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The objective of this study is to explore the relation among mixture distribution condition, chemical character of fuel, combustion processes, and emissions characteristics with premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) operation. The present experiment employs two fuel injectors which are capable of port injection and direct one. The former was used to supply a highly-homogeneous mixture and the latter with late injection timing was employed to control the mixture heterogeneity. Thus, these sets of injection equipments are capable of setting a wide variety of mixture heterogeneity. Furthermore, two primary reference fuels were used in order to know the influences of chemical character. The experiments were conducted in order to clarify the combustion and emissions characteristics through engine tests. Optical diagnostic was also performed to gain additional insight into the combustion processes for a wide variety of mixture distribution.

It is very much necessary for researchers and engineers whose work is the field of combustion in a CI engine to find the information of droplets in a diesel spray. The information is strongly required to construct the model of spray built in the numerical code for its simulation and to be used for the verification of the accuracy of the calculation. This paper describes the photographing system with high spatial resolution, the distribution of droplet size and the vortex scale caused by the droplets motion by means of this system.

The demand for quieter vehicle interiors increases year after year. The dynamic force transmission of rolling tires from the road surface to the spindles is a critical factor in vehicle interior noise. We investigated the dynamic force transmission of a rolling tire as it relates to reducing vehicle interior noise. A test with a tire rolling over a cleat was conducted in order to measure the road forces and the spindle forces. The transfer function of the rolling tire was identified from the experimental results by applying multi dimensional spectral analysis. In addition, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) technology has advanced recently. This enables prediction of spindle forces early in the design stage. One of the most important issues in predicting spindle forces accurately is to clarify the distribution of road forces. This paper also describes the distribution of the dynamic road forces of the rolling tire.

A hydraulic excavator cab is mounted on a viscous mount. When the weight of the cab is heavy, the neutral position is depressed. Besides, at a large load, the cab receives compressive repulsion power of oil thereby restricting its damping ability. In addition, it is difficult to obtain an arbitrary damping performance separately. To overcome these problems, which combines the shear force due to viscous fluid with elastic force due to air-spring a mount, was invented. The neutral position of composite mount is adjustable by air-spring according to the weight. And viscous oil is not sealed up. So, viscous oil can flow at a large load. Therefore, it may not experience the repulsion force of oil in spite of a large load. Moreover, the generated elastic force is adjustable according to change of pressure in the air spring, and the generated damping force is adjustable according to change of viscous fluid's viscosity or volume.

Three-dimensional large eddy simulation (LES) has been conducted for a diesel spray flame using KIVALES which is LES version of KIVA code. Modified TAB model, velocity interpolation model and rigid sphere model are used to improve the prediction of the fuel-mixture process in the diesel spray. Combustion is simulated using the Eddy-Dissipation model. CIP method was incorporated into the KIVALES in order to suppress the numerical instability on the combustible flow. The formation of soot and NO was simulated using Hiroyasu model and KIVA original model. Three different grid resolutions were used to examine the grid dependency. The result shows that the LES approach with 0.5 mm grid size is able to resolve the instantaneous spray with the intermittency in the spray periphery, the axi-symmetric shape and meandering flow after the end of injection as shown in the experimental results.

It is thought that the synthetic gas, including hydrogen and carbon monoxide, has a potential to be an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines, because a heating value of the synthetic gas is higher than one of hydrogen or natural gas. A purpose of this study is to acquire stable auto-ignition and combustion of the synthetic gas which is supposed to be applied into a direct-injection compression ignition engine. In this study, the effects of ambient gas temperatures and oxygen concentrations on auto-ignition characteristics of the synthetic gas with changing percentage of hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the synthetic gas. An electronically-controlled, hydraulically-actuated gas injector was used to control a precise injection timing and period of gaseous fuels, and the experiments were conducted in an optically accessible, constant-volume combustion chamber under simulated quiescent diesel engine conditions.

This study discussed the mechanism of the low speed judder for wave type brake disc developed newly for recent motorcycles. Wavy disc was examined to investigate the effect of wave configurations on the BTV (Brake Torque Variation) behavior. Torque amplitude in braking was compared with respect to the revolution order which represented the multiple number of the number of revolutions. To explain the mechanism at the mode showing largest BTV, the elastic deformation of the pad was analyzed by finite element method concerning geometrical nonlinearity with commercial code. This study found that most crucial BTV appeared on low speed judder was observed at the 3 rd peaks on the revolution order. Test data showed that this crucial BTV was related with the number of waves at the disc periphery, and caused by the indentation of the pad into notched part at disc periphery.

A prediction method was proposed for crack initiation in one-piece type brake discs under extreme braking conditions. Braking tests under extreme loading conditions were conducted by using sample discs. The variations of internal temperatures and surface strains at several locations were measured by using thermocouples and strain gages. In order to obtain the S-N curve of the disc material, specimens with a hole in their center were used for the fatigue test in which an alternative strain was cyclically applied. The numbers of strain cycles, when a 0.3mm crack initiated from the hole, were analyzed by the Weibull plot. The maximum and minimum strains at the hole edge were estimated by calculation considering the temperature variation with respect to time as well as the strain induced by friction due to braking pads. The number of cycles corresponding to the strain amplitude range was estimated by the rain-flow method.

To reduce tire/road noise, it is important to examine the noise generation mechanism. Noise generated by a rolling tire is mainly emitted from the tread block. However, it has recently been reported that smooth tires also generate noise recently. This paper remarks on a smooth tire vibration by rolling on the road. The vibration of a rolling smooth tire is mainly vibration excited from the road surface. It is difficult to measure the input from the road surface, so we measured the tire's vibration at the leading and trailing edges. Scan Laser Doppler Vibrometers were employed to measure the vibration of the tire tread.

It is very significant to take the intermediate products in diesel combustion for understanding the generation of exhaust emissions like SOF, dry soot and so on. The products generated in a constant volume combustion chamber were sampled by pricking a sheet of polyester film installed in the chamber to freeze the chemical reaction. The gas was analyzed by a gas chromatography. The fuel used was n-heptane. It is able to explain the generation of exhaust emissions by the experimental results. The other objective is to simulate the intermediate products. It is capable of explaining the relation between the simulated and experimental results.

This paper presents an analytical model for the prediction of piston secondary motion and the vibration due to piston slap. For the modeling of piston slap phenomenon, cylinder liner is modeled as a several spring-mass system that are connected by modal characteristics, and lubricant film between the piston and the cylinder is modeled as reaction force vectors which excite resonant mode of them. By comparing experimental results and analytical ones, the validity of the proposed model has been confirmed. The optimization of the piston skirt profile is also carried out with the analytical model, and it is confirmed that the round shape of the lower part of piston skirt is effective for the reduction of piston slap excitation.

The mixed fuel composed of two kinds of fuel oil whose boiling temperature is different each other forms the fine spray with minute droplets when its condition crosses over the two-phase region. It is expected that the fuel with low volatility dominates the ignition delay and that with high volatility does the generation of particulate matter. The experiments were carried out in a rapid compression and expansion machine and in an actual high-speed small sized diesel engine by use of this kind of fuel. The experimental results prove this expectation.

In this study, a system to perform a parameter search of heavy-duty diesel engines is proposed. Recently, it has become essential to use design methodologies including computer simulations for diesel engines that have small amounts of NOx and SOOT while maintaining reasonable fuel economy. For this purpose, multi-objective optimization techniques should be used. Multi-objective optimization problems have several types of objectives and they should be minimized or maximized at the same time. There is often a trade-off relationship between objects and derivation of the Pareto optimum solutions that express the relationship between the objects is one of the goals in this case. The proposed system consists of a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) and phenomenological model. MOGA has strong search capability for Pareto optimum solutions. However, MOGA requires a large number of iterations.

Flash-boiling occurs when a fuel is injected to a combustion chamber where the ambient pressure is lower than the saturation pressure of the fuel. It has been known that flashing is a favorable mechanism for atomizing liquid fuels. On the other hand, alternative fuels, such as gaseous fuels and oxygenated fuels, are used to achieve low exhaust emissions in recent years. In general, most of these alternative fuels have high volatility and flash-boiling takes place easily in fuel spray, when they are injected into the combustion chamber of an internal combustion engine under high pressure. In addition, fuel design concept the multicomponent fuel with high and low volatility fuels has been proposed in the previous study in order to control the spray and combustion processes in internal combustion engine. It is found that the multicomponent fuel produce flash-boiling with an increase in the initial fuel temperature.

This work investigates the soot formation process in diesel jet flame using a detailed kinetic soot model implemented into the KIVA-3V multidimensional CFD code and 2D imaging by use of time-resolved laser induced incandescence (LII). The numerical model is based on the KIVA code which is modified to use CHEMKIN as the chemistry solver using Message Passing Interface (MPI). This allows for the chemical reactions to be simulated in parallel on multiple CPUs. The detailed soot model used is based on the method of moments, which begins with fuel pyrolysis, followed by the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, their growth and coagulation into spherical particles, and finally, surface growth and oxidation of the particles. The model can describe the spatial and temporal characteristics of soot formation processes such as soot precursors distributions, nucleation rate and surface reaction rate.

The present study extends the recently developed HIDECS-GA computer code to optimize diesel engine emissions and fuel economy with the existing techniques, such as exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and multiple injections. A computational model of diesel engines named HIDECS is incorporated with the genetic algorithm (GA) to solve multi-objective optimization problems related to engine design. The phenomenological model, HIDECS code is used for analyzing the emissions and performance of a diesel engine. An extended Genetic Algorithm called the ‘Neighborhood Cultivation Genetic Algorithm’ (NCGA) is used as an optimizer due to its ability to derive the solutions with high accuracy effectively. In this paper, the HIDECS-NCGA methodology is used to optimize engine emissions and economy, simultaneously. The multiple injection patterns are included, along with the start of injection timing, and EGR rate.

This work presents the ignition delay time characteristics of oxygenated fuel sprays under simulated diesel engine conditions. A constant volume combustion vessel is used for the experiments. The fuels used in the experiments were three oxygenated fuels: diethylene glycol dibutyl ether, diethylene glycol diethyl ether, and diethylene glycol dimethyl ether. JIS 2nd class gas oil was used as the reference fuel. The ambient gas temperature and oxygen concentration were ranging from 700 to 1100K and from 21 to 9%, respectively. The results show that the ignition delay of each oxygenated fuel tested in this experiments exhibits shorter than that of gas oil fuel for the wide range of ambient gas conditions. Also, NTC (negative temperature coefficient) behavior which appears under shock tube experiment for homogenous fuel-air mixture was observed on low ambient gas oxygen concentration for each fuel. And at the condition, the ignition behavior exhibits two-stage phase.

This paper provides new insights on the mechanism of the smokeless diesel combustion with oxygenated fuels, based on a combination of soot kinetic modeling and optical diagnostics. The chemical effects of fuel compositions, including aromatics - paraffins blend, neat oxygenated fuels and oxygenate additives, on sooting equivalence ratio ‘ϕ’ - temperature ‘T’ dependence were numerically examined using a detailed soot kinetic model. To better understand the physical factors affecting soot formation in oxygenated fuel sprays, the effects of injection pressure and ambient gas temperature on the flame lift-off length and relative soot concentration in oxygenated fuel jets were experimentally investigated. The computational results show that the leaner mixture side of soot formation peninsula on the ϕ - T map, rather than the lower temperature one, should be utilized to suppress the formation of PAHs and ultra-fine particles together with the large reduction in particulate mass.

Fuel design for internal combustion engines has been proposed in our study. In this concept, the multicomponent fuel with high and low volatility fuels are used in order to control the spray and combustion processes in internal combustion engine. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the spray and combustion characteristics of the multicomponent fuels in detail. In the present study, the modeling of multicomponent spray vaporization was conducted using KIVA3V code. The physical fuel properties of multicomponent fuel were estimated using the source code of NIST Mixture Property Database. Peng-Robinson equation of state and fugacity calculation were applied to the estimation of liquid-vapor equilibrium in order to take account for non-ideal vaporization process. Two-zone model in which fuel droplet was divided into droplet surface and inner core was introduced in order to simply consider the temperature distribution in fuel droplet.

In this study, the novel fuel design concept has been proposed in order to realize the low emission and combustion control in engine systems. In this fuel design concept, the mixed fuels with a high volatility fuel (gasoline or gaseous fuel components) and a low volatility fuel (gas oil or fuel oil components) are used in order to improve the spray characteristics by flash boiling. In our previous papers on this study, the fundamental characteristics of spray and its combustion of mixed fuel were reported. In this paper, heat release and exhaust emission (smoke, NOx and THC) characteristics of single cylinder diesel engine operated with the mixed fuels were investigated under each load. The exhaust performance of diesel engine could be improved using mixed fuel, because fuel properties and spray characteristics were controlled by changing mixing fraction of the mixed fuel.