Automotive Engineering
Automotive Engineering highlights issues related to automobile manufacturing – including vehicle parts and accessories – and the environmental impact and safety of automotive products, production facilities and manufacturing processes.
innovations-report offers stimulating reports and articles on a variety of topics ranging from automobile fuel cells, hybrid technologies, energy saving vehicles and carbon particle filters to engine and brake technologies, driving safety and assistance systems.
Test-drive ESA technology
PlayStation users worldwide can now see for themselves what happens when Ariane launcher technology is applied to Le Mans racing. All they have to do is sit back and select which Pescarolo racing car they want to test-drive.
Gran Turismo 4, a new PlayStation 2 game, features the two custom-built top-performance Pescarolo racing cars that took part in the Le Mans endurance race in 2003 and 2004. Both were constructed using technologies developed for European space programmes.
Airbags will become even safer
Russian scientists are successfully developing smokeless gunpowder for automobile airbags, under ISTC Project #1882. This powder combusts almost instantaneously at the most important moment, but the airbag will fill with a gas that is harmless to the passenger, not like known compositions today.
The Russian scientists, from the Institute of Chemical Physics RAS, propose to make car safety airbags even safer. Their theoretical and practical investigations have established of which c
Non-Blinding Headlights
A new way to protect the eyes of drivers from the light of oncoming cars is found by Russian scientists. The technology for production of new anti-blinding systems is under development. Finance is extended by the Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE) under the program “Start”.
Russian scientists from Dimitrovgrad (Ul’yanovsk area) have designed a new non-blinding headlight system. Its use in cars will significantly decrease the risk of driving at nigh
Airbags Will Become Even More Secure
Russian researchers, specialists of the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, suggest the way to make motor-car airbags even more secure. Their theoretical and practical investigations allowed to determine which the compounds should be included in the powder that burns at the moment of blow during the accident so that the airbags were instantly filled up with gases not dangerous to human beings and environment. The researchers’ effort was supported by the Interna
Scientists close in on ’superbrakes’ for cars
A theoretical study of friction between solids that looks at the process just one molecule at a time could soon lead to a more effective way to stop cars in an emergency than simply slamming on the brakes or using ABS. This research is reported today in a special Einstein Year issue of the New Journal of Physics (www.njp.org) published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft).
Scientists and engineers have assimi
Novel system for monitoring vehicles
The University of Deusto (Bilbao) is developing a system for the remote monitoring of vehicles.
The NEXT-CAR project consists in developing a system for the management of a number of sensors incorporated into a vehicle and the subsequent sending of data from these to a monitoring control centre.
The basis of the project is a small pocket computer (PDA) which receives all the information from the vehicle’s network of electronic sensors, thus enabling it to monitor the compl