Engineering Essay on From Electric Power Steering to the Airbag System Essays

Engineering Essay on From Electric Power Steering to the Airbag System Essays Engineering Essay on From Electric Power Steering to the Airbag System Essay Engineering Essay on From Electric Power Steering to the Airbag System Essay Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, and Oxford University. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] As of 2013, three U. S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars: Nevada, Florida and California.. Vehicular communication systems Individual vehicles may benefit from information obtained from other vehicles in the vicinity, especially information relating to traffic congestion and safety hazards.Vehicular communication systems use vehicles and roadside units as the communicating nodes in a peer-to-peer network, providing each other with information. As a cooperative approach, vehicular communication systems can allow all cooperating vehicles to be more effective. According to a 2010 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, vehicular communication systems could help avoid up to 81 percent of all traffic accidents. [82] In 2012, computer scientists at the University of Texas in Austin began developing smart intersections designed for autonomous cars.The intersections will have no traffic lights and no stop signs, instead using computer programs that will communicate directly with each car on the road. [83] Public opinion surveys In a 2011 online survey of 2,006 consumers in the US and the UK conducted by Accenture, 49% of those surveyed said they would be comfortable using a driverless car. [84] According to a 2012 survey of 17,400 vehicle owners conducted by J. D. Power and Associates, 37% of all survey responders initially said they would be interested in purchasing a fully autonomous car. 85] However, that figure dropped to 20% once they learned the technology would cost an additional $3,000. With an additional cost of $3,000, 25% of the male vehicle buyers were willing to pay for a fully autonomous vehicle, while only 14 percent of women wanted the feature. [85] AIRBAG SYSTEM An airbag is a part of the safety restraint system in cars. Airbags are bags that rapidly fill with air when an accident happens. That way they can prevent injuries that occur be cause the driver hit a hard object. An airbag is a useful vehicle safety device.Airbags are used in the world increasingly because in accidents, it can help passengers reduce shock. When the sensor feels a strong shock, the gas device explodes. This gas fills the bag immediately. An airbag, also known as a Supplementary/Secondary Restraint System (SRS) or as an Air Cushion Restraint System (ACRS), is a flexible membrane or envelope, inflatable to contain air or some other gas. Air bags are most commonly used for cushioning, in particular after very rapid inflation in the case of an automobile collision. History of airbagsAn American inventor, Dr. Allen S. Breed, invented and developed a key component for automotive use. Breed Corporation then marketed this innovation first in 1967 to Chrysler. A similar Auto-Ceptor crash-restraint, brandon, developed by Eaton, Yale ;amp; Towne Inc. for Ford was soon offered as an automatic safety system in the USA. The Italian Eaton-Livia company of fered a variant with . The first patent on an inflatable crash-landing device for airplanes was filed during World War II. In the 1980s, the first commercial airbags appeared in automobiles.Since model year 1990, all new cars sold in the United States have been required to have airbags on both driver and passenger sides. To date, statistics show that airbags reduce the risk of dying in a direct frontal crash by about 30 percent. Today, some cars have six or even eight airbags. How airbags work First, moving objects have momentum (the product of the mass and the velocity of an object). If no outside force acts on an object, the object will continue to move at its present speed and direction (because of inertia). Cars consist of several objects, including the vehicle itself, loose objects in the car and, of course, passengers.If these objects are not restrained, they will continue moving at whatever speed the car is traveling at, even if the car is stopped by a collision. Stopping an objects momentum requires force acting over a period of time. When a car crashes, the force required to stop an object is very great because the cars momentum has changed instantly while the passengers has not (there is not much time to work with). The goal of any supplemental restraint system is to help stop the passenger while doing as little damage to him or her as possible.What an airbag wants to do is to slow the passengers speed to zero with little or no damage. The constraints that it has to work within are huge. The airbag has the space between the passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a second to work with. Even that tiny amount of space and time is valuable, however, if the system can slow the passenger evenly rather than forcing an abrupt halt to his or her motion. Motorcycle airbag In 2006 the airbag was set up for a motorcycle. This was in the Gold Wing by Honda. 1] Air bags supplement the safety belt by reducing the chance that the occupants h ead and upper body will strike some part of the vehicles interior. They also help reduce the risk of serious injury by distributing crash forces more evenly across the occupants body. One recent study concluded that as many as 6,000 lives have been saved as a result of airbags. However, the exact number of lives saved is almost impossible to calculate. SPECIAL VEHICLES (EARTH MOVERS/ EXCAVATORS) Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform (known as the house).The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. A cable-operated excavator uses winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements. They are a natural progression from the steam shovels and often called power shovels. All movement and functions of a hydraulic excavator are accomplished through the use of hydraulic fluid, with hydraulic cylinders and hydraulic motors. Due to the linear actuation of hydraulic cylinders, their mode of operation is fun damentally different from cable-operated excavators.Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform (known as the house). The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. A cable-operated excavator uses winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements. They are a natural progression from the steam shovels and often called power shovels. All movement and functions of a hydraulic excavator are accomplished through the use of hydraulic fluid, with hydraulic cylinders and hydraulic motors.Due to the linear actuation of hydraulic cylinders, their mode of operation is fundamentally different from cable-operated excavators. Configurations Excavators come in a wide variety of sizes. The smaller ones are called mini or compact excavators. Caterpillars smallest mini-excavator weighs 2,060 pounds (930Â  kg) and has 13 hp; their largest model is the largest excavator available (a record previously held by the Orenstei n ;amp; Koppel RH400) the CAT 6090, it weighs in excess of 2,160,510 pounds (979,990Â  kg), has 4500Â  hp and has a bucket size of around 52. m? depending on bucket fitted. Engines in excavators drive hydraulic pumps; there are usually 3 pumps: the two main pumps are for supplying oil at high pressure (up to 5000 psi) for the rams, swing motor, track motors, and accessories, and the third is a lower pressure (700 psi) pump for Pilot Control, this circuit used for the control of the spool valves, this allows for a reduced effort required when operating the controls. The two main sections of an excavator are the undercarriage and the house.The undercarriage includes the blade (if fitted), tracks, track frame, and final drives, which have a hydraulic motor and gearing providing the drive to the individual tracks, and the house includes the operator cab, counterweight, engine, fuel and hydraulic oil tanks. The house attaches to the undercarriage by way of a center pin, allowing the ma chine to slew 360Â ° unhindered. The main boom attaches to the house, and can be one of several different configurations: * Most are mono booms: these have no movement apart from straight up and down. Some others have a knuckle boom which can also move left and right in line with the machine. * Another option is a hinge at the base of the boom allowing it to hydraulically pivot up to 180Â ° independent to the house; however, this is generally available only to compact excavators. * There are also triple-articulated booms (TAB). Attached to the end of the boom is the stick (or dipper arm). The stick provides the digging force needed to pull the bucket through the ground. The stick length is optional depending whether reach (longer stick) or break-out power (shorter stick) is required.On the end of the stick is usually a bucket. A wide, large capacity (mud) bucket with a straight cutting edge is used for cleanup and levelling or where the material to be dug is soft, and teeth are no t required. A general purpose (GP) bucket is generally smaller, stronger, and has hardened side cutters and teeth used to break through hard ground and rocks. Buckets have numerous shapes and sizes for various applications. There are also many other attachments which are available to be attached to the excavator for boring, ripping, crushing, cutting, lifting, etc.Before the 1990s, all excavators had a long or conventional counterweight that hung off the rear of the machine to provide more digging force and lifting capacity. This became a nuisance when working in confined areas. In 1993 Yanmar launched the worlds first Zero Tail Swing excavator,[2] which allows the counterweight to stay inside the width of the tracks as it slews, thus being safer and more user friendly when used in a confined space. This type of machine is now widely used throughout the world.There are two main types of Control configuration generally use in excavators to control the boom and bucket, both of which s pread the four main digging controls between two x-y joysticks. This allows a skilled operator to control all four functions simultaneously. The most popular configuration in the US is the SAE controls configuration while in other parts of the world, the ISO control configuration is more common. Some manufacturers such as Takeuchi have switches that allow the operator to select which control configuration to use. Excavator attachmentsHydraulic excavator capabilities have expanded far beyond excavation tasks with buckets. With the advent of hydraulic-powered attachments such as a breaker, a grapple or an auger, the excavator is frequently used in many applications other than excavation. Many excavators feature a quick coupler for simplified attachment mounting, increasing the machines utilization on the jobsite. Excavators are usually employed together with loaders and bulldozers. Most wheeled, compact and some medium-sized (11 to 18-tonne) excavators have a backfill (or dozer) blade .This is a horizontal bulldozer-like blade attached to the undercarriage and is used for levelling and pushing removed material back into a hole COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEMS A considerable amount of research is addressing eSafety systems of the future. Much work is being carried out on technologies such as collision avoidance systems but their usefulness in addressing high-risk crash scenarios typical of most European roads as well as their feasibility has yet to be determined.Research on collision warning and collision avoidance systems is taking place in Japan, the United States and in the European Union within the European Commissions eSafety programme. Very large estimates of the safety potential of such systems have been claimed following laboratory studies, but the range of technical and behavioural issues involved in many of the concepts require full on-road assessment. To be practical, most of the proposed systems require a well controlled traffic situation, such as that foun d on motorways, but where the casualty reduction potential is relatively low.For an overview of key issues [41]OECD, 2003 Road safety: impact of new technologies. Various systems are under development: Forward Collision Warning Is a system which comprises a visual and audible warning that the driver is too close to the vehicle in front. The warning depends on how long the distance is between the vehicle and the vehicle ahead. The level of warning changes from safe to critical as the following distance decreases. The Reverse Collision Warning System Is a visual and audible system which warns drivers about the likelihood of collision with an object behind the vehicle by means of sensors in the rear bumper.The warning intensifies when the distance between the vehicles rear and the object decreases. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) Enhances automatic cruise control found in many new vehicles by automatically maintaining a set following distance to the vehicle in front. The distance to the preceding vehicle is measured by radar, laser systems or both. When the speed of the vehicle in front is slower than the adjusted speed, the ACC system adjusts vehicle speed to allow a safe distance to the lead vehicle. Collision Mitigation by brakingIs an evolution of ACC with the addition of a braking system that increases headway by braking; these systems may also detect obstacles within the road and brake accordingly. The speed and separation distance at which the systems operate is determined by the arrangement and type of sensors and the recognition ability of the systems. Lane-Keeping Devices Are electronic warning systems that are activated if the vehicle is about to veer off the lane or the road. Times to collision in safety-critical lane changes are normally much less than one second.Since mean driver reaction time is about one second, there is not sufficient time for a driver to respond to a warning before crashing. Because there is insufficient time for reaction to a war ning, lane change and merging crashes can probably only be avoided by intervening systems. But these have their own problems: how to detect driver intentions and how to intervene. This may be by taking over the steering from the driver or by providing feedback through the steering wheel. The technical and operational feasibility of such systems has still to be demonstrated. Most existing systems are warning only systems.