Ford Motor Company

About: Ford Motor Company is a company organization based out in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Internal combustion engine & Signal. The organization has 36123 authors who have published 51450 publications receiving 855200 citations. The organization is also known as: Ford Motor & Ford Motor Corporation.

Prospects for the application of GaN power devices in hybrid electric vehicle drive systems

Abstract: GaN, a wide bandgap semiconductor successfully implemented in optical and high-speed electronic devices, has gained momentum in recent years for power electronics applications. Along with rapid progress in material and device processing technologies, high-voltage transistors over 600?V have been reported by a number of teams worldwide. These advances make GaN highly attractive for the growing market of electrified vehicles, which currently employ bipolar silicon devices in the 600?1200?V class for the traction inverter. However, to capture this billion-dollar power market, GaN has to compete with existing IGBT products and deliver higher performance at comparable or lower cost. This paper reviews key achievements made by the GaN semiconductor industry, requirements of the automotive electric drive system and remaining challenges for GaN power devices to fit in the inverter application of hybrid vehicles.

Misfire detection in an internal combustion engine

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for reliably detecting misfires in an internal combustion engine during actual driving conditions by monitoring fluctuations in engine speed between consecutive firing intervals. An average acceleration over a series of firing intervals is removed from an individual acceleration measurement corresponding to a particular firing interval to give an acceleration deviation which is then normalized to an expected torque to provide a power loss measurement. The power loss measurement indicates the occurrence of a misfire with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The information derived from misfire detection can be used to prevent destruction of a catalytic converter by unburned fuel mixtures and can be used to improve vehicle driveability by correcting for or indicating needed sevice for the vehicle. The misfire detection is implemented using existing sensors and processors and is adapted to be done on-board a vehicle in real time.

Speech recognition system

Abstract: A speech recognition system 7 for an automotive vehicle 10 is provided including a microphone receiver 12 for receiving a voice audio signal and converting the same to an analog signal 13, a microphone aimer for giving the microphone receiver 12 a locational bias for reception, an analog to digital converter 15 for converting the analog signal to a digital signal, a speech recognizer 17 for recognizing a voice from the digital signal received from the analog to digital converter 15, an occupant restraint system 22 having an occupant informational system 60/18 to control deployment of the occupant restraint system 22 resultant upon an occupant condition, an occupant restraint system signal generator 18 for signaling the occupant condition to the microphone aimer to locationally bias the reception of the microphone receiver 12.

A Potent Greenhouse Gas Identified in the Atmosphere: SF5CF3

Abstract: We detected a compound previously unreported in the atmosphere, trifluoromethyl sulfur pentafluoride (SF5CF3). Measurements of its infrared absorption cross section show SF5CF3 to have a radiative forcing of 0.57 watt per square meter per parts per billion. This is the largest radiative forcing, on a per molecule basis, of any gas found in the atmosphere to date. Antarctic firn measurements show it to have grown from near zero in the late 1960s to about 0.12 part per trillion in 1999. It is presently growing by about 0.008 part per trillion per year, or 6% per year. Stratospheric profiles of SF5CF3 suggest that it is long-lived in the atmosphere (on the order of 1000 years).