Search Results (11)

As one of the most ideal alternative fuels for internal combustion engines, methanol can achieve near-zero carbon emissions. The main problem of methanol application in compression combustion engines is the phase lag caused by its poor combustion characteristics, but under low load conditions, the fuel activity can be improved by adding the cetane number improver EHN (Isooctyl nitrate), and the dependence on intake heating can be reduced to a certain extent. Based on a three-dimensional CFD simulation, the effects of methanol injection parameters and the addition of EHN on the combustion characteristics of a four-stroke exhaust turbocharged diesel engine were studied in this paper. With or without EHN, the increase in injection pressure and the advance in injection timing lead to an increase in the peak temperature, pressure, and heat release rate, as well as a shortening of the combustion duration. Adding EHN witnesses reduced requirements for methanol ignition, including a decreased peak temperature, pressure, and heat release rate, a significantly shortened ignition delay period, and an extended combustion duration, which thus results in a reduced indicated thermal efficiency. This study innovatively develops a 3D model of a compression combustion engine applicable to in-cylinder direct injection pure methanol fuel and EHN under small load conditions, which provides a reference for future research and development of small-load pure methanol compression combustion engines and has certain guiding significance. Full article

Efficient and low-polluting mobility is a major demand in all countries. Hybrid electric vehicles have already shown to be suitable to respond to this need, being a reliable alternative to conventional cars, at least in urban environments. Nevertheless, such vehicles present a yet unexplored potential. In this paper, we will investigate how the powertrain efficiency may possibly benefit, in an integrated drivetrain for a hybrid electric vehicle, based on a turbocharged gasoline engine, of an innovative supercharging system. The compressor and turbine will be mechanically decoupled so as to independently optimize their operation, avoiding turbo lag and maximizing energy recovery by completely eliminating the waste-gate valve. This, in turns, requires changing the turbine so as to have a flattest possible efficiency/load curve. Therefore, an ad-hoc designed turbine will be implemented in the decoupled configuration, to be used to drive an electrical generator and produce electrical energy for charging the battery. This study presents a preliminary assessment of the potential of a turbo-compounded system for a 1L turbocharged gasoline engine for a small city car. To this aim, a one-dimensional dynamic model of the engine has been built in GT-Suite and has been calibrated and validated by means of experimental data obtained on a dynamometer, both in steady state and dynamic conditions. In particular, the model has been calibrated by means of experimental data obtained in stationary conditions and its robustness has then been verified through experimental data obtained under transient conditions. The model also includes data retrieved from the characterization of the existing turbine and compressor, while a new performance map for the turbine has been designed to better exploit the potential of the components’ decoupling. Results include the estimation of energy recovery potential of such a solution. Under the implementation of a straightforward control strategy, which runs both compressor and turbine at the same speed, the system is able to achieve a 60.57% increase in energy recovered from the exhaust gasses in the turbine. Afterwards, an attempt was made to limit the minimum turbine speed to 45000 rpm and simultaneously decrease the instantaneous speed by 3000 rpm compared to the compressor, attaining a further increase of 1.7% in the energy recovered by the turbine. Full article

As environmental regulations on automotive exhaust gas are gradually strengthened to cope with climate change, internal combustion engines, including those in hybrid electric vehicles, are continuously being downsized. Supercharging technologies are essential to compensate for the reduced engine power. One of the supercharging technologies, the turbocharger, has a response delay in the low-speed region, which is known as turbo lag. Various technologies have emerged to reduce turbo lag. Recently, electric supercharging technologies capable of reducing turbo lag using high-speed motors have been developed and commercialized. However, they are difficult to obtain for high-speed motors because of the cost of load performance test equipment. For this reason, many previous studies have compared analysis and experiment results under no-load conditions, or they have estimated performance in the high-speed region from results at low speed with light loads. This makes it difficult to know exactly how the performance of the motor is affected under loads applied to an actual system. In this study, performance test evaluation was conducted using a high-speed torque sensor, eddy current brake, and inertial dynamometer. Input/output power and efficiency were calculated using the measured voltage, current and output side torque and speed, and the results were compared. Full article

The earlier activation of the catalytic converters in internal combustion engines is becoming highly challenging due to the reduction in exhaust gas temperature caused by the application of ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ reduction technologies. In this context, the use of pre-turbine catalysts arises as a potential way to increase the conversion efficiency of the exhaust aftertreatment system. In this work, a small-sized oxidation catalyst consisting of a honeycomb thin-wall metallic substrate was placed upstream of the turbine to benefit from the higher temperature and pressure prior to the turbine expansion. The change in engine performance and emissions in comparison to the baseline configuration are analyzed under driving conditions. As an individual element, the pre-turbine catalyst contributed positively with a relevant increase in the overall CO and HC conversion efficiency. However, its placement produced secondary effects on the engine and baseline aftertreatment response. Although small-sized monoliths are advantageous to minimize the thermal inertia impact on the turbocharger lag, the catalyst cross-section is in trade-off with the additional pressure drop that the monolith causes. As a result, the higher exhaust manifold pressure in pre-turbine pre-catalyst configuration caused a fuel consumption increase higher than 3% while the engine-out CO and HC emissions did around 50%. These increments were not completely offset despite the high pre-turbine pre-catalyst conversion efficiency (>40%) because the partial abatement of the emissions in this device conditioned the performance of the close-coupled oxidation catalyst. Full article

Stringent emission regulations and increased demand for improved fuel economy have called for advanced turbo technologies in automotive engines. The use of turbochargers on smaller engines is one such concept, but they are limited by a time delay in reaching the required boost during transient operation. The amount of turbocharger lag plays a key role in the driver’s perceived quality of a passenger vehicle’s engine response. This paper investigates an alternative method to the conventional design of a turbocharger turbine to improve the transient response of a passenger vehicle. The investigation utilises the Ford Eco-Boost 1.6 L petrol engine, an established production engine, equipped with a turbocharger of similar performance to the GT1548 produced by Honeywell. The commercially available Ricardo WAVE was used to model the engine. Comparing the steady-state performance showed that the axial turbine provides higher efficiencies at all operating conditions of an engine. The transient case demonstrated an improved transient response at all operating conditions of the engine. The study concluded that, by designing a similar sized axial turbine, the mass moment of inertia can be reduced by 12.64% and transient response can be improved on average by 11.76%, with a maximum of 21.05% improvement. This study provides encouragement for the wider application of this turbine type to vehicles operating on dynamic driving cycles such as passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and certain off-road applications. Full article

This paper describes and discusses the development of an axial turbocharger turbine concept as a potential substitute to commercial radial turbines for high-volume production. As turbo-lag is one of the main issues related to the inertia of the rotating parts in a turbocharger, leading to less responsive and drive-cycle efficient power units, the use of axial turbines, with their inherently lower inertia than radial types for the same application, enables the efficient reduction of the spool-up time of the system, to the benefit of the driving experience and emissions. However, axial turbines for this application usually show complicated blades and level of twist, leading to efficient but expensive designs compared to their radial counterparts. Based on this challenge, the idea of comparing prismatic (generally less efficient, but cheaper) and twisted 3D-bladed axial turbines showed that for lower blade aspect ratios, the efficiency is of the same order. For these reasons, many turbines with a range of different sizes were designed with both layouts (3D and prismatic blades) and compared. Further, the use of 3D optical scanning, as well as dyno-calibrated 1D engine models enabled the gathering of invaluable data to design the proposed solution and compare it to the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) version. Thanks to these processes, the comparison between the proposed design and the OEM one was not limited to the performance, and also included the manufacturing costs, which were calculated via Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) programs, with the limitation of using only Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining for production. To conclude, the work showed a notable performance superiority of the proposed turbine in respect to the OEM one, despite a slightly higher estimated production cost. Full article

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is an area of machine learning that combines a deep learning approach and reinforcement learning (RL). However, there seem to be few studies that analyze the latest DRL algorithms on real-world powertrain control problems. Meanwhile, the boost control of a variable geometry turbocharger (VGT)-equipped diesel engine is difficult mainly due to its strong coupling with an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system and large lag, resulting from time delay and hysteresis between the input and output dynamics of the engine’s gas exchange system. In this context, one of the latest model-free DRL algorithms, the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, was built in this paper to develop and finally form a strategy to track the target boost pressure under transient driving cycles. Using a fine-tuned proportion integration differentiation (PID) controller as a benchmark, the results show that the control performance based on the proposed DDPG algorithm can achieve a good transient control performance from scratch by autonomously learning the interaction with the environment, without relying on model supervision or complete environment models. In addition, the proposed strategy is able to adapt to the changing environment and hardware aging over time by adaptively tuning the algorithm in a self-learning manner on-line, making it attractive to real plant control problems whose system consistency may not be strictly guaranteed and whose environment may change over time. Full article

In this paper, a fundamental analysis of the effects of various influential parameters on the performance and emissions of a turbocharged truck operating under transient conditions is presented. The results derive from a detailed vehicle model that comprises two parts. The first is an engine performance and emissions module that follows a mapping approach, with experimentally derived correction coefficients employed to account for transient discrepancies; this is then coupled to a comprehensive vehicle model that takes into account various vehicle operation attributes such as gearbox, tires, tire slip, etc. Soot, as well as nitrogen monoxide, are the examined engine-out pollutants, together with fuel consumption and carbon dioxide. The parameters examined are vehicular (mass and gearbox), driving (driver ‘aggressiveness’ and gear-shift profile) and road (type and grade). From the range of values investigated, the most critical parameters for the emission of NO and soot are vehicle mass, driving ‘aggressiveness’ and the exact gear-change profile. Vehicle mass, driving ‘aggressiveness’ and road-grade were identified as the most influential parameters for the emission of CO₂. A notable statistical correlation was established between pollutant emissions (NO, soot) and vehicle mass or road-tire friction, as well as between fueling/CO₂ and vehicle mass, road-tire friction and road grade. It is believed that the results obtained shed light into the effect of critical operating parameters on the engine-out emissions of a truck/bus, underlining at the same time the peculiarities of transient operating conditions. Full article

The present work presents results from an experimentally validated simulation code, regarding a turbocharged diesel-powered vehicle running on the recently developed worldwide light-duty vehicles WLTC driving cycle. The simulation is based on an engine mapping approach, with correction coefficients applied vis-à-vis the transient discrepancies encountered. Both performance and engine-out emission results are presented and discussed. As regards the latter, the concerned pollutants are soot and nitrogen monoxide. Since the WLTC driving cycle is scheduled to replace the NEDC in Europe from September 2017 with regard to the certification of passenger cars and light-duty trucks, a comparative analysis between the two test schedules is also performed for the engine/vehicle under study. Full article

The availability of compressed air in combination with downsizing and turbocharging is a promising approach to improve the fuel economy and the driveability of internal combustion engines. The compressed air is used to boost and start the engine. It is generated during deceleration phases by running the engine as a piston compressor. In this paper, a camshaft-driven valve is considered for the control of the air exchange between the tank and the combustion chamber. Such a valve system is cost-effective and robust. Each pneumatic engine mode is realized by a separate cam. The air mass transfer in each mode is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the tank pressure dependence. The air demand in the boost mode is found to increase with the tank pressure. However, the dependence on the tank pressure is small in the most relevant operating region. The air demand of the pneumatic start shows a piecewise continuous dependence on the tank pressure. Finally, a tank sizing method is proposed which uses a quasi-static simulation. It is applied to a compact class vehicle, for which a tank volume of less than 10 L is sufficient. A further reduction of the tank volume is limited by the specifications imposed on the pneumatic start. Full article

Downsizing and turbocharging is a widely used approach to reduce the fuel consumption of spark ignited engines while retaining the maximum power output. However, a substantial loss in drivability must be expected due to the occurrence of the so-called turbo lag. The turbo lag results from the additional inertia that the turbocharger adds to the system. Supplying air by an additional valve, the boost valve, to the intake manifold can be used to overcome the turbo lag. This turbo lag compensationmethod is referred to as intakemanifold boosting. The aims of this study are to show the effectiveness of intake manifold boosting on a turbocharged spark-ignited engine and to show that intake manifold boosting can be used as an enabler of strong downsizing. Guidelines for the dimensioning of the boost valve are given and a control strategy is presented. The trade-off between additional fuel consumption and the consumption of pressurized air during the turbo lag compensation is discussed. For a load step at 2000 rpm the rise time can be reduced from 2.8 s to 124ms, requiring 11.8 g of pressurized air. The transient performance is verified experimentally by means of load steps at various engine speeds to various engine loads. Full article