s p e c i a l  s u p p l e m e n t

SMART TRUCKING
SMART HIGHWAYS

Electronics, communications and computers - Today, they routinely monitor, communicate and coordinate some of the most critical functions of your operation. Tomorrow, they'll do the same with the borders your rigs cross and the roads they travel. Like George Jetson on his treadmill, changes are coming at us at an ever-faster rate. Goodyear is proud to sponsor this ongoing series to keep you on top of it all.

Produced By Heavy Duty Trucking Magazine • Sponsored By Goodyear As An Industry Service

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P A R T   VI   I N   A   S E R I E S
SMART ENGINES

Forced to ‘go electronic’ by emissions rules, engines are now the smartest part of most trucks.

Steve Sturgess
Senior Editor

Ever more stringent diesel emissions standards through the ’90s have dictated new engine designs and increasingly precise fuel controls for cleaner combustion. Fundamental to the changes have been the adoption of electronic controls and innovative injection systems.
     This electronics development — the hardware and the less obvious software development — has cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Fortunately, these costs have been amortized over the nearly 2 million engines sold through the decade as American trucking has seen an unprecedented expansion and a wholesale switch to more modern equipment.
     To a very great extent, the fuel economy gained from electronic engine controls forced that rejuvenation of the truck population. The new engines have been a bargain, as their fuel efficiency gains with each emissions-driven update have easily offset the rising prices. The new features that on-engine electronics have brought to the customer have enormously enhanced the productivity, driveability, performance, reliability, longevity and service convenience of each generation of new diesel engines.
     Today’s engines are a far cry from the mechanically controlled diesels of the 1980s. In fact, few of the engines around then are still in production today. Those that are bear little relationship to pre-electronics and pre-emissions diesels. Almost all the credit goes to the evolving electronic controls that are increasingly integrated into engine designs for today and tomorrow.

EMISSIONS-DRIVEN
     Emissions regulations have driven diesel engine designs in the last 10 years (see chart on p.132). The original proposals were made in the mid-’80s to an openly hostile industry that predicted dire things for the diesel engine if those early, not especially stringent controls were enforced.
     California was the first to adopt emissions controls for heavy duty engines in 1987, and the federal regulations didn’t become effective until the beginning of the decade.
     However, the first real hurdle for the engine manufacturers was the 1991 round of regulation, which dropped the particulate emissions from 0.6 to 0.25 g/hp-hr. This, in itself, was not the real driver for electronics. It was the bus emissions regulation that brought the over-the-road emissions levels set for 1994 to the earlier 1991 date.
     This created a need for both control of the combustion process to clean up smoke and, for some engine manufacturers, a new generation of hardware that controlled combustion in the cylinder and reduced the amount of oil carried over in the exhaust.
     Because of its 90% share of the bus engine business, Detroit Diesel was early in the development of engine controls to meet these extra-onerous limits, demonstrating early Detroit Diesel Electronic Controls — DDEC — on its 92-Series two-cycle engines. This technology quickly showed that a modern, microprocessor controller could offer a number of advantages over traditional mechanical controls.

EARLY ADOPTERS
     The first Detroit Diesel Electronic Control system was developed to support sales of bus engines and appeared in 1985. However, DDEC made an early prototype appearance in trucking, too, when it was applied to a 6V92 used in a Canadian fuel economy challenge in the mid-’80s.
     During the same period, Cummins was flirting with electronic controls, adding on simple electronics that were essentially speed-limiting devices. Based on the Cummins Pressure/Time injection system, this early foray into electronic controls was introduced as the PT Pacer.
     Since the function of the controller was to limit fuel consumption electronically by overriding the demands of the foot pedal, these early systems got off to a bad start with drivers. Part of the package promoted to the end-user fleets was that the systems were tamper-proof, an important feature since drivers have demonstrated over the years how adept they are at defeating mechanical speed-limiting devices.
     As it turned out, drivers proved even more adept at defeating electronics than they had at getting around mechanical limiters. At one point, as Detroit Diesel was developing its second-generation DDEC II in the late ’80s, the company actually had a rewards program where drivers could earn several hundred dollars by going into the company’s facility and demonstrating how they had defeated the first generation of electronic controls.
     The evolution of DDEC II even before such systems were applied to emissions engines shows the pace of development in engine electronics. The early systems such as DDEC and PT Pacer were crude by the standards of the next-generation controls; today’s fourth-generation systems are complex and fully featured.
     That’s hardly surprising when viewed against the history of the microprocessor. It was not until the mid-’80s that personal computers really made any major impression in business, and it was the end of the decade before Intel’s second-generation chip, the 286, made bulky desktop computers a real force in commerce.

ELECTRONICS EVOLUTION
     Trucking’s first flirtation with electronics had been the disastrous implementation of antilock braking systems with FMVSS121 in the mid-’70s. It made the industry very suspicious of electronic controls, especially in such a critical component as the power unit. In part to allay fears, the early control systems were multi-box designs, with a distribution unit mounted to the engine and the controller mounted in the cab where it was protected from the harsh environment of heat, dirt and moisture under the hood.
     In these early days, a major effort was made to both harden the electronics for truck installation and to educate the market of the value and the reliability of the components. During this period, Detroit Diesel mounted a demonstration of the early DDEC, with the controller suspended in a fishtank complete with swimming fish.
     Today, with the recent introduction of the latest controller for the Navistar International diesels, all electronic controllers are now single-box designs, with the electronics package bolted to the side of the engine.
     For the most part, these boxes are isolated from the engine and cooled with fuel lines coupled through the mounting and diesel fuel carrying away the excess heat. In its latest engine introduction, Cummins has a particularly innovative cooling method with the Signature 600 electronics, using the air in the intake manifold passing by the back side of the electronics box to carry off the heat.
     The dissipation of heat has become more of an issue as the systems have evolved. With each new generation of controllers, the processor and the memory that are the heart of the electronics have increased in power and capacity. When Caterpillar went from its earlier Programmable Electronic Engine Control (PEEC) that debuted for the 1991 emissions standards to the Advanced Diesel Engine Management (ADEM) system ready for 1994, it quadrupled computing power. Speeding the number of calculations and the capacity for lookup tables in the controller, memory was boosted eight times. The result was much more accurate fuel control, better matched to the engine’s demands.
     When DDEC went from generation II to III, Detroit Diesel switched over to a 32-bit chip communicating over a 16-bit bus to gain significantly faster processing than the earlier DDEC. Further enhancing the performance of that system was its ability to communicate over the North American standard J1939 high-speed serial link for truck chassis electronics. At the time, this was many times faster than the J1922 interim protocol used previously by DDEC and its competitors.

CHEAP MEMORY
     As the price of memory chips tumbled in the mid-’90s, the ability to do more with the electronics coincided with a much more ready acceptance. End users were profiting from the fuel efficiencies delivered by the control and were starting to see the value of the on-board diagnostics that came with the package. Now, with memory capacity jumping, engine makers were able to capture and make available more than just error messages and brief snapshots of operating conditions. Whole histories became available in the expanded memory, and the data was available to aid in vehicle management at the home office.
     This directly led to a change in the character of the on-board electronic control unit. The electronic control unit quickly progressed from a fuel control device to a vehicle and then a fleet management tool. Reports created from data downloaded from the engine could show truck speed, idle time, percentage of throttle or percentage of time in cruise control, for instance. And in many ways, the engine electronics took over the function of the tachograph and on-board computers such as the Tripmaster.
     Early systems were downloaded by hardwiring from the ECU to the truck’s home base. In some cases this was performed during service or fueling via a pigtail from the diagnostics port. Some fleets had download points at truckstops. The process was simplified through a link with on-board messaging systems such as the Qualcomm OmniTRACS interface, where critical data could be automatically uploaded with truck position and status information via a satellite link.
     The latest technologies utilize the driver display with a convenient port, or for the most technologically advanced operations, using radio frequency tags mounted outside the truck that download data to an antenna as the truck drives through the terminal gate.
     Data from the ECU for individual vehicle management made the on-board electronics no friend to the driver. The result was a tattletale even more intrusive than the previous generation of relatively clunky recorders and report-generating software.
     Over their relatively brief life span, the vehicle recorders and their reports had flooded fleet managers with indigestible quantities of reports. Now with off-engine reports from the sophisticated capture of the data by engine and chassis sensors, increasingly powerful software could pinpoint exceptions to fleet-set standards for speed, fuel mileage and idle time, for instance. This meant managers could zero in on drivers and trucks that were outside of fleet norms, either through poor or incomplete maintenance or through overenthusiastic drivers.

DRIVER WINDOWS
     Fortunately for drivers, the sensors and electronic controls that were recording the driver’s performance along with the truck’s were able to redeem themselves by presenting the information on a driver display. The Road Relay, Pro Driver, Cat ID and V-MAC displays all offered a “window” on the engine to allow the driver to interact. With their use, fuel economy targets, whether set by individuals for themselves or by fleets for bonus programs, could be tracked instantaneously or over time. Drivers could see how they were doing and compensate in their driving. Similarly, idle time, for instance, could be tracked and related to company objectives to allow drivers to take control of their actions.
     Cummins Road Relay was an early introduction, and the driver displays have essentially followed this lead with the various functions selected by push buttons and a series of different displays offering operating, vehicle and diagnostics information. A useful feature of the displays is the presentation of fault information in words rather than as a series of flashes of the engine fault light.
     Most recently, the driver displays are being integrated into truck dashboards. This is either through the provision of suitable “real estate” on the dash or even through the routing of the information to a vehicle manufacturer’s display. Ultimately, the engine ECU will communicate with dash displays in a fully integrated manner and drivers will be presented with exception information — such as a malfunction, or an out-of-range fuel economy, for instance — in the same way fleet managers see their reports today.

OPTION, OPTIONS
     The power of the microprocessor and the available memory have meant a proliferation of the features available through the electronics. Fleet-set parameters such as idle shutdown and top speed are now at the very basic level of a feature set that runs into literally hundreds of items.
     While they bring many desirable things to the engine and to the vehicle operation, there is concern that there are just too many options for truck specifiers, maintainers and drivers to really understand. Comments at meetings of The Maintenance Council of the American Trucking Assns. indicate that many times new trucks arrive with the wrong settings in the electronic controls, or that new truck orders are just too complicated for all the options to be programmed and either enabled or turned off, and the truck has to be taken out of service for reprogramming when drivers complain.
     There are moves at the manufacturer level to address the complaints. As the engineers explain, the factory “default” values are usually set with the experience of applications involving thousands of engines and many fleet operations. Similarly, functions are being bundled into groups, just as features on new cars are combined into convenience or appearance groups. So a fleet specifier or an individual can tailor the multiplicity of options pretty much to what is needed right out of the factory.
     Some of the features are actually lessening the input needed at the fleet level. Various parameters such as time at a certain percentage of throttle, time in excess of a set speed, idle time and fuel economy are dialed in. If a driver exceeds preset levels, he is rewarded with additional top speed. Once the parameters are set, there is no need for further management involvement, since the system performs all the functions and the driver receives the rewards automatically.

INFO ON THE GO
     Data off the engine controller on how the truck and driver are performing is increasingly used in the management of the truck.
     Even individual operators can use a driver display for valuable driving information. Fuel economy gauges and real-time consumption figures are great reminders to drive economically. And text messages about engine faults allow for quick decision making: Is it an engine-threatening problem that will cause the power unit to derate, or is it something that is noted for prompt action as soon as the truck gets to the terminal?
     Operators can also use management software available from each of the engine vendors to run fuel tax reports and many other modules that pinpoint precisely how the truck is being operated.
     For fleets, critical information from the engine controller is ported to the communications system and sent to the home terminal or dispatch as soon as — or even sooner than — the driver is aware. To save on messaging costs, this “real time” information is usually restricted by the fleet to mission-critical data, such as a fault that will likely result in the truck being late with a delivery.
     Instead of a driver limping in to a rest area to use a phone and call in with a problem, dispatch knows the instant something goes wrong. A flag is raised on a computer screen and, depending on the sophistication of the system, many decisions are made automatically. If the problem is not severe or the delivery window flexible, no action may be necessary other that to re-dispatch it back to the home terminal for repair. If, on the other hand, repairs need to be made on the road, the diagnostics component of the truck’s electronics may determine the problem and the communications system has determined the location. It takes only a few mouse clicks on the dispatch computer to find a dealer nearby and a phone call to make an appointment. With luck, the parts to effect the repair are on hand and the freight is back on its way with minimal interruption.

DIAGNOSTICS DATA
     In their infancy, the on-board electronics had only enough capacity to control the fuel system and perform a self-check to verify all the inputs and outputs were as anticipated. Anything out of the ordinary was identified with a blink code for the engine fault light. To aid the technician later, any faults were logged into memory so they could be accessed in the in-shop diagnostic mode, with the information displayed on a suitable hand-held tool coupled to the truck’s diagnostic port.
     With the second and third generation of on-board electronics came increasing electronics power and more capacity on the engine controller to undertake bigger diagnostic tasks.
     The same evolution happened in the technicians’ tools to diagnose and trace faults on the electronic engines. Engine manufacturers worked with Society of Automotive Engineers and TMC to standardize the interface so that common tools could be used across the board. There are still significant differences across the makes, and each supplier has unique service software, but the connection to the truck and the portable computer that runs the software are at least common.
     A fleet today can load all the necessary service software into a laptop computer or a roll-around cart with a desktop machine and service technicians can use the new tools to work on a mixed fleet with any of the engine manufacturers’ products under the hood.
     This service software makes it much easier to trace engine — and increasingly, other component — faults, to run diagnostics, to fix problems, to view the truck’s history and even run service campaigns through downloads. But it has placed greater demands on technicians to learn not only how to use a computer but also each different software package, aggravating the shortage of highly qualified service personnel.
     Addressing this shortage, at least in part, is a trend toward “prognostics.” The object is to schedule equipment downtime and avoid surprises, but by its nature, preventive often means overmaintaining. The object of prognostics is to change the way vehicles are maintained from a preventive to a predictive maintenance schedule. Simple examples would be sensing air inlet restriction and pressure differentials across filters to tell when air, oil or cooling filters need service, then presenting the driver and the technician with messages, even calling upon dispatch through the cellular or satellite system to schedule the truck in for its maintenance.
     The result would be increased life from the disposables — the lube oil, coolant and filters — less scheduled truck downtime and fewer hazardous materials and fluids to dispose of, as well. And of course, with the trend definitely heading toward extended service interval chassis, fewer technicians wrenching on trucks. One engine manufacturer even talks of putting padlocks on the outside of a truck hood to stop drivers and owners from going in to check oil and coolant and look for leaks or air restriction. On-engine sensors today cover many of the daily check items, and others will soon be available to handle all the underhood routing tasks a driver is expected to perform today.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
     As powerful and sophisticated as they seem today, electronic controls are still in their infancy. It has been suggested that they have the capacity to integrate the entire vehicle system together. You could compare it to a server on a conventional computer network.
     With the development of the on-vehicle databus and the well-established protocols, it will probably be less a server/client network than a peer-to-peer or a distributed intelligence network on the truck. Each component will have the necessary electronic controls to perform its primary function and the engine’s ECU performs all the same functions as today’s yet with more features and more power. Efficiency will come from a sharing of the resources and sensors, and from all the different ECUs communicating with each other where their function is complementary or overlapping.
     As engines continue to climb in torque output, the drivetrain manufacturers have had to scramble to build more robust transmissions and drivelines to sustain starting torques. However, since the high torque is really only needed in the upper ratios to maintain road speed on grades, it makes good sense to limit the engine torque in the lower gear ratios. Cummins and Meritor have already shown this can be done with electronics, and Eaton is talking about a system where the transmission limits peak engine torque in all gears to avoid damage. This would limit the unauthorized uprating of electronic engines, or the uprating at the point of sale to a rating incompatible with the transmission specification.

SIDEBAR
EPA Emission Standards For Heavy Duty Diesel Engines