Modeling of Regeneration Dynamics in Gasoline Particulate Filters and Sensitivity Analysis of Numerical Solutions 2022-01-0556

Gasoline direct-injection (GDI) engine technology improves vehicle fuel economy while decreasing CO₂ emissions. The main drawback of GDI technology is the increase in particulate emissions compared to the commonly used port fuel injection technologies. Today’s adopted strategy to limit such emissions relies upon the use of aftertreatment gasoline particulate filters (GPFs). GPFs reduce particulates resulting from fuel combustion. Soot oxidation (also known as regeneration) is required at regular intervals to clean the filter, maintain a consistent soot trapping efficiency, and avoid the formation of soot plugs in the GPF channels. In this paper, starting from a multiphysics GPF model accounting for mass, momentum, and energy transport, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to choose the best mesh refinement, time step, and relative tolerance to ensure a stable numerical solution of the transport equations during regeneration while maintaining low computational time. Moreover, the numerical solutions are analyzed with respect to different smoothing of the model inputs, namely, experimental exhaust gas temperature, mass flow rate, and air-fuel ratio.