Search Results

A segment of steel tube with the inner diameter of 60 mm and length of 100 mm was fixed between the intake manifold and cylinder head in a direct injection natural aspirated diesel engine. The surface of the tube could be heated to be above 400 °C by the heater enwrapped outside within several minutes under the power less than 600 W. The tip of an injector traditionally used for in-cylinder diesel direct injection was extended to the axis of the tube. The diesel sprays could impinge onto the hot inner surface of the tube and atomize quickly if the temperature of the tube was high enough. Then the fuel-air mixture would be sucked into the cylinder, and HCCI combustion could be fulfilled. The vaporization ratio of the impinged diesel sprays was estimated by fuel consumption, intake air flux and excess air coefficient (λ) calculated from the volumetric concentration of O2, CO2 and CO emissions. The NOx emission was always very low.

An EURO 3 certified common rail diesel engine was fueled with pure petroleum diesel (EURO 4 standard) and three different alternative blended diesel fuels, 10% biodiesel blended diesel (B10), 10% gas to liquid blended diesel (G10) and 10% water emulsified diesel (E10). Tests were performed at different engine speeds and load states. Particle number concentration and size distribution data were obtained from an engine exhaust particle sizer (EEPS). Over all the working conditions, total particle and nucleation mode particle number concentration among these fuels from high to low were in this order: B10, E10, pure diesel and G10. Proportions for nucleation mode particle over all the operating states in that order were 89%, 82%, 59% and 66%. Particle size distributions of B10 and E10 presented bimodal logarithmic distributions with outstanding nucleation mode peaks at all working conditions.

Based on equivalent static loads method (ESL), a nonlinear dynamic topology optimization is carried out to optimize an automotive body in white (BIW) subjected to representative legislative crash loads, including frontal impact, side barrier impact, roof crush and rear impact. To meet the crashworthiness performances, two evaluation indexes are defined to convert the practical engineering problems into mathematic optimization problems. The strain energy is treated as the stiffness evaluation index of the BIW and the relative displacement is employed as the compliance index of the components and parts.

In order to meet the ever more stringent demands on the CO2 emission reduction, downsized modern gasoline engine with highly boosted turbo charger meets new challenges such as super knock and pre-ignition, which will influence the engine combustion efficiency, smooth operation and even cause mechanical failure. A spark plug type ion current detection sensor was used in a 1.8L turbo charged gasoline engine. The ion-current wave signal differed greatly under different engine operating conditions such as without knock, with knock of different knock intensities. The frequency spectrum of ion-current was also studied, by the method of discrete Fourier transform (DFT). In knocking cycles, there were fluctuations of frequency 8-13 kHz both in the combustion pressure signal and in the ion current signal, proving the existence of knock information.

With regulatory standards for diesel engine emissions becoming stricter worldwide, integrated catalytic systems are becoming increasingly necessary. One of the better approaches is to use an after-treatment system consisting of a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC), a catalyzed diesel particulate filter (CDPF), and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR), but many factors can affect how well this system works. This study investigates the effects of DOC and CDPF catalyst composition on emissions characteristics for DOC + CDPF + SCR systems by collecting reactor and engine data. The reactor results show that the light-off temperatures (T50) of CO and C3H6 increase with the growth of Pt:Pd ratio while the T50 of NO degrades. An engine dynamometer test was conducted on a light-duty diesel engine equipped with DOC + CDPF + SCR. The results show light-off curves of CO and THC that are smoother than the reactor data.

By means of particle image velocimetry(PIV) measurements, this paper uses vortex identification algorithms to find and analyze the coherent structures in the shear layer region of a 1:15 scaled 3/4 open jet automotive wind tunnel with a high Reynolds number(about 106), referring to SAWTC’s AAWT. The proper orthogonal decomposition(POD) is used to process the PIV experimental data to reconstruct the velocity fields. Based on the vortex identification functions, the locations of the center, the rotation direction and the radius of vortex can be computed. Furthermore, this paper uses the statistical method to study the regularities of distribution of these vortexes in a two-dimensional plane, and identify the vortex pairing process in the shear layer region. This paper also chooses different vortex identification algorithms to find the most accurate and suitable algorithms.

Faced with intricate traffic conditions, the single sensor has been unable to meet the safety requirements of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. In the field of multi-target tracking, the number of targets detected by vision sensor is sometimes less than the current tracks while the number of targets detected by millimeter wave radar is more than the current tracks. Hence, a multi-sensor information fusion algorithm is presented by utilizing advantage of both vision sensor and millimeter wave radar. The multi-sensor fusion algorithm is based on centralized fusion strategy that the fusion center takes a unified track management. At First, vision sensor and radar are used to detect the target and to measure the range and the azimuth angle of the target. Then, the detections data from vision sensor and radar is transferred to fusion center to join the multi-target tracking with the prediction of current tracks.

Due to the oil crisis and the requirements of energy saving and emission reduction, the research of alternative energy sources for sustainable development has made good progress. Methanol has proven to be a very suitable alternative clean fuel. Compared with gasoline, methanol has a wide range of source and the higher oxygen content and octane number and combustion efficiency, which are beneficial for the engine performance. The effect of different proportions of methanol-gasoline mixed fuel on the performance of SI engine was studied experimentally (lower proportion and higher proportion). It was found that the engine power performance, fuel economy and exhaust emissions were related to the methanol ratio under different operating conditions. In order to adapt to different operating conditions to improve the performance of methanol-gasoline engine, an on-board flexible fuel mixed system was proposed.

Battery models are often applied to describe the dynamic characteristics of batteries and can be used to predict the state of the battery. Due to the process of charging and discharging, the battery heat generation will cause the inhomogeneity between inner battery temperature and surface temperature. In this paper, a novel battery impedance model, which takes the impact of the battery internal temperature gradient on battery impedance into account, is proposed to improve the battery model performance. Several experiments are designed and conducted for pouch typed battery to investigate the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) characteristics with the artificial temperature gradient (using a heating plate). Experimental results indicate that the battery internal temperature gradient will influence battery EIS regularly.

Lightweight automobile has an important role in saving the energy, improving the fuel economy and reducing the exhaust emission. However, reducing the mass of the automobile need to meet the structural and NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) performance requirements. With the rapid development of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) technology, more and more people tend to research the complex engineering application problem by computer simulation. An important challenge in today's simulation is the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) of an automobile, including mass, stiffness and modal etc. This paper presents a MDO study in a minicar hatchback.

A specially designed generator has been developed to produce poly-disperse droplet streams: A liquid fuel (n-heptane) is metered to an ultrasonic atomizer to produce droplets, which are then carried and accelerated vertically upwards through a nozzle tube by carrier-air flow. Conditions of the streams at the nozzle exit are modulated by varying the length of nozzle tubes, the fuel and carrier-air flow rate. Optical measurement techniques such as direct photography method, schlieren photography and particle image velocimetry (PIV) are employed to characterize its performance characteristics. Effects of the nozzle tube length, the carrier-air and fuel flow rate are investigated to evaluate the performance of the generator. Longer nozzle tubes provide a better flow guidance for the carrier-air, and tend to generate streams with less and smaller droplets due to the transporting losses.

Regulated gaseous and particulate matter (PM) emissions in the exhaust from a heavy duty diesel engine with biodiesel fuel were studied, and the emission characteristics of PM and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) emissions in PM were highlighted. In the experiment, pure diesel fuel and B10 (a blend of diesel and biodiesel fuels with the volume ratio of 9 to 1) fuel were chosen. The study shows that, compared to the pure diesel, the emissions of PM, soluble organic fractions (SOF) and PAHs from the heavy duty diesel engine decrease when the engine burns B10 fuel, and the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission slightly increases, while the unburned hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions also decline. Among the detected 12 kinds of PAHs, emission concentrations of 10 kinds of PAHs from the engine with B10 descend. Especially Benzo(a)pyrene equivalent toxicity (BEQ) analysis results show that the BEQ of B10 fuel decreases by 15.2% compared to pure diesel.

The unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is applied to estimate the real vehicle velocity. The velocity estimation algorithm uses lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration and yaw rate as inputs. The non-linear vehicle model and Dugoff tire model are built as the estimation model of UKF. Some parameters of Dugoff tire model and vehicle, which can't be measured directly, are identified by the particle swarm optimization (PSO). For the purpose of evaluating the algorithm, the estimation values of UKF are compared with measurements of the Inertial and GPS Navigation system. Besides, the real time property of UKF is tested by xPC Target, which is a real-time software environment from MathWorks. The result of the real vehicle experiment demonstrates the availability of the UKF and PSO in vehicle velocity estimation.

As the connectivity of vehicles increases rapidly, more vehicles have the capability to communicate with each other. Because Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) have the characteristics of solid mobility and decentralization, traditional security strategies such as authentication, firewall, and access control are difficult to play an influential role. As a soft security method, trust management can ensure the security attributes of VANETs. However, the rapid growth of newly encountered nodes of the trust management system also increases the requirements for trust establishing mechanisms. Without a proper trust establishment mechanism, the trust value of the newly encountered nodes will deviate significantly from its actual performance, and the trust management system will suffer from newcomer attacks.

Off-road trucks, tractors and earth-moving machines are at high risk of accidents involving falling objects or rollovers. Therefore, these machines need proper protective structures to protect operators. This study investigates the crashworthiness optimization of a hydraulic excavator cab roof rail based on an improved bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method considering two different load cases (a lateral quasi-static load and an impact load from the top of cab, respectively). In the crashworthiness optimization problem, a weighted summation of external works done by the two different load cases is treated as the objective function while the volume of design domain is treated as the constraint. A mutative weight scheme is proposed to stabilize the optimization and balance the two load cases. Finite element (FE) model is established and two prototypes are fabricated based on the optimal design.

The First Firing Cycle (FFC) is very important at cold-start. Misfiring of the first firing cycle can lead to significant HC emissions and affect the subsequent cycles. This paper presents an investigation of characteristics of transient NO emissions in a small LPG SI engine with electronic gaseous injection system. To determine the optimal excess air coefficient ( λ=[A/F]/[A/F]stoic) of the first firing cycle, the emission of instantaneous NO was proposed as a useful criterion to judge if the combustion is occurred or not. A fast response NO detector- Cambustion fNOx400, based on the chemiluminescence's (CLD) method, has been employed to measure continuous, transient emissions of NO during the first firing cycle in the exhaust port of the engine. At the same time, the transient cylinder pressure, instantaneous crankshaft speed of the engine and engine-out HC emissions were measured and recorded.

The conventional crash box with thin-walled column conceals some limitations on pedestrian protection and lightweight. The metallic NPR metamaterials designed in this study are based on re-entrant lattice structures. Re-entrant structures are known to be one main class of axenic structures that display negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR), which can be manufactured by 3D printing technology. This kind of metamaterial has good designability and can be used as the filling structure of the crash box to improve the crashworthiness of the car. This paper starts from the relations between geometric parameters of the metamaterial. Considering the deformation characteristics of the crash box, the structure were designed into some gradient types. The mechanical properties of different gradient structures under the same impact conditions were compared to find the proper gradient structures. Based on the studies, the gradient lattice structure is applied to the automobile crash box.

In this study, effects of altitude on free diesel spray morphology, macroscopic spray characteristics and air-fuel mixing process were investigated. The diesel spray visualization experiment using high-speed photography was performed in a constant volume chamber which reproduced the injection diesel-like thermodynamic conditions of a heavy-duty turbocharged diesel engine operating at sea level and 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m above sea level. The results showed that the spray morphology became narrower and longer at higher altitude, and small vortex-like structures were observed on the downstream spray periphery. Spray penetration increased and spray angle decreased with increasing altitude. At altitudes of 0 m, 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m, the spray penetration at 1.45 ms after start of injection (ASOI) were 79.54 mm, 80.51 mm, 81.49 mm, 83.29 mm and 88.92 mm respectively, and the spray angle were 10.9°, 10.8°, 10.7°, 10.4°and 9.8° respectively.

Based on a 125cm3 single cylinder SI engine, the designated idle speed was controlled by adjusting of cycle ignition advance angle. By analyzing the effects of different idle speed and throttle open position on three way catalyst (TWC) light-off time and conversion efficiency of HC and CO emissions, combined with the corresponding total HC and CO emissions level, the optimum idle speed and throttle open position at engine's warm-up phase were found by the matching optimum. The present method for engine control strategy is helpful to optimize the warm-up phase emission levels in SI engine with LPG fuel.

Lane marking detection plays a crucial role in Autonomous Driving Systems or Advanced Driving Assistance System. Vision based lane marking detection technology has been well discussed and put into practical application. LiDAR is more stable for challenging environment compared to cameras, and with the development of LiDAR technology, price and lifetime are no longer an issue. We propose a lane marking detection algorithm based on solid-state LiDARs. First a series of data pre-processing operations were done for the solid-state LiDARs with small field of view, and the needed ground points are extracted by the RANSAC method. Then, based on the OTSU method, we propose an approach for extracting lane marking points using intensity information.