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The automotive industry continues to develop new powertrain and vehicle technologies aimed at reducing overall vehicle-level fuel consumption. Specifically, the use of electrified propulsion systems is expected to play an increasingly important role in helping OEM’s meet fleet CO2 reduction targets for 2025 and beyond. Electric and hybrid electric vehicles do not typically utilize IC engines for low-speed operation. Under these low-speed operating conditions, the vehicles are much quieter than conventional IC engine-powered vehicles, making their approach difficult to detect by pedestrians. To mitigate this safety concern, many manufacturers have synthesized noise (using exterior speakers) to increase detection distance. Further, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has provided recommendations pursuant to the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act (PSEA) of 2010 for such exterior noise signatures to ensure detectability.

Demanding CO2 and fuel economy regulations are continuing to pressure the automotive industry into considering innovative powertrain and vehicle-level solutions. Powertrain engineers continue to minimize engine internal friction and transmission parasitic losses with the aim of reducing overall vehicle fuel consumption. Strip friction methods are used to determine and isolate components in engines and transmissions with the highest contribution to friction losses. However, there is relatively little focus on friction optimization of Front-End-Accessory-Drive (FEAD) components such as alternators and Air Conditioning (AC) compressors. This paper expands on the work performed by other researchers’ specifically targeting in-depth understanding of system design and operating strategy.

In view of changing climatic conditions all over the world, Green House Gas (GHG) saving related initiatives such as reducing the CO2 emissions from the mobility and transportation sectors have gained in importance. Therefore, with respect to the large U.S. market, the corresponding legal authorities have defined aggressive and challenging targets for the upcoming time frame. Due to several aspects and conditions, like hesitantly acting clients regarding electrically powered vehicles or low prices for fossil fuels, convincing and attractive products have to be developed to merge legal requirements with market constraints. This is especially valid for the market segment of Light-Duty vehicles, like SUV’S and Pick-Up trucks, which are in high demand.

Modern combustion engines must meet increasingly higher requirements concerning emission standards, fuel economy, performance characteristics and comfort. Especially fuel consumption and the related CO2 emissions were moved into public focus within the last years. One possibility to meet those requirements is downsizing. Engine downsizing is intended to achieve a reduction of fuel consumption through measures that allow reducing displacement while simultaneously keeping or increasing power and torque output. However, to reach that goal, downsized engines need high brake mean effective pressure levels which are well in excess of 20bar. When targeting these high output levels at low engine speeds, undesired combustion events with high cylinder peak pressures can occur that can severely damage the engine. These phenomena, typically called low speed pre-ignition (LSPI), set currently an undesired limit to downsizing.

Substitution of diesel fuel with natural gas in heavy-duty diesel engines offers significant advantages in terms of operating cost, as well as NOx, PM emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. However, the challenges of high THC and CO emissions, combustion stability, exhaust temperatures and pressure rise rates limit the substitution levels across the engine operating map and necessitate an optimized combustion strategy. Reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) combustion has shown promise in regard to improving combustion efficiency at low and medium loads and simultaneously reducing NOx emissions at higher loads. RCCI combustion exploits the difference in reactivity between two fuels by introducing a less reactive fuel, such as natural gas, along with air during the intake stroke and igniting the air-CNG mixture by injecting a higher reactivity fuel, such as diesel, later in the compression stroke.

Upcoming motor vehicle emission regulations, such as California's LEVIII, continue to tighten emission limitations in diesel vehicles. These increasingly challenging emission requirements will be met by improving the combustion process (reducing engine-out emissions), as well as improving the exhaust gas aftertreatment efficiency. Furthermore, intricate On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) systems are required to properly diagnose and meet OBD regulation requirements for complex aftertreatment systems. Under these conditions, current monitoring strategies are unable to guarantee reliable detection of partially failed systems. Additionally, new OBD regulations require aftertreatment systems to be diagnosed as a whole. This paper covers potential OBD strategies for LEVIII aftertreatment concepts with regard to regulation compliance and robustness, while striving to use existing sensor concepts.

Measures for reducing engine friction within the powertrain are assessed in this paper. The included measures work in combination with several new technologies such as new combustion technologies, downsizing and alternative fuels. The friction reduction measures are discussed for a typical gasoline vehicle. If powertrain friction could be eliminated completely, a reduction of 15% in CO2 emissions could be achieved. In order to comply with more demanding CO2 legislations, new technologies have to be considered to meet these targets. The additional cost for friction reduction measures are often lower than those of other new technologies. Therefore, these measures are worth following up in detail.

Automatic engine start/stop systems are becoming more prevalent and increasing market share of these systems is predicted due to demands on improving fuel efficiency of vehicles. Integration of an engine start/stop system into a “conventional” drivetrain with internal combustion engine and 12V board system is a relatively cost effective measure to reduce fuel consumption. Comfort and NVH aspects will continue to play an important role for customer acceptance of these systems. Possible delay during vehicle launch due to the engine re-start is not only a safety relevant issue but a hesitating launch feel characteristic will result in reduced customer acceptance of these systems. The engine stop and re-start behavior should be imperceptible to the driver from both a tactile and acoustic standpoint. The lack of masking effects of the engine during the engine stop phases can cause other “unwanted” noise to become noticeable or more prominent.

The electrification of vehicle propulsion has changed the landscape of vehicle NVH. Pure electric vehicles (EV) are almost always quieter than those powered by internal combustion engines. However, one of the key challenges with the development of range extended electric vehicles (ReEV) is the NVH behavior of the vehicle. Specifically, the transition from the EV mode to one where the range extender engine is operational can cause significant NVH issues. In addition, the operation of the range extender engine relative to various driving conditions can also pose significant NVH concerns. In this paper internal combustion engines are examined in terms of their acoustic behavior when used as range extenders. This is done by simulating the vibrations at the engine mounting positions as well as the intake and exhaust orifice noise. By using a transfer path synthesis, interior noise components of the range extenders are calculated from these excitations.

The definition of vehicle and powertrain level targets is one of the first tasks toward establishing where a vehicle will reside with respect to the current or future state of industry. Though development of sound quality metrics is ongoing to better correlate objective data with subjective assessments, target setting at the vehicle level is relatively straightforward. However, realization of these targets depends on effective cascading to system and component levels. Often, component level targets are derived based on experience from earlier development programs, or based on selected characteristics observed during component level benchmarking. An approach is presented here to complement current strategies for component level target definition. This approach involves a systematic concept for definition of component NVH targets based on desired vehicle level performance and a consequent target break down.

Downsizing in combination with turbocharging currently represents the main technology trend for meeting CO2 emissions with gasoline engines. Besides the well-known advantages of downsizing the compression ratio has to be reduced in order to mitigate knock at higher engine loads along with increased turbocharging demand to compensate for the reduction in power. Another disadvantage occurs at part load with increasing boost pressure levels causing the part load efficiencies to deteriorate. The application of a variable compression ratio (VCR) system can help to mitigate these disadvantages. The 2-stage VCR system with variable kinetic lengths entails variable powertrain components which can be used instead of the conventional components and thus only require minor modifications for existing engine architectures. The presented variable length connecting rod system has been continuously developed over the past years.

The increased demand in fuel economy and the reduction of CO₂ emissions results in continued efforts to downsize engines. The downsizing efforts result in engines with lower displacement as well as lower number of cylinders. In addition to cylinder and displacement downsizing the development community embarks on continued efforts toward down-speeding. The combination of the aforementioned factors results in engines which can have high levels of torsional vibrations. Such behavior can have detrimental effects on the drivetrain particularly during the development phase of these. Driveshafts, couplings, and dynamometers are exposed to these torsional forces and depending on their frequency costly damages in these components can occur. To account for these effects, FEV employs a multi-body-system modeling approach through which base engine information is used to determine optimized drivetrain setups. All mechanical elements in the setup are analyzed based on their torsional behavior.

The interest in electric propulsion of vehicles has increased in recent years and is being discussed extensively by experts as well as the public. Up to now the driving range and the utilization of pure electric vehicles are still limited in comparison to conventional vehicles due to the limited capacity and the long charging times of today's batteries. This is a challenge to customer acceptance of a pure electric vehicle, even for a city car application. A Range Extender concept could achieve the desired customer acceptance, but should not impact the “electric driving” experience, and should not cause further significant increases in the manufacturing and purchasing cost. The V2 engine concept presented in this paper is particularly suited to a low cost, modular vehicle concept. Advantages regarding packaging can be realized with the use of two generators in combination with the V2 engine.

The problem with traditional drive cycle fuel economy analysis is that kinematic (backward looking) models do not account for transient differences in charge air handling systems. Therefore, dynamic (forward looking) 1D performance simulation models were created to predict drive cycle fuel economy which encompass all the transient elements of fully detailed engine and vehicle models. The transient-capable technology of primary interest was mechanical supercharging which has the benefit of improved boost response and "time to torque." The benefits of a supercharger clutch have also been evaluated. The current US class 6-8 commercial vehicle market exclusively uses turbocharged diesel engines. Three vehicles and baseline powertrains were selected based on a high-level review of vehicle sales and the used truck marketplace. Fuel economy over drive cycles was the principal output of the simulation work. All powertrains are based on EPA 2010 emission regulations.

Over the past few years, both global warming and rising oil prices led to a significantly increased demand for low fuel consumption in passenger cars. However, the necessity to also meet the limits of today's and future emission regulations makes it more and more difficult to maintain a high engine efficiency without the use of an expensive external exhaust gas after-treatment system. Therefore, new technologies that simultaneously prevent emission formation and reduce fuel consumption inside the internal combustion engine during the combustion process itself are of highest interest. This paper analyzes the influence of a catalytic coating of the combustion chamber on combustion, emission formation and fuel consumption. For this purpose, test runs with a production 2.0-liter, 4-cylinder, 4-valve, double overhead camshaft (DOHC), port fuel injection (PFI) gasoline engine were performed.

Stringent global emissions legislation demands effective NOx reduction strategies, particularly for the aftertreatment, and current typical liquid urea SCR systems achieve efficiencies greater than 90% [1]. However, with such high-performing systems comes the trade-off of requiring a tank of reductant (urea water solution) to be filled regularly, usually as soon as the fuel fillings or as far as oil changes. Advantages of solid reductants, particularly ammonium carbamate, include greater ammonia densities, enabling the reductant refill interval to be extended several multiples versus a given reductant volume of urea, or diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) [2]. An additional advantage is direct gaseous ammonia dosing, enabling reductant injection at lower exhaust temperatures to widen its operational coverage achieving greater emissions reduction potential [3], as well as eliminating deposits, reducing mixing lengths, and avoiding freeze/thaw risks and investments.

A multi-objective optimization scheme based on stochastic global search is developed and used to examine the performance of an HCCI model containing a reduced chemical kinetic mechanism, and to study interrelations among different model responses. A stochastic reactor model of an HCCI engine is used in this study, and dedicated HCCI engine experiments are performed to provide reference for the optimization. The results revealed conflicting trends among objectives normally used in mechanism optimization, such as ignition delay and engine cylinder pressure history, indicating that a single best combination of optimization variables for these objectives did not exist. This implies that optimizing chemical mechanisms to maintain universal predictivity across such conflicting responses will only yield a predictivity tradeoff. It also implies that careful selection of optimization objectives increases the likelihood of better predictivity for these objectives.

Tier 4 emissions legislation is emerging as a clear pre-cursor for widespread adoption of exhaust aftertreatment in off-highway applications. Large bore engine manufacturers are faced with the significant challenge of packaging a multitude of catalyst technologies in essentially the same design envelope as their pre-Tier 4 manifestations, while contending with the fuel consumption consequences of the increased back pressure, as well as the incremental cost and weight associated with the aftertreatment equipment. This paper discusses the use of robust metallic catalysts upstream of the exhaust gas turbine, as an effective means to reduce catalyst volume and hence the weight and cost of the entire aftertreatment package. The primarily steady-state operation of many large bore engine applications reduces the complication of overcoming pre-turbine catalyst thermal inertia under transient operation.

Downsized direct-injected boosted gasoline engines with high specific power and torque output are leading the way to reduce fuel consumption in passenger car vehicles while maintaining the same performance when compared to applications with larger naturally aspirated engines. These downsized engines reach brake mean effective pressure levels which are in excess of 20 bar. When targeting high output levels at low engine speeds, undesired combustion events called pre-ignition can occur. These pre-ignition events are typically accompanied by very high cylinder peak pressures which can lead to severe damage if the engine is not designed to withstand these high cylinder pressures. Although these pre-ignition events have been reported by numerous other authors, it seems that their occurrence is rather erratic which makes it difficult to investigate or reliably exclude them.

Beginning in 2010, implementation of on-board diagnostics (OBD) is mandatory for all the heavy-duty engine applications in the United States. The task of developing OBD strategies and calibrating them is a challenging one. The process involves a strong interdependency on base engine emissions, controls and regulations. On top of that the strategies developed as a result of the regulatory requirements need to go through a stringent and time-intensive process of software implementation and integration. The recent increasing demands to minimize the development process have been pushing the envelope on the methodologies used in developing the strategies and the calibration for robust monitoring. The goal of this paper is to provide a concise overview of a process utilized to help the development, testing and calibration of the OBD strategies on a 2010 model year heavy-duty diesel engine.