The UK automotive industry is a large and critical sector within the UK economy. It accounts for 820,000 jobs, exports finished goods worth £8.9bn annually and adds value of £10bn to the UK economy each year. However, the UK automotive industry is currently facing great challenges, such as responsibility for a 19% and growing share of UK annual CO2 emissions, strong international competition, declining employment and hollowing-out of the domestic supply chain, and enormous pressure from regulatory bodies for decarbonisation. A solution to these challenges comes from the development and manufacture of low carbon vehicles (LCVs), as identified by the UK government. Vehicle lightweighting is the most effective way to improve fuel economy and to reduce CO2 emissions. This has been demonstrated by many vehicle mass reduction programmes worldwide. Historically vehicle mass reduction has been achieved incrementally by reducing the mass of specific vehicle parts piece-by-piece, with little consideration of the carbon footprint of input materials and closed-loop recycling of end of life vehicles (ELVs). Our vision is that the future low carbon vehicle is achieved by a combination of multi-material concepts with mass-optimised design approaches through the deployment of advanced low carbon input materials, efficient low carbon manufacturing processes and closed-loop recycling of ELVs. To achieve this vision, we have gathered the best UK academic brainpower for vehicle lightweighting and formed the TARF-LCV consortium, whose members include 8 research teams involving 18 academics from Brunel, Coventry, Exeter, Imperial, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford Brookes and Strathclyde. TARF-LCV aims to deliver fundamental solutions to the key challenges faced by future development of LCVs in the strategic areas of advanced materials, enabling manufacturing technologies, holistic vehicle design and closed-loop recycling of ELVs. We have developed a coherent research programme organised in 6 work packages. We will develop closed-loop recyclable aluminium (Al) and magnesium (Mg) alloys, metal matrix composites (MMCs) and recyclable polymer matrix composites (PMCs) for body structure and powertrain applications; we will develop advanced low carbon manufacturing technologies for casting, forming and effective vehicle assembly and disassembly; and we will develop mass-optimised design principles and specific life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology for future LCV development. To deliver the 4-year TARF-LCV programme, in addition to the EPSRC funding requested, we have leveraged financial support for 2 post-doctoral research fellows from the EPSRC Centre-LiME at Brunel University and LATEST2 at Manchester University, and for 9 PhD studentships from partner universities. Consequently, the TARF-LCV research team will include 18 academics, 11 post-doctoral research fellows and 18 research students. This not only ensures a successful delivery of the TARF-LCV research programme, but also provides a training ground for the future leaders of low carbon vehicle development in the UK.

Within the automotive industry there is an ever-increasing demand for the use of lightweight materials, particularly aluminium alloys, for structural components. Cold forming of aluminium alloy sheet metal components has the problems of low ductility and high springback, which are difficult to solve. Hot stamping can increase formability and reduce springback, but it destroys the desirable microstructure and the post-forming heat-treatment required to restore it would result in distortion of the formed panels during quenching after Solution Heat Treatment (SHT). To overcome the above problems, a novel process, which is called solution Heat treatment, Forming and cold-die Quenching (HFQ), for producing high strength and high precision Al-alloy sheet parts, has been the subject of some preliminary tests by the principal investigator. From the initial investigation, it has been concluded that HFQ could be an excellent process to produce high strength, high precision heat-treatable Al-alloy sheet components and to increase the formability of leaner composition non-heat-treatable alloys. Thus this project aims to establish the basic science and process window in order to predict suitable alloy and die combinations to successfully implement the process, in the first instance, into the automotive industry.

Within the automotive industry there is an ever-increasing demand for the use of lightweight materials, particularly aluminium alloys, for structural components. Cold forming of aluminium alloy sheet metal components has the problems of low ductility and high springback, which are difficult to solve. Hot stamping can increase formability and reduce springback, but it destroys the desirable microstructure and the post-forming heat-treatment required to restore it would result in distortion of the formed panels during quenching after Solution Heat Treatment (SHT). To overcome the above problems, a novel process, which is called solution Heat treatment, Forming and cold-die Quenching (HFQ), for producing high strength and high precision Al-alloy sheet parts, has been the subject of some preliminary tests by the principal investigator. From the initial investigation, it has been concluded that HFQ could be an excellent process to produce high strength, high precision heat-treatable Al-alloy sheet components and to increase the formability of leaner composition non-heat-treatable alloys. Thus this project aims to establish the basic science and process window in order to predict suitable alloy and die combinations to successfully implement the process, in the first instance, into the automotive industry.

The automotive industry in the UK remains one of the key strategic sectors in the overall national R&D footprint, employing some 160,000 people (38000 in motor sport) [1]. The UK is home to a number of global OEMs representing the largest inward investment in the country's R&D through the establishment of significant technical centres. Influenced by the stringent emission mandates (Euro 4: Directive 98/70/EC and amendment: 70/220/EEC) and noise pollution targets (EU:DIRECTIVE 70/157/EEC and amendment: 2007/34/EC, USA: FHWA-HEP-06-020) improvements in engine efficiency have assumed a high priority with automotive manufacturers. An effective way is to reduce frictional (parasitic) and mechanical (errant dynamic) losses, accounting for 15 / 25 % of lost energy. Errant dynamic losses refer to inertial imbalance and structural deformation, also contributing to noise and vibration pollution. The largest mechanical losses are due to translational imbalance of pistons and rotational imbalance of the crank system, with increasing engine roughness due to demands for high output power-to-weight ratio. Engine roughness refers to structural vibration of lightly damped engine systems. Worst conditions for frictional losses arise under stop-start conditions or other transient events, where interactions between system dynamics and tribological behaviour of engine sub-systems play significant roles (Andersson [2]). Nearly half of the friction losses in internal combustion engines originate in the piston-ring-cylinder contacts, about 50% (Blau et al [3]), two thirds of which is attributable to the compression ring. Hitherto, interactions between frictional and mechanical losses have not received the fundamental analysis that they deserve. With increasing demand for high performance engines, the piston is subjected to even higher loads and, thus, increased losses. At the same time, engine development is driven by high fuel efficiency and output power-to-weight ratio, as well as reduced NOx and particulate emissions. These requirements frequently lead to conflicting demands put on combustion, system dynamics and tribological performance. It is significant to note that a mere 4% reduction in parasitic losses can lead to 1% improvement in fuel efficiency. Rapidly diminishing fossil fuel deposits in the UK's territorial waters and the difficulty of extraction, together with the adverse environmental impact of significant vehicular emissions, make improved fuel efficiency by reduction of parasitic losses a national imperative and a paramount objective. Whilst large national projects have been undertaken for development of efficient combustion strategies, a large consortium project has not hitherto been undertaken for tribology and dynamics of the piston-connecting rod-crankshaft sub-system which contributes significantly to engine losses. This project will bring together experts in the fields of dynamics, surface engineering, contact mechanics, lubricant rheology and tribology to collectively provide unique and novel solutions for this challenging multi-disciplinary problem of utmost importance to the UK automotive industry. An approach incorporating these inter-related disciplines within a unified analysis framework is referred to as multi-physics. This points to a single integrated project across all the interacting disciplines to deal with physics on a wide range of scales from large displacement dynamics to small thermo-elastic distortion of components and further down to micro-scale tribological contacts (such as EHD films, and asperity interactions) and onto the diminishing conjunctions of surface textured patterns with nano-scale interactions such as the molecular behaviour of lubricants due to their physical chemistry and free surface energy effects.

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