CARE profs will try to improve police cars
By Michal Tellos
News Editor
February 3, 2010
 Two UWindsor professors at the Centre for Automotive Research and Engineering (CARE) will lead research projects to make police cars more effective and efficient.
Colin Novak will investigate a relatively new type of siren technology, while Peter Frise will look into making cruisers more fuel and energy efficient.
Novak explains that in recent years, drivers have had more trouble hearing normal, high frequency police sirens, largely due to the sound packaging that newly manufactured cars have.
“They are quieter than they used to be from exterior noise because of the under-pad coating and such. These sound packages attenuate high frequency noise quite well,” he said, adding that some accidents across the country are attributed to this.
As a result, an American company developed a low frequency, modulating siren called the rumbler, which more easily penetrates modern cars because of the amplitude of low frequency. The rumbler would primarily be employed when driving through intersections during an emergency.
Because the sound is modulated, people within a reasonable distance of the rumbler will feel it as well as hear it, to a degree. The hope is that this will get the attention of other drivers much more readily, but the responses from police officers have been mixed.
“The feedback that they’ve gotten from officers has been mixed, but there’s been no real scientific work done to determine how effective these things are,” said Novak. As a result, UWindsor was approached to test the acoustics of the siren.
CARE is especially well equipped for this project, as they possess technology unique to any North American school.
“It’s an NVH, or noise vibration harshness simulator, and it lets us evaluate not only the physics of sounds in a vehicle but also the perception of people sitting in a vehicle in this virtual environment,” said Novak.
Frise, on the other hand, will be looking to make cruisers more energy and fuel-efficient. It is estimated that 70 per cent of the time that a police car is in service, it is idling, and up to 40 per cent of its fuel is lost when the car is stationary.
Frise will attempt to reduce the inevitable environmental impact of wasting so much fuel and emitting so many fumes by testing technology recently developed by a provincially funded group known as Fleet Challenge Ontario.
“It’s basically an on board electrical power system for the vehicle. It runs on a large battery, and when the battery reaches a certain low level, the engine will automatically restart to recharge the battery for a few minutes. And when it reaches a certain level, the engine will shut off again, and the process can continue,” said Frise, adding that fuel consumption while idling could be reduced by over 40 per cent.
Frise also added that the technology does work, it just needs to be optimized and calibrated correctly for ideal performance.
Novak highlighted the different skill set that students, who are conducting most of experiments, will adopt from these projects.
“What makes this very unique is the actual application. It’s really outside the box and it challenges them to learn skills that they normally wouldn’t be able to do, and that at the end ultimately makes them more attractive when they get out to the workforce.”
Frise also noted the business opportunity for Canadian automakers if his tests yield positive results.
Preliminary data collection and testing should begin within the next few weeks.
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