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The energy management strategies (EMS) for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) have a great impact on the fuel economy (FE). The Pontryagin's minimum principle (PMP) has been proved to be a viable control strategy for HEV. The optimal costate of the PMP control can be determined by the given information of the driving conditions. Since the full knowledge of future driving conditions is not available, this paper proposed a dynamic optimization method for PMP costate without the prediction of the driving cycle. It is known that the lower fuel consumption the method yields, the more efficiently the engine works. The selection of costate is designed to make the engine work in the high efficiency range. Compared with the rule-based control, the proposed method by the principle of Hamiltonian, can make engine working points have more opportunities locating in the middle of high efficiency range, instead of on the boundary of high efficiency range.

The increasingly stringent restrictions on vehicle emissions and fuel consumption are driving the development of gasoline engines towards lean combustion. Increasing ignition energy has been considered an effective way to achieve lean operation conditions. To further improve the lean limit of engine combustion, the influence of the spark plug orientation on the combustion stability under lean operation should be explored. In this investigation, the original machine spark plug orientation, 90 degrees clockwise rotation, and 180 degrees clockwise rotation are studied to analyze the impact of spark plug orientation. The combustion experiment was carried out under the condition of low excess air ratio of the original machine and high excess air ratio with a 450 mA high energy ignition.

Accuracy of heat flux models is critical to clutch design in case of excessive temperatures due to large amounts of friction heat generated in the narrow space. Pressure distribution on the clutch friction interface is an important factor affecting heat flux distribution, thus affecting temperature distribution. In this paper, an experiment is conducted to obtain the pressure distribution for one typical dry clutch equipped with a set of diaphragm spring. Considering that the frictional interface is in contact, this study makes use of pressure sensitive film and acquires data based on image processing techniques. Then a polynomial mathematical model with dimensionless parameters is developed to fit the pressure distribution on the friction disc. After that, the proposed pressure model is applied to a thermal model based on finite element method. In addition, two conventional thermal models (i.e., uniform heat flux model and uniform pressure model), are implemented for comparison.

The internal combustion engine (ICE) is a typical complex multidisciplinary system which requires the support of precision design and manufacturing. To achieve a better performance of ICEs, tolerance assignment, or tolerance design, plays an important role. A novel multi-disciplinary tolerance design optimization problem considering two important disciplines of ICEs, the compression ratio and friction loss, is proposed and solved in this work, which provides a systematic procedure for the optimal determination of tolerances and overcomes the disadvantages of the traditional experience-based tolerance design. A bi-disciplinary analysis model is developed in this work to assist the problem solving, within which a model between the friction loss and tolerance is built based on the Gaussian Process using the corresponding simulation and experimental data.

The interaction of fuel sprays and in-cylinder flow in direct-injection engines is expected to alter kinetic energy and integral length scales at least during some portions of the engine cycle. High-speed particle image velocimetry was implemented in an optical four-valve, pent-roof spark-ignition direct-injection single-cylinder engine to quantify this effect. Non-firing motored engine tests were performed at 1300 RPM with and without fuel injection. Two fuel injection timings were investigated: injection in early intake stroke represents quasi-homogenous engine condition; and injection in mid compression stroke mimics the stratified combustion strategy. Two-dimensional crank angle resolved velocity fields were measured to examine the kinetic energy and integral length scale through critical portions of the engine cycle. Reynolds decomposition was applied on the obtained engine flow fields to extract the fluctuations as an indicator for the turbulent flow.

Manufacturing tolerances are inevitable in nature. For the bearings used in internal combustion engines, the manufacturing tolerances of roundness, which is of the micron scale, can be very close to the bearing radial clearance, and as a result the roundness could affect the lubrication of the bearings and thus affecting the friction loss of the engine. However, there is insufficient understanding of this mechanism. This study aims to find out the effects of the amplitude and the phase of journal roundness in the shape of ellipse on the lubrication of engine bearings. The elastohydrodynamic (EHD) theory is applied to model the bearing since the EHD model takes account of the elastic deformation of the journal and the bearing shell. The analysis of the DOE results shows the existence of roundness can be beneficial to the lubrication in some cases.

Flash boiling is considered a useful method in enhancing the liquid fuel jet break-up and spray atomization process for internal combustion engine applications. Spray atomization efficiency plays a vital role in the combustion process. Although some researches have demonstrated that flash boiling has the potential to improve the combustion efficiency and optimize emission-related issues, the effect of flash boiling spray characteristics on the combustion process has not been fully investigated. In this paper, spray characteristics and its related combustion process were studied via various non-intrusive diagnostics methods. The spray and combustion process under different test conditions were studied using an optical engine. It was found that by using flash boiling atomization, the combustion duration was reduced and IMEP enhanced significantly. Experimental results have built the relationship between flash boiling spray characteristics and the combustion performance in the engine.

It is well known that engine downsizing is still the main energy-saving technology for spark-ignition direct-injection (SIDI) engine. However, with the continuous increase of the boosting ratio, the gasoline engine is often accompanied by the occurrence of knocking, which has the drawback to run the engine at retarded combustion phasing. Besides, in order to protect the turbine blades from being sintered by high exhaust temperature, the strategies of fuel enrichment are often taken to reduce the combustion temperature, which ultimately leads to a high level of particulate number emission. Therefore, to address the issues discussed above, the port water injection (PWI) techniques on a 1.2-L turbocharged, three-cylinder, SIDI engine were investigated. Measurements indicate that the optimization of spark timing has a significant impact on its performance.

Increasingly stringent emission standards have promoted the interest in alternate fuel sources. Because of the comparable energy density to the existing fossil fuels and renewable production, alcohol fuels may be a suitable replacement, or an additive to the gasoline/diesel fuels to meet the future emission standards with minimal modification to current engine geometry. In this research, the combustion characteristics of neat n-butanol are analyzed under spark ignition operation using a single cylinder SI engine. The fuel is injected into the intake manifold using a port-fuel injector. Two modes of charge dilution were used in this investigation to test the limits of stable engine operation, namely lean burn using excess fresh air and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The in-cylinder pressure measurement and subsequently, heat release analysis are used to investigate the combustion characteristics of the fuel under low load SI engine operation.

Using highly efficient powertrain is one of the most important and effective approaches to increase the driving distance of electric vehicles (EVs). In this paper, a novel two-speed dual-clutch transmission (DCT) is proposed. The transmission is comprised of two traditional friction clutches and two-stage planetary gear sets. One clutch connects the input sun gear and the other connects the input carrier. The Simulink models including an electric motor and two-speed DCT are established. Gearshift schedule based on fuzzy logic which reflects the driver’s intensions is adopted to improve the dynamic and economic performance of the novel transmission. The simulation model is built using MATLAB/Simulink® to validate the effectiveness of the proposed gearshift schedule compared with the conventional two-parameter gearshift schedule. Simulation results show that both the dynamic and economic performance of the novel DCT for EVs are improved with the proposed fuzzy logic gearshift schedule.

Stringent particulate emission regulations are applied to spark-ignition direct-injection (SIDI) engines, calling for a significant in-cylinder reduction of soot particles. To enhance fundamental knowledge of the soot formation and oxidation process inside the cylinder of the engine, a new in-flame particle sampling system has been developed and implemented in a working optical SIDI engine with a side-mounted, wall-guided injection system. Using the sampling probes installed on the piston top, the soot particles are directly sampled from the petrol flame for detailed analysis of particle size distribution, structure, and shape. At the probe tip, a transmission electron microscope (TEM) grid is stored for the soot collection via thermophoresis, which is imaged and post-processed for statistical analysis. Simultaneously, the flame development was recorded using two high-speed cameras to evidence the direct exposure of the sampling grids to the soot-laden diffusion flames and pool fires.

Applications of methanol and biodiesel in internal combustion engines have raised widespread concerns, but there is still huge scope for improvement in efficiency and emissions. The brand-new combustion mode, named as Intelligent Charge Compression Ignition (ICCI) combustion, was proposed with methanol-biodiesel dual fuel direct injection. In this paper, effects of injection parameters such as two-stage split-injections, injection timings, injection pressure and intake pressure on engine combustion and emissions were investigated at IMEP = 8, 10, and 12 bar. Results show that the indicated thermal efficiency up to 53.5% and the NOx emissions approaching to EURO VI standard can be obtained in ICCI combustion mode.

Port water injection is considered as a promising strategy to further improve the combustion performance of internal combustion engines for its benefit in knock resistance by reducing the cylinder temperature. A thorough investigation of the port water injection technique is required to fully understand its effects on the engine combustion process. This study explores the potential of the port water injection technique in improving the performance of a turbo charged Gasoline Direct Injection engine. A 3D computational fluid dynamics model is applied to simulate the in-cylinder mixing and combustion for this engine both with and without water injection. Different water injection timings are investigated and it is found that the injection timing greatly effects the mass of water which enters the combustion chamber, both in liquid and vapor form.

With the rapid development of series-parallel hybrid electric vehicles (SPHEVs), mode transition from pure electrical drive to hybrid drive has attracted considerable attention. The presence of time delay due to response capacity of actuators and signal transmission of communication may cause decrease of speed tracking accuracy, even instable dynamics. Consequently, drivability of the SPHEV is unacceptable, and durability of the components is reduced. So far, plenty of control strategies have been proposed for mode transition, however, no previous research has been reported to deal with the time delay during mode transition. In this paper, a dynamic model with time delay of hybrid electric system is established. Next, a mode transition time-delay controller is proposed based on a two degree of freedom internal model controller (2-DOF-IMC).

The transient characteristics of combustion and emissions during the engine start up at different higher cranking speeds for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) applications were presented in this paper. Cycle-by-cycle analysis was done for each start up case. Intake air mass during the first several cycles decrease as the engine was cranked at higher speed. Ignition timing is delayed with higher cranking speed, which leads to an increase of exhaust temperature. For various start up cases, similar quantity of fuel is injected at the first cycle, but the ignition timing is significantly delayed to meet the acceleration requirement when cranking speed enhanced. Because of the deterioration of intake charge, the air-fuel mixture is over-enriched in the first several cycles for the cases at higher cranking speed. With cranking speed is increased, the in-cylinder residual gas fraction rises, which leads to poor combustion and decrease of mass fraction of burned fuel.

An air-cooled, four-stroke, 125 cc electronic gasoline fuel injection SI engine for motorcycles is altered to burn ethanol fuel. The effects of nozzle orifice size, fuel injection duration, spark timing and the excess air/ fuel ratio on engine power output, fuel and energy consumptions and engine exhaust emission levels are studied on an engine test bed. The results show that the maximum engine power output is increased by 5.4% and the maximum torque output is increased by 1.9% with the ethanol fuel in comparison with the baseline. At full load and 7000 r/min, HC emission is decreased by 38% and CO emission is decreased 46% on average over the whole engine speed range. However, NOx levels are increased to meet the maximum power output. The experiments of the spark timing show that the levels of HC and NOx emission are decreased markedly by the delay of spark timing.

Combustion efficiency of internal combustion engine is closely influenced by the air flow pattern in the engine cylinder. Some researchers use high-speed particle image velocimetry to visualize and measure the temporally and spatially resolved in-cylinder velocity flow fields in the optically assessable engine. However, the transparent cylindrical liner makes it difficult to accurately determine the particle displacements inside the cylinder due to the optically distorted path of scattering light from seeding particles through the curved liner. To correct for the distortion-induced error in the seeding particle positions through the optical liner, the distortion mapping function is modeled using the Gaussian optics theory. Two artificial flow patterns with 5 by 5 vectors were made to illustrate the mapping correction. Distortion-induced error of velocity vectors was precisely mapped in six different planes inside the cylinder.

Three-phase sequential turbocharging system with two unequal-size turbochargers is developed to improve fuel economy performance and reduce emission of the automotive diesel engine, which satisfies wide range of intake flow demand. However, it results in complicated transient control strategies under frequently changing operating conditions. The present work aims to optimize the control scheme of boost system and fuel injection and evaluate their contributions to the improvement of transient performance. A mean value model for diesel engine was built up in SIMULINK environment and verified by experiment for transient study. Then a mathematical model of optimization issue was established. Strategies of control valves and fuel injection for typical acceleration and loading processes are obtained by coupled calculating of the simulation model and optimization algorithm.

Taking advantages of high speed RGB video cameras, the two-color method can be implemented with a relatively simple setup to obtain the temporal development of the two dimensional temperature and soot (KL) distributions in a reacting diesel jet. However, several issues such as the selection of the two wavelengths, the role of bandpass filters, and the proper optical settings, etc. should be known to obtain a reliable measurement. This paper, at first, discusses about the uncertainties in the measurement of temperature and KL distributions in the diesel flame by the two-color method using the high speed RGB video camera. Since n-butanol, as an alternative renewable fuel, has the potential application in diesel engines, the characteristic of spray combustion of diesel-butanol blends under the diesel-like ambient conditions in a pre-burning constant-volume combustion chamber is studied.

Lift-off length is defined as the distance from injector hole to the location where flame stabilized on a high injection pressure direct injection (DI) diesel spray. In this paper we used the high-speed (40 kHz) Schlieren and time-averaged OH chemiluminescence imaging technique to simultaneously measure the flame lift-off locations on a DI diesel spray in an optically accessible and constant-volume combustion vessel. The time-resolved development of the diesel spray acquired from the high-speed Schlieren imaging system enabled us to observe the instantaneous spray structure details of the spray flames. The OH chemiluminescence image obtained from a gated, intensified CCD video camera with different delay and width settings was used to determine the quiescent lift-off length. Experiments were conducted under various ambient temperatures, ambient gas densities, injection pressures and oxygen concentrations.