the finished surface exposes graphite without burr. The quality of the honing is measured by surface roughness value.

The graphite in the cast iron block works as a solid lubricant during machining as well as in engine operation. A solid lubricant gives a low frictional force without hydrodynamic lubrication. Graphite, MoS2, WS2,

Sn, and Pb are all well known as solid lubricants. The low frictional force of graphite comes from the fact that the crystal structure has a very low frictional coefficient during slip at the basal plane. Figure 2.13 shows a schematic representation of the mechanism. The crystal slides easily along its basal plane even with a low shear force. The graphite decreases friction for tools during machining. The brittle nature of graphite makes chips discontinuous.The resultant high machinability gives high dimensional accuracy to cast iron parts. The graphite also works as a solid lubricant to prevent seizure of the piston or piston ring even under less oily conditions.

The micro-burr of the crosshatch disrupts the oil film to obstruct hydrodynamic lubrication. Additional Mn-phosphate conversion coating (refer to Appendix H) chemically removes the micro-burr to increase oil retention.This prevents seizure during the running-in stage. As well as dimensional accuracy, the surface profile also determines oil retention which, in turn, greatly influences wear resistance. An appropriate profile should be established. One pass finish with the whetstone usually shapes the surface profile to the normal type shown in Fig. 2.14(a)2. An additional finish, scraping off the peak, generates the trapezoid pattern shown in Fig. 2.14(b). This finishing is called plateau honing.

A customer does not want to change engine oil frequently. Less oil consumption is therefore required. Figure 2.152 compares the oil consumption of a 1.9L car engine, measured by the final oil consumption value (FOC). For a normal type profile, the low Ra = 0.12 μm, middle Ra = 0.4 μm and high Ra = 0.62 μm. For the plateau type, the low Ra = 0.14 μm, middle Ra = 0.32 μm and high Ra = 0.88 μm. The oil consumption is least in the normal type of low Ra. However, it is worth mentioning that the scuffing resistance of the low Ra surface is poor. When the bore wall temperature is high, the plateau surface shows excellent resistance to scuffing although oil consumption is high. This feature comes from the fact that the plateau shape can maintain

more lubricating oil without disrupting the oil film.

READ MORE.......

The science and technology of materials in automotive engines

Hiroshi Yamagata

Woodhead Publishing and Maney Publishing

on behalf of

The Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining

CRC Press

Boca Raton Boston New York Washington, DC

WOODHEAD PUBLISHING LIMITED

Cambridge England

for more details and updates about automotive-technology-guide please visit.........

www.automotive-technology-guide.com

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www.automotive-technology-guide.com

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Enabling the next generation of cool

Capturing QNX presence in automotive can’t be done IMHO without a nod to our experience in other markets. Take, for example, the extreme reliability required for the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle. This is the selfsame reliability that automakers rely on when building digital instrument clusters that cannot fail. Same goes for the impressive graphics on the BlackBerry Playbook. As a result, Tier1s and OEMs can now bring consumer-level functionality into the vehicle.

Multicore is another example. The automotive market is just starting to take note while QNX has been enabling multi-processing for more than 25 years.

So I figure that keeping our hand in other industries means we actually have more to offer than other vendors who specialize.

I tried to capture this in a short video. It had to be done overnight so it’s a bit of a throw-away but (of course) I'd like to think it works. :-)

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Production model of the Invader TC-3 to be unveiled soon

The production model of the Invader TC-3 will be unveiled at this years 2011 SEMA Show. The Invader is a reverse trike with two steering front wheels and one rear drive wheel and comfortably seats two - an exciting fusion of bike and super car.

As compared to the prototype, the improved version has a longer and wider wheelbase for a better ride and handling, and we increased its width and height to make it more comfortable and easier to get in and out of.

The Invader features an enclosed cockpit complete with a roof and a tempered safety glass windshield. Its frame is constructed from one-and-a-half-inch tubular steel with a front crash zone, triangulated side protection bars and a complete roll-cage around the cockpit.

Inside there are two side-by-side fully adjustable race style bucket seats that will comfortably accommodate six foot plus occupants.

The Invader is powered by a 1,300 cc Hayabusa engine capable of delivering 197 horsepower to the 18-inch wide rear tire.According to their press release the can go from 0 to 60 mph in just under four seconds with a top speed of 150 mph. Stopping power is provided by front and rear discs equipped with four and six piston calipers respectively.

Last year's Invader prototype is pictured below:

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QNX and Freescale talk future of in-car infotainment

Paul Leroux

QNX and Freescale enjoy one of the longest technology partnerships in the field of automotive infotainment. The roots of their relationship reach back to 1999, when QNX became a founding member of MobileGT, an industry alliance formed by Motorola (Freescale's parent company) to drive the development of infotainment systems.

If you've read any of my blog posts on the QNX concept car (see here, here, and here), you've seen an example of how mixing QNX and Freescale technologies can yield some very cool results.

So it's no surprise that when Jennifer Hesse of Embedded Computing Design wanted to publish an article on the challenges of in-car infotainment, she approached both companies. The resulting interview, which features Andy Gryc of QNX and Paul Sykes of Freescale, runs the gamut — from mobile-device integration and multicore processors to graphical user interfaces and upgradeable architectures. You can read it here.
 

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Valve Failure

Three types of valve failure have been observed:

-valve recession;

-guttering;

-torching.

Valve recession, the most common form of wear in diesel engine inlet valves, is caused by loss of material from the seat insert and/or the valve. Guttering is a hightemperature, corrosive process usually caused by deposit flaking. Torching or melting of a valve is triggered by a rapid rise in the temperature of the valve head, which may be caused by preignition or abnormal combustion.

Inlet valve wear is a particular problem in diesel engines because the fuel is introduced directly into the cylinder. The inlet valve, therefore, receives no liquid on its seating face and seats under rather dry conditions.

Exhaust valve wear is less prominent than inlet valve wear as combustion products deposited on the seating faces provide lubrication. Exhaust valves are more likely to fail due to guttering or torching. Such failures are rarely seen in inlet valves.

READ MORE.......

E N G I N E E R I N G R E S E A R C H S E R I E S

Automotive Engine Valve Recession

R Lewis and R S Dwyer-Joyce

Series Editor

Duncan Dowson

Professional Engineering Publishing Limited,

London and Bury St Edmunds, UK

for STEP BY STEP GUIDE solidwork simple tutorial please visit.........

www.solidworksimpletutorial.blogspot.com

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When will I get apps in my car?

I read the other day that Samsung’s TV application store has surpassed 10 million app downloads. That got me thinking: When will the 10 millionth app download occur in the auto industry as a whole? (Let’s not even consider 10 million apps for a single automaker.)

There’s been much talk about the car as the fourth screen in a person’s connected life, behind the TV, computer, and smartphone. The car rates so high because of the large amount of time people spend in it. While driving to work, you may want to listen to your personal flavor of news, listen to critical email through a safe, text-to-speech email reader, or get up to speed on your daily schedule. When returning home, you likely want to unwind by tapping into your favorite online music service. Given the current norm of using apps to access online content (even if the apps are a thin disguise for a web browser), this begs the question — when can I get apps in my car?

Entune takes a hands-free
approach to accessing apps.

A few automotive examples exist today, such as GM MyLink, Ford Sync, and Toyota Entune. But app deployment to vehicles is still in its infancy. What conditions, then, must exist for apps to flourish in cars? A few stand out:

Cars need to be upgradeable to accept new applications — This is a no-brainer. However, recognizing that the lifespan of a car is 10+ years, it would seem that a thin client application strategy is appropriate.

Established rules and best practices to reduce driver distraction — These must be made available to, and understood by, the development community. Remember that people drive cars at high speeds and cannot fiddle with unintuitive, hard-to-manipulate controls. Apps that consumers can use while driving will become the most popular. Apps that can be used only when the car is stopped will hold little appeal.

A large, unfragmented platform to attract a development community — Developers are more willing to create apps for a platform when they don't have to create multiple variants. That's why Apple maintains a consistent development environment and Google/Android tries to prevent fragmentation. Problem is, fragmentation could occur almost overnight in the automotive industry — imagine 10 different automakers with 10 different brands, each wanting a branded experience. To combat this, a common set of technologies for connected automotive application development (think web technologies) is essential. Current efforts to bring applications into cars all rely on proprietary SDKs, ensuring fragmentation.

Other barriers undoubtedly exist, but these are the most obvious.

By the way, don’t ask me for my prediction of when the 10 millionth app will ship in auto. There’s lots of work to be done first.

 

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The cast iron monolithic block

The use of cast iron blocks in Table 2.1 has been widespread due to low cost as well as formability. Figure 2.2 shows a V6 block used for a car engine.

The block is normally the integral type where the cylinders and upper crankcase are all one part. The cylinders are large holes that are machined into the

block. The iron for the block is usually gray cast iron having a pearlitemicrostructure, typically being JIS-FC200 (Table 2.2). The microstructure is shown in Fig. 2.7. Gray cast iron is so called because its fracture has a gray appearance. Ferrite in the  microstructure of the bore wall should be avoided because too much soft ferrite tends to cause scratching, thus increasing blow-by.

Cast iron blocks are produced by sand casting. For cast iron, the die casting process using a steel die is fairly rare. The lifetime of the steel die is not adequate for repeated heat cycles caused by melting iron. As its name

suggests, sand casting uses a mold that consists of sand. The preparation of sand and the bonding are a critical and very often rate-controlling step.

Permanent patterns are used to make sand molds. Generally, an automated molding machine installs the patterns and prepares many molds in the same shape. Molten metal is poured immediately into the mold, giving this process very high productivity. After solidification, the mold is destroyed and the inner sand is shaken out of the block. The sand is then reusable. Two main methods are used for bonding sand. A green sand mold consists of mixtures of sand, clay and moisture. A dry sand mold consists of sand and synthetic

binders cured thermally or chemically.

Figure 2.8 shows a schematic view of a sand mold used to shape a tube. This mold includes a sand core to make the tube hollow. The casting obtained from using this mold is shown in Fig. 2.9. Normally, molten iron in a ladle is gently poured into the cavity under the force of gravity using a filling system. The sand core forming an inside hollow shape is made from a dry sand component. The bore as well as the coolant passages in the cylinder block are shaped as cored holes.

READ MORE.......

The science and technology of materials in automotive engines

Hiroshi Yamagata

Woodhead Publishing and Maney Publishing

on behalf of

The Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining

CRC Press

Boca Raton Boston New York Washington, DC

WOODHEAD PUBLISHING LIMITED

Cambridge England

for more details and updates about automotive-technology-guide please visit.........

www.automotive-technology-guide.com

---or---

www.automotive-technology-guide.com

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Marking over 5 years of putting HTML in production cars

Think back to when you realized the Internet was reaching beyond the desktop. Or better yet, when you realized it would touch every facet of your life. If you haven’t had that second revelation yet, perhaps you should read my post about the Twittering toilet.

For me, the realization occurred 11 years ago, when I signed up with QNX Software Systems. QNX was already connecting devices to the web, using technology that was light years ahead of anything else on the market. For instance, in the late 90s, QNX engineers created the “QNX 1.44M Floppy,” a self-booting promotional diskette that showcased how the QNX OS could deliver a complete web experience in a tiny footprint. It was an enormous hit, with more than 1 million downloads.

Embedding the web,
dot com style:
The QNX-powered Audrey

Also ahead of its time was the concept of a tablet computer that provided full web access. When I started at QNX, I was responsible for tablets, thin clients, and set-top boxes. The most successful of these pioneering devices was the 3COM Audrey kitchen tablet. It could send and receive email, browse the web, and sync to portable devices — incredibly sophisticated for the year 2000.

At the time, Don Fotsch, one of Audrey’s creators, coined the term “Internet Snacking” to describe the device’s browsing environment. The dot com crash in 2001 cut Audrey’s life short, but QNX maintained its focus on enabling a rich Internet experience in embedded devices, particularly those within the car.

The point of these stories is simple: Embedding the web is part of the QNX DNA. At one point, we even had multiple browser engines in production vehicles, including the Access Netfront engine, the QNX Voyager engine, and the OpenWave WAP Browser. In fact, we have had cars on the road with Web technologies since model year 2006.

With that pedigree in enabling HTML in automotive, we continue to push the envelope. We already enable unlimited web access with full browsers in BMW and other vehicles, but HTML in automotive is changing from a pure browsing experience to a full user experience encompassing applications and HMIs. With HTML5, this experience extends even to speech recognition, AV entertainment, rich animations, and full application environments — Angry Birds anyone?

People often now talk about “App Snacking,” but in the next phase of HTML 5 in the car, it will be "What’s for dinner?”!

 

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BBDevCon — Apps on BlackBerry couldn't be better

Unfortunately I joined the BBDevCon live broadcast a little too late to capture some of the absolutely amazing TAT Cascades video. RIM announced that TAT will be fully supported as a new HMI framework on BBX (yes, the new name of QNX OS for PlayBook and phones has been officially announced now). The video was mesmerizing — a picture album with slightly folded pictures falling down in an array, shaded and lit, with tags flying in from the side. It looked absolutely amazing, and it was created with simple code that configured the TAT framework "list" class with some standard properties. And there was another very cool TAT demo that showed an email filter with an active touch mesh, letting you filter your email in a very visual way. Super cool looking.

HTML5 support is huge, too — RIM has had WebWorks and Torch for a while, but their importance continues to grow. HTML5 apps provide the way to unify older BB devices and any of the new BBX-based PlayBooks and phones. That's a beautiful tie-in to automotive, where we're building our next generation QNX CAR software using HTML5. The same apps running on desktops, phones, tablets, and cars? And on every mobile device, not just one flavor like iOS or Android? Sounds like the winning technology to me.

Finally, they talked about the success of App World. There were some really nice facts to constrast with the negative press RIM has received on "apps". First some interesting comparisons: 1% of Apple developers made more than $1000, but 13% of BlackBerry developers made more than $100,000. Whoa. And that App World generates the 2nd most amount of money — more than Android. Also very interesting!

I can't do better than the presenters, so I'll finish up with some pics for the rest of the stats...

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New release of QNX acoustic processing suite means less noise, less tuning for hands-free systems

Paul Leroux

This just in: QNX has released version 2.0 of its acoustic processing suite, a modular software library designed to maximize the quality and clarity of automotive hands-free systems.

The suite, used by 18 automakers on over 100 vehicle platforms, provides modules for both the receive side and the send side of hands-free calls. The modules include acoustic echo cancellation, noise reduction, wind blocking, dynamic parametric equalization, bandwidth extension, high frequency encoding, and many others. Together, they enable high-quality voice communication, even in a noisy automotive interior.

Highlights of version 2.0 include:

Enhanced noise reduction — Minimizes audio distortions and significantly improves call clarity. Can also reconstruct speech masked by low-frequency road and engine noise.

Automatic delay calculation and compensation — Eliminates almost all product tuning, enabling automakers to save significant deployment time and expense.

Off-Axis noise rejection — Rejects sound not directly in front of a microphone or speaker, allowing dual-microphone solutions to hone in on the person speaking for greater intelligibility.

To read the press release, click here. To learn more about the acoustic processing suite, visit the QNX website.


The QNX Aviage Acoustic Processing Suite can run on the general purpose processor,
saving the cost of a DSP.

 

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Wanted: Haunted Vehicles

Halloween is just around the corner, and that reminds me of the haunted room at Lucent Bell Labs. Mind you, it wasn’t really haunted. But for a moment, I was convinced.

Let me explain. As I entered the room, I could hear two of my colleagues talking to each other, and by the sound of their voices, they were both sitting right in front of me. But when I looked, I could see only one person. Creepy, to say the least.

It took a few seconds, but I finally realized what was happening: The other colleague was in a different room, talking over a perfectly tuned prototype of a conference phone. The sense of presence was so real that I couldn’t help but feel we were all in the same room — even after I became aware of the “trick” being played!

It was then that I realized it: We don’t know what we’re missing until we experience it.

Making it real
Current telephone calls don’t sound like face-to-face conversations because the telephone network and terminals band-limit speech from about 50-10000 Hz down to 300-3400 Hz. To make matters worse, the phone’s single channel of audio eliminates spatial information about the sound source. As a result, we perceive most sounds as coming from the same point in space.

But here's the thing: The historical reasons for transmitting these single-channel narrowband speech signals no longer apply. Current technologies — such as wideband speech coders, spatial audio, and VoIP — are enabling speech communications with wider bandwidth speech and greater spatial information.

Many in the industry refer to these next-generation telecommunications systems as telepresence systems. “Telepresence” refers to the degree of realism created by a telecommunications system. Traditional systems have low telepresence while newer systems that use wider bandwidth speech and spatial audio have high telepresence.

Some people believe that a visual display is a must-have for a telepresence system. In reality, a display can decrease telepresence if its quality is poor. Experience shows that an audio-only system can have such high telepresence that people can't distinguish it from face-to-face communications — witness my haunting experience at Lucent Bell Labs.

Until recently, widespread deployment of telepresence systems has hit a roadblock: lack of standardization. Fortunately, the IETF CLUE Working Group and ITU-T Study Groups 16 and 12 are actively developing standards to remedy this situation.

Pimp my ride with telepresence
Telepresence systems have a lot to offer in an automotive environment. For instance, they could:

• reduce driver distraction
• make it easier to understand speech in the presence of vehicle noise
• reduce the fatigue that comes from trying to understand a degraded voice signal

Moreover, a telepresence system makes the talker on the far end of the phone connection sound more like they are in the vehicle; it also makes the talker easier to identify.

Successful deployment of telepresence in an automotive environment depends on several factors:

• attention to the design of vehicle platforms
• use of high-performance acoustic processing algorithms (AEC, NR, etc.), such as those provided by the QNX acoustic processing suite
• the ability to transport telepresence signals between telephony terminals — this is being enabled by increased VoIP availability (via LTE, for instance)

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to the day when my vehicle is haunted like that lab in New Jersey!

For additional reading on this topic, download the whitepaper, "Wideband Speech Communications for Automotive: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

 

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Harman infotainment systems gear up with QNX technology

Paul Leroux

If you've ever driven an Audi, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes, or Porsche, chances are it used a sound system or infotainment unit from Harman International.

Mind you, Harman isn't just about the high end. They also offer a scalable infotainment platform that can target both higher-end and lower-end vehicles. And they aren't just about European cars, either. Earlier this year, they became the first non-Japanese supplier to supply an infotainment system (the QNX-based Entune system) to Toyota. They also supply systems to Hyundai, Lexus, Subaru, and Ssangyong.

Since 2003, Harman has used the QNX OS as the software platform for its infotainment products. (In fact, Harman owned QNX Software Systems for about 5 years, before QNX became a subsidiary of RIM.) In this video, Rick Kreifeldt, Harman's VP of global automotive research and innovation, discusses how QNX technology and expertise help Harman cut time-to-market and create greener products. Check it out:



A version of this post originally appeared on the On Q blog.
 

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Sebastian Vettel's journey to the top

Red Bull has created an exclusive webpage dedicated to grand prix champion Sebastian Vettel. Check out the video clip charting his journey to the top of the podium.

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The cylinder

The cylinder must maintain an accurate roundness and straightness of the

order of μm during operation. The cylinder bore wall typically  experiences local wear at the top-dead-center point, where the oil film is most likely to fail, and scratching along the direction of travel of the piston. Figure 2.5 shows vertical scratching caused by scuffing. The grooves caused by scratching increase oil consumption and blow-by. In extreme cases, the piston seizes to the bore wall. The demand for higher output with improved exhaust gas emission has recently increased heat load to the cylinder even more. A much lighter weight design is also required.An engine generating high power output requires more cooling, since it generates more heat. Automotive engines have two types of cooling systems, air-cooled and water-cooled. Figure 2.1 shows the air-cooled type and Fig.2.2 the water-cooled type. Whilst an air-cooled engine may use a much simpler structure because it does not use the water-cooled system, the heat management of the cylinder block is not as easy. As a result, most automotive engines nowadays use water-cooled systems. It would be no exaggeration to say that the required cooling level for an individual engine determines its cylinder structure.

Figure 2.6 shows cutaway views of four different types of cylinder block structure. The monolithic or quasi-monolithic block (on the right) is made of

only one material. It is also called a linerless block because it does not contain liners (described later). The bore wall consists of either the same material as the block or a modified surface such as plating to improve wear resistance. It is normally difficult for one material to fulfill the various needs listed in Fig. 2.4. However a liner-less design in multi-bore engines can make the engine more compact by decreasing inter-bore spacing.

The other designs in Fig. 2.6 (on the left) incorporate separate liners. A liner is also called a sleeve. A wet liner is directly exposed to coolant at the outer surface so that heat directly dissipates into the coolant. To withstand combustion pressure and heat without the added support of the cylinder block, it must be made thicker than a dry liner. A wet liner normally has a flange at the top. When the cylinder head is installed, the clamping action pushes the liner into position. The cylinder head gasket keeps the top of the liner from leaking. A rubber or copper O-ring is used at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of a wet liner to prevent coolant from leaking into the crankcase. A dry liner presses or shrinks into a cylinder that has already been bored. Compared to the wet liner, this liner is relatively thin and is not exposed to the coolant. The cast-in liner design encloses the liner during the casting process of an entire cylinder block.

Table 2.1 lists various types of cylinder structures, their processing and characteristics. Cylinder blocks are normally made of cast iron or aluminum alloy. The aluminum block is much lighter. Various types of materials are combined to increase strength. In the following sections, we will look at the blocks of four-stroke engines. Those for two-stroke engines are discussed in the final section.

READ MORE.......

The science and technology of materials in automotive engines

Hiroshi Yamagata

Woodhead Publishing and Maney Publishing

on behalf of

The Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining

CRC Press

Boca Raton Boston New York Washington, DC

WOODHEAD PUBLISHING LIMITED

Cambridge England

for more details and updates about automotive-technology-guide please visit.........

www.automotive-technology-guide.com

---or---

www.automotive-technology-guide.com

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Car Magnets - an effective advertising medium

A great way to advertise your business or organisation is to use the vehicles. They represent a really great medium for advertising and promotion as they are visible, mobile and cost effective.

You have several options: First of all, there is the more permanent method of painting on the vehicles or you can also have the really popular method - using customized vinyl decals which can partially or fully wrap the vehicle. Another method which is fast gaining in popularity is the use of magnetic signs. These offer several advantages over the previous two methods namely, in terms of flexibility and relatively inexpensive as well. They can be removed easily and transferred to other positions or vehicles.

Sometimes if you are using your car for both commercial and private purposes, you may not want the sign on all the time. In this case, magnetic signs are the obvious choice. On the other hand, these signs have certain limitations in the sense that it may not be possible to have full coverage or have them go round the curves or the vehicle.

Anyway, I was going through the CarMagnets.com - a company which specialises in car magnets.

According to the company, their signs use high quality material, with non-fading ink which is UV and scratch resistant. However, I guess there is a small mistake on the home page at the top as it says that you can choose from 3 sizes when in fact, they offer five standard sizes of magnetic car signs.

They take away the difficult job of designing your own signs by offering over 100 templates to choose from. To make it easier, the templates are also grouped under different categories ranging from "Just Married" to "Autism Awareness" - all you have to do is add your own slogan or company name. On other other hand, if you are the artistic type or know someone good with graphics - you also have the option of uploading you own graphics and then use their online editing tool to add additional text.

I feel that a little bit more information about the advantages of magnetic car signs and also some more information about the company would help. It also appears that their pricing page is still under construction - not a great way to instil confidence in prospective customers. They could also do with a more professional looking logo. Apart from that, I think the site is really innovative and their online editing tool is really user friendly as well. It took me less than 5 minutes to choose a template and create my own sign.

Check out the site in case you are thinking of getting a magnetic sign for your car.

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QNX Auto Summit Japan 2011

How many car guys does it take to change a light bulb?  Three normally, but only one if you've already lifted  the engine block out of the way!

There's an actual reason for this joke which I'll explain in the epilogue.  But let me shamelessly segue: there's a whole room full of car folks here in Nagoya, and they're working on something which needs a good more heavy lifting than needed to change that troublesome light bulb.  They're building tomorrow's car systems.  To help, QNX is hosting a full day event here in beautiful Nagoya, covering what the latest goings on are in the automotive space that's near and dear to our hearts--in-cab vehicle electronics.

Getting seated before the day begins

Our first presenter was Dr. Motoyuki Akamatsu, who broke the ice with a very entertaining video about an early 1966 study on driver distraction.  The driver is wearing a device that looks like a giant eyelid that closes over his face on regular intervals, occluding his vision.  The driver is coincidentally also the narrator, calmly describing the whole experiment as his view of the road is completely blocked every couple seconds or so.  This is all while normal traffic is flowing around his car, totally unaware that this test driver could run into them at any moment. What they got away with in the sixties! The rest of his talk was equally informative; Akamatsu-san talked about how modern testing for driver distraction is done, and how mobiles can impact that.

I gave a talk about picking the right HMI (or UX if you prefer) framework for automotive infotainment.  There's a ton of choice out there--HTML5, Adobe AIR, Qt, Android, Meego, EB Guide,  OpenGL ES--I could go on and on. There are a lot of things to consider.  Given that I didn't have an abundance of time and that it was all being dynamically translated into Japanese, I couldn't cover as much as I might have wanted.  Look for a future blog from me where I can give the topic a little bit more space.  (Mini-spoiler alert: I've listed my favorite first.)

The president of ARM Japan gave a talk about ARM use in vehicles. A short summary: ARM processors are on the rise everywhere in the car, and trending upwards. ARM licensed 6 billion CPUs last year, and they predict 100 billion devices by 2020.  Japan is probably the only area where they aren't dominating (yet). A short roadmap then was presented about Cortex family--A8, A9, A15, and A5. Also he talked about the ARM M series. I must apologize that my jet lag affect my attention span during ARM M series (that architecture is almost irrelevant in infotainment, if that's an excuse). He also talked about ARM's Mali GPU built on Midgard architecture (supporting both OpenGLES 2.0 and DirectX9). 

Alex Kinsella of RIM gave a talk about separation of personal and enterprise use of devices, in a way that gives simultaneously more freedom for the user and more options and security for the enterprise.  All very cool stuff for enabling more OEM options to the vehicle.

Our very own Andrew Poliak talked about the various different connectivity options between cars and mobiles--both where we are today (MirrorLink, iPod Out, Remote Skin/BlueTooth SPP+A2DP) and where we see that they're going (HTML5, HDMI/MDL, USB 3.0).

Andrew explains OEM's evolving needs and timelines

Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics had a lot of interesting things to share about their in-depth research, covering current industry trends and some of Roger's predictions.

• Global smartphones are right now 38% of the mobile market, with all signs of growth.
• You need good traffic info that's predictive.  If it's not, its worthless, and navigation and traffic services are still the biggest customer desire out of an in-car system.
• Solve distraction problems before they are regulated out by governments.
• Apps in the car will be very important.  Their research shows over 55% buyers (world wide average) want it.  OEMs though take note--this will sell cars, but there's no profit in it for the OEM themselves.
• Many different connectivity options exist. Nobody has hmi nailed yet, so there's a big opportunity to get it right.
• HMI solutions are converging on mobile device communications.

Roger lists every mobile connectivity solution known to man

Probably most emphasized facts of Roger's presentation were about China.

• China is important. If you don't play there you're writing your own ticket for irrelevance. It's the fastest growing automotive market, with a rich aftermarket space.
• China infotainment solutions are like the wild west right now, and include some crazy displays that Roger showed us with dozens of touch buttons.  They've even got systems that have the ability to create and edit docs while driving! Microsoft Word at 70mph, here I come!  I can't wait for the next IDE to have in-vehicle recognition so I can program while driving.  
• China has exceedingly complex HMIs with apparent disregard for any regulations that might exist. 
• China is not the safest place.  They've got tons of new drivers, new infrastructure, and growth rates that exceed their experience.  The World Health Organization estimates 200,000 vehicle fatalities (significantly higher than China's officially reported numbers).  That's around 18% the world total vehicular fatalities.  Wow.

Finally, our VP of Sales and Marketing Derek Kuhn ended up with a description of where QNX is going for the future automotive platforms with QNX CAR 2.  In a word?  Awesomeness.  (Coincidentally, this is Derek's favourite word.) In ten? Full support for almost everything car makers ever dreamed of. 

We wrapped up the day with a cocktail hour for all our guests and some Formula 1 race day ticket give-aways to some lucky attendees.  

Guests having caught their taxis or trains, and the show nicely wrapped, the QNX staff gave secret surprise birthday wishes to our Alison Canavan, the world's best event coordinator, and to the world's most thoughtful person and our Auto Summit Japan emcee, Kosuke Abe.

All in all, a very busy and successful day.  I'm pooped.  And that's a wrap.

You've probably forgotten about the car guy lightbulb joke already, but I'll finish explaining it anyway. My girlfriend had one of her car's headlights burn out, and she asked me if I could fix it. My male chivalry and handyman pride made me jump at the opportunity to help! I naively went out to the car with a screwdriver, expecting to maybe loosen the screws around the light enclosure, pop out the bulb, put in the new one, and dust off my hands for a well deserved beer in one minute flat. It became immediately obvious that Honda had something much more nefarious in mind when they built the Civic. No screws.  You had to remove the bulb from the back, but there wasn't any obvious way for a human hand (well, no adult human, anyway) to fit in the allotted space.  I went back into the house, grabbed a handful of tools this time, and spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out what parts of the car needed to be disassembled to get at the light bulb. This wasn't immediately fruitful either, so I went back in the house, consulted the Internet, and lo and behold--I wasn't just an idiot.  I found many other posts from many other delighted Civic owners.  It looked like the most popular solution was to remove the battery, battery cage and power steering pump mounts, lift the power steering out of the way, and then you could get at the bulb.  More of a challenge than I was really looking for, I'm afraid, so I went back to my girlfriend, tail between my legs, and shamefully recommended that she take it to the dealer.

I couldn't help smiling at her retelling of the dealer visit.  The first mechanic came out, all confident with a line something like "well, many guys don't really know how to do car stuff, so we'll take care of it."  Then he spent about 15 minutes digging around, trying to discover how on earth you get the stupid bulb out.  He finally had to call over his boss to get assistance.  They did end up replacing the bulb, but it was a little more complicated than he expected too! Tally it up--me and two mechanics--three guys to replace a light bulb. 

Good thing that building automotive software is so much easier.

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QNX Auto Summit Japan 2011 – ‘Automotive at the speed of Mobility’

The QNX Auto Summit Japan 2011 will be starting soon, here in Nagoya, Japan.  We’re expecting a good crowd of Tier 1s and OEMs from across Japan.  QNX technology is being showcased in a BMW X5 and Audi A8 - as seen below - as well as in many of our partner demos.  The theme of the event is ‘Automotive at the speed of Mobility’!  Industry speakers will focus on how the worlds of automotive and mobility are converging at a break-neck speed, and what Tier 1s and OEMs will need to know to design for these next-generation systems.  Should be interesting!  Stay tuned for more.

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Countdown to the Auto Summit Japan

I’m here at the QNX Auto Summit Japan 2011  in Nagoya, Japan and really energized about our event!  We’re being supported by some of our key partners including ARM, Redbend, Freescale, A&W, Elektrobit, Texas Instruments, Renesas and TCS.  

There’s presentations, amazing car demos based on QNX and serious networking planned!  Looking forward to meeting many of the Japanese Tier 1s and OEMs.  More to come once the event starts. 

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Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) MirrorLink meeting, Chicago, September 29, 2011

For those who aren't yet reset on "MirrorLink", it's the new term for what previously was called TerminalMode.  The name change is a definite improvement.  I informally polled people to ask them what they though when they first heard "Terminal Mode".  Basically the answers fell into two camps: either a telnet replacement or a disease you really don't want your doctor saying that you have. Neither sound like a real ringing endorsement!  MirrorLink as a term makes sense.  Good job CCC.

Here are some of my observations and notes from the CCC show in Chicago last week.

• MirrorLink will not be going away any time soon--there is enough industry momentum to keep it alive for a while.  Sounds like roughly 60% of the car makers and 60% of the mobile makers are behind it to some extent or another.
• QNX is very bullish on HTML5 as a replacement for MirrorLink-like features, but it doesn’t look like HTML5 is part of the future MirrorLink strategy at all.  Instead, they’re looking at HDMI or MDL—direct video from the mobile with a control channel.  This is a generic replacement for iPod out, and it's an approach that we've considered as well and will likely support, so this is a good alignment at least in direct video technology. Even though they don't see the wisdom of the HTML5 path yet (patience--they'll get there :-).
• OEMs don’t seem to realize how badly this will impact their revenue chain or are taking the "cross your fingers" approach.  Certainly many seemed to be focused solely on the value MirrorLink provides by enabling customers and building new markets.  I think it's somewhat Pollyanna-ish to not admit MirrorLink has the potential to completely decimate in-vehicle navigation uptake.  If I can bring my phone in for navigation for a half-way decent experience with a built-in screen, who's going to spend $3000 on a nav-only solution? 
• MirrorLink isn’t as focused as much on enabling third party apps (although they did talk about it), but more about mirroring custom-built phone apps into the car.  Everything that was demoed in the demo room breakout was a customized app that provided an integrated experience.  This is both bad and good.  Bad because it definitely reduces the short-term promise of opening up a huge third party ecosystem.  Good because I think it's the only reasonable way to go--there's really no other way OEMs can justify the liability of phone apps within the car, unless they can have some measure of control.
•  I still think that there's a significant amount of work they need to address safety concerns around driver distraction. MirrorLink the specification, and the general CCC communications contains "driver-safe" messaging.  However, my take is that the actual participation level people, especially on the mobile side seem to discount their accountability when you bring third party apps into the car, and nothing in the specification really makes it possible for an automotive outsider to make a car-safe app.  I highly doubt this approach will fly. The application level certification that is planned for a future MirrorLink 1.1 release seems almost a mandatory requirement before this issue can be put to bed.

Proposed app certification process

• Interestingly, almost every car company I talked to had a different take on how MirrorLink will impact their strategy—some see it as a low-end only play, but others see it as a high-end play.  There's still a lot of confusion as to where it slots into product lines.  I didn’t talk to anyone there who isn’t going to do it at all (not surprising given that the show was completely MirrorLink-focused), but some didn't seem to put a lot of weight behind it.  The perception I had was that some were doing it to "keep up with the Joneses."
• I give the CCC credit for realizing that MirrorLink has a lot of danger for the fragmentation whirlpool that has plagued Android releases and that makes Bluetooth interop the biggest nightmare for those who implement it and test it.  To that end, they're really trying to take this one head-on. It's still very early days to see if they will be successful, with the first MirrorLink 1.0.1 systems coming out in production.  (Alpine's aftermarket ICS-X8 earns that "first to market" distinction.) I hold out hope that CCC can keep MirrorLink interop from becoming a quagmire, but this is a bugger of a problem to fix in an area that tries to tie "slow-moving" car tech with the mobile space, so keep your eyes peeled...

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