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The local equivalence ratio, Φ, was measured in fuel jets using laser-induced spontaneous Raman scattering in an optical heavy duty diesel engine. The measurements were performed at 1200 rpm and quarter load (6 bar IMEP). The objective was to study factors influencing soot formation, such as gas entrainment and lift-off position, and to find correlations with engine-out particulate matter (PM) levels. The effects of nozzle hole size, injection pressure, inlet oxygen concentration, and ambient density at TDC were studied. The position of the lift–off region was determined from OH chemiluminescence images of the flame. The liquid penetration length was measured with Mie scattering to ensure that the Raman measurement was performed in the gaseous part of the spray. The local Φ value was successfully measured inside a fuel jet. A surprisingly low correlation coefficient between engine-out PM and the local Φ in the reaction zone were observed.

A consortium of interested parties has conducted an experimental characterization of two Tau parallel kinematic machines which were built as a part of the EU-funded project, SMErobot1. Characteristics such as machine stiffness, work envelope, repeatability and accuracy were considered. This paper will present a brief history of the Tau parallel machine, the results of this testing and some comment on prospective application to the aerospace industry.

The effects of fuel properties on the performance and emissions of an engine running in partially premixed combustion mode were investigated using nine test fuels developed in the gasoline boiling point range. The fuels covered a broad range of ignition quality and fuel chemistry. The fuels were characterized by performing a load sweep between 1 and 12 bar gross IMEP at 1000 and 1300 rpm. A heavy duty single cylinder engine from Scania was used for the experiments; the piston was not modified thus resulting in the standard compression ratio of 18:1. In order to properly run gasoline type of fuels in partially premixed combustion mode, an advanced combustion concept was developed. The concept involved using a lot of EGR, very high boost and an advanced injection strategy previously developed by the authors. By applying this concept all the fuels showed gross indicated efficiencies higher than 50% with a peak of 57% at 8 bar IMEP.

A transparent HSDI CI engine was used together with a high speed camera to analyze the liquid phase spray geometry of the fuel types: Swedish environmental class 1 Diesel fuel (MK1), Soy Methyl Ester (B100), n-Heptane (PRF0) and a gas-to-liquid derivate (GTL) with a distillation range similar to B100. The study of the transient liquid-phase spray propagation was performed at gas temperatures and pressures typical for start of injection conditions of a conventional HSDI CI engine. Inert gas was supplied to the transparent engine in order to avoid self-ignition at these cylinder gas conditions. Observed differences in liquid phase spray geometry were correlated to relevant fuel properties. An empirical relation was derived for predicting liquid spray cone angle and length prior to ignition.

Using alternative fuels like Natural Gas (NG) has shown good potentials on heavy duty engines. Heavy duty NG engines can be operated either lean or stoichiometric diluted with EGR. Extending Dilution limit has been identified as a beneficial strategy for increasing efficiency and decreasing emissions. However dilution limit is limited in these types of engines because of the lower burnings rate of NG. One way to extend the dilution limit of a NG engine is to run the engine on Hythane (natural gas + some percentage hydrogen). Previously effects of Hythane with 10% hydrogen by volume in a stoichiometric heavy duty NG engine were studied and no significant changes in terms of efficiency and emissions were observed. This paper presents results from measurements made on a heavy duty 6-cylinder NG engine. The engine is operated with NG and Hythane with 25% hydrogen by volume and the effects of these fuels on the engine performance are studied.

Exhaust noise is a major contributor to the radiated noise level of a vehicle, especially at idle. The radiated noise level has to meet a certain criteria based on regulation and consumer demand. In many cases, the problem appears after the vehicle is manufactured and the tailpipe noise measurement is performed indicating a high noise level that needs to be reduced. This paper describes one of those cases where the radiated noise level of a certain passenger car at idle was required to be reduced by 6 dB(A). The exhaust system consists of one main muffler and one auxiliary muffler. A 1D two-port model of the exhaust system including the two mufflers was built using commercial software. This model was validated against the measurement of the two-port matrix of both mufflers. The model was then used together with tailpipe noise measurements to estimate the characteristics of the source strength and impedance.

Current trends for IC-engines are driving the development of more efficient engines with higher specific power. This is true for both light and heavy duty vehicles and has led to an increased use of super-charging. The super-charging can be both in the form of a single or multi-stage turbo-charger driven by exhaust gases, or via a directly driven compressor. In both cases a possible noise problem can be a strong Blade Passing Frequency (BPF) typically in the kHz range and above the plane wave range. In this paper a novel type of compact dissipative silencer developed especially to handle this type of problem is described and optimized. The silencer is based on a combination of a micro-perforated (MPP) tube backed by a locally reacting cavity. The combined impedance of micro-perforate and cavity is chosen to match the theoretical optimum known as the Cremer impedance at the mid-frequency in the frequency range of interest.

The paper gives an overview of techniques used for characterization of IC-engines as acoustic sources of exhaust and intake system noise. Some recent advances regarding nonlinear source models are introduced and discussed. To calculate insertion loss of mufflers or the level of radiated sound information about the engine as an acoustic source is needed. The source model used in the low frequency plane wave range is often the linear time invariant one-port model. The acoustic source data is obtained from experimental tests or from 1-D CFD codes describing the engine gas exchange process. The IC-engine is a high level acoustic source and in most cases not completely linear. It is therefore of interest to have models taking weak non-linearity into account while still maintaining a simple method for interfacing the source model with a linear frequency domain model for the attached exhaust or intake system.

The combustion timing in internal combustion engines affects the fuel consumption, in-cylinder peak pressure, engine noise and emission levels. The combination of an in-cylinder pressure sensor together with a direct injection fuel system lends itself well for cycle-to-cycle control of the combustion timing. This paper presents a method of controlling the combustion timing by the use of a cycle-to-cycle injection-timing algorithm. At each cycle the currently estimated heat-release rate is used to predict the in-cylinder pressure change due to a combustion-timing shift. The prediction is then used to obtain a cycle-to-cycle model that relates combustion timing to gross indicated mean effective pressure, max pressure and max pressure derivative. Then the injection timing that controls the combustion timing is decided by solving an optimization problem involving the model obtained.

In the last couple of decades, countries have enacted new laws concerning environmental pollution caused by heavy-duty commercial and passenger vehicles. This is done mainly in an effort to reduce smog and health impacts caused by the different pollutions. One of the legislated pollutions, among a wide range of regulated pollutions, is nitrogen oxides (commonly abbreviated as NOx). The SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) was introduced in the automotive industry to reduce NOx emissions leaving the vehicle. The basic idea is to inject a urea solution (AdBlue™) in the exhaust gas before the gas enters the catalyst. The optimal working temperature for the catalyst is somewhere in the range of 300 to 400 °C. For the reactions to occur without a catalyst, the gas temperature has to be at least 800 °C. These temperatures only occur in the engine cylinder itself, during and after the combustion.

Partially premixed combustion (PPC) is a promising way to achieve high thermal efficiency and low emissions, especially by using multiple injection strategies. The mechanisms behind PPC efficiency are still to be explained and explored. In this paper, multiple injections have been used to affect the gross indicated efficiency in an optical PPC engine modified from a Volvo MD13 heavy-duty diesel engine. The aim is both to improve and impair the gross indicated efficiency to understand the differences. The combustion natural luminosity is captured by a high-speed camera, and the distribution of fuel, oxygen, and temperature during the combustion process has been further explored by CFD simulation. The results show that with the right combination of the pilot, main, and post injection the gross indicated efficiency can be improved.

Diffusive combustion of direct injected ethanol is investigated in a heavy-duty single cylinder engine for a broad range of operating conditions. Ethanol has a high potential as fossil fuel alternative, as it provides a better carbon footprint and has more sustainable production pathways. The introduction of ethanol as fuel for heavy-duty compression-ignition engines can contribute to decarbonize the transport sector within a short time frame. Given the resistance to autoignition of ethanol, the engine is equipped with two injectors mounted in the same combustion chamber, allowing the simultaneous and independent actuation of the main injection of pure ethanol and a pilot injection of diesel as an ignition source. The influence of the dual-fuel injection strategy on ethanol ignition, combustion characteristics, engine performance and NOx emissions is evaluated by varying the start of injection of both fuels and the ethanol-diesel ratio.

Low temperature combustion (LTC), is a promising alternative for combustion engines, because it combines the positive aspects of both CI and SI engines, high efficiency and low emissions. Another positive aspect of LTC is that it can operate with gasoline of different octane ratings. Still, higher octane gasolines prove to be difficult to operate at low load conditions leading to high combustion instability (COV) that leads also to high emissions. This drawback can be reduced by increasing the intake air temperature or increasing compression ratio, but it is not a viable strategy in conventional applications. For a diesel engine running under LTC conditions, a possibility is to use the existing hardware, glow plugs in this case, to increase the in-cylinder temperature at low loads and facilitate an improved combustion event.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas that is believed to be one of the main contributors to global warming. Recent studies show that a combination of methanol as a renewable fuel and advanced combustion concepts could be a promising future solution to alleviate this problem. However, high unburned hydrocarbon (UHC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions can be stated as the main drawback in low load operations when using methanol under advanced combustion concepts. This issue can be mitigated by modifying the stratification of the local equivalence ratio to achieve a favorable level. The stratifications evolved, and the regimes that can simultaneously produce low emissions, and high combustion efficiency can be identified by sweeping the injection timing from homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) to partially premixed combustion (PPC). Understanding how the stratification of the local equivalence ratio for methanol evolves during the sweep is essential to gain these benefits.

Methanol is not a fuel typically used in compression ignition engines due to the high resistance to auto-ignition. However, conventional diesel combustion and PPC offer high engine efficiency along with low HC and CO emissions, albeit with the trade-off of increased NOx and PM emissions. This trade-off balance is mitigated in the case of methanol and other alcohol fuels, as they bring oxygen in the combustion chamber. Thus methanol compression ignition holds the potential for a clean and effective alternative fuel proposition. Most existing research on methanol is on SI engines and very little exists in the literature regarding methanol auto-ignition engine concepts. In this study, the spray characteristics of methanol inside the optically accessible cylinder of a DI-HD engine are investigated. The liquid penetration length at various injection timings is documented, ranging from typical PPC range down to conventional diesel combustion.

Renewable fuels from different feedstocks can enable sustainable transport solutions with significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional petroleum-derived fuels. Nevertheless, the use of biofuels in diesel engines will still require similar exhaust gas cleaning systems as for conventional diesel. Hence, the use of diesel particulate filters (DPF) will persist as a much needed part of the vehicle’s aftertreatment system. Combustion of renewable fuels can potentially yield soot and ash with different properties as well as larger amounts of ash compared to conventional fossil fuels. The faster ash build-up and altered ash deposition pattern lead to an increase in pressure drop over the DPF, increase the fuel consumption and call for premature DPF maintenance or replacement. Prolonging the maintenance interval of the DPF for heavy-duty trucks, having a demand for high up-time, is highly desirable.

The emission of airborne wear particles from friction material / cast iron pairs used in car brakes was investigated, paying special attention to the influence of temperature. Five low-metallic materials and one non-asbestos organic material were tested using a pin-on-disc machine. The machine was placed in a sealed chamber to allow airborne particle collection. The concentration and size distribution of 0.0056 to 10 μm particles were obtained by a fast mobility particle sizer and an optical particle sizer. The temperature was measured by a thermocouple installed in the disc. The experiments show that as the temperature increases from 100 to 300 °C the emission of ultrafine particles intensifies while that of coarse particles decreases. There is a critical temperature at which the ultrafine particle emission rate rises stepwise by 4 to 6 orders of magnitude. For the friction pairs investigated, the critical temperature was found to be between 165 and 190 °C.

In the last decades, emission legislation on pollutant emissions generated by road transportation sector has become the main driving force for internal combustion engine development. Approximately 20% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel combustion come from the transportation sector, and road vehicles contribute up to 80% of those emissions [1]. Light-duty methane gas engines are usually spark-ignited due to similar combustion characteristics for methane gas and gasoline. Since spark ignition requires a low compression ratio to avoid knock problems, gas engines have lower efficiency than diesel engines. A combustion concept that has been successfully applied on large stationary engines and to some extent on heavy-duty engines is dual-fuel combustion, where a compression-ignited diesel pilot injection is used to ignite a homogeneous charge of methane gas and air.

In low-temperature combustion concepts such as partially premixed combustion, the ignition delay should be large enough in order to ensure sufficient fuel and air mixing before the start of combustion. It is also necessary that the combustion timing is sufficiently well phased for high thermal efficiency. Since the ignition delay and combustion timing are intimately coupled, the decoupling of these two quantities gives rise to an interesting multiple input, multiple output control problem where the control of the air system and the fuel injection system have to be combined. In a multi-cylinder engine this problem becomes underdetermined or uncontrollable with more outputs than inputs. This article investigates model-based cycle-to-cycle cylinder-individual closed-loop control of the ignition delay and the combustion phasing in a multi-cylinder heavy-duty DI engine running on a gasoline fuel mixture.

Internal combustion engine (ICE) fuel efficiency is a balance between good indicated efficiency and mechanical efficiency. High indicated efficiency is reached with a very diluted air/fuel-mixture and high load resulting in high peak cylinder pressure (PCP). On the other hand, high mechanical efficiency is obtained with very low peak cylinder pressure as the piston rings and bearings can be made with less friction. This paper presents studies of a combustion engine which consists of a two stage compression and expansion cycle. By splitting the engine into two different cycles, high-pressure (HP) and low-pressure (LP) cycles respectively, it is possible to reach high levels of both indicated and mechanical efficiency simultaneously. The HP cycle is designed similar to today's turbo-charged diesel engine but with an even higher boost pressure, resulting in high PCP. To cope with high PCP, the engine needs to be rigid.