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Fuel economy estimates are provided for the CleanFleet vans operated for two years by FedEx in Southern California. Between one and three vehicle manufacturers (Chevrolet, Dodge, and Ford) supplied vans powered by compressed natural gas (CNG), propane gas, California Phase 2 reformulated gasoline (RFG), methanol (M-85), and unleaded gasoline as a control. Two electric G-Vans, manufactured by Conceptor Corporation, were supplied by Southern California Edison. Vehicle and engine technologies are representative of those available in early 1992. A total of 111 vans were assigned to FedEx delivery routes at five demonstration sites. The driver and route assignments were periodically rotated within each site to ensure that each vehicle would experience a range of driving conditions. Regression analysis was used to estimate the relationships between vehicle fuel economy and factors such as the number of miles driven and the number of delivery stops made each day.

Prior-art two-phase systems for cooling automotive piston engines have several handicaps which have been responsible for them not having been mass produced to date. Those handicaps are identified, and the salient distinctive features of a new technology which eliminates those handicaps are listed. Two embodiments of that technology, suitable for piston engines, are described in outline. Similar embodiments can also be used with rotary engines.

The CleanFleet project was a 24-month demonstration of five alternative motor fuels and a control gasoline in 111 FedEx delivery vans. Delivery vans from Chevrolet, Dodge, and Ford were operated on compressed natural gas (CNG), M-85 (methanol containing 15 percent RFG), propane gas, and California Phase 2 reformulated gasoline (RFG). Control vans for each fleet were operated on gasoline. Electric vans on loan from Southern California Edison were also used by FedEx. Data were gathered on vehicle emissions, fleet operations, and facility and vehicle capital and operating costs. This paper focusses on vehicle reliability and maintenance. Maintenance experience is described, vehicle utilization is discussed, the results of oil analysis are presented, and future engine teardown and inspection plans are described.

Tests were undertaken with a Renault Express 1.4 litre converted to natural gas operation. The effect of cold starts at cold temperatures and vehicle weight on tail pipe emissions were investigated with petrol and natural gas operation over the FTP75 and the 91/441/EEC drive cycles. The results show that the emissions with natural gas are unaffected by cold temperature, unlike petrol emissions which are several times higher at -15°C than at 25°C. A crude simulation, accounting for the actual temperature, shows that the conversion of a significant quantity of light duty vehicles to natural gas operation could reduce the emissions of CO and HC by more than 90% in Switzerland.

Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources of energy, being one of the largest fractions of the greenhouse gases (GHG). Hydrogen is indicated as a fuel with potential to replace fossil fuels in the future, mainly because the combustion products are environmentally friendly, with high specific energy, in comparison with other sources of fuel. However, to use hydrogen as a fuel in internal combustion engines (ICE) or in fuel cell vehicles (FCV), it is necessary to separate it from primary elements (water, biomass, natural gas, etc.). It´s also need to consider storage and transport in order to handle a fuel like hydrogen. All of these phases require energy, which may be from renewable or non-renewable sources, causing environmental impacts. In order to investigate if the hydrogen is economically viable, aspects such as environmental impacts, safety and technological feasibility need to be studied.

The paper describe investigations on the vibration characteristics of a gasoline engine due to piston slap and a diesel engine due to combustion. Engine parameters and vibration data were recorded and time series signals were obtained. The effect of speed, load and other engine parameters on vibration is investigated. Vibration due to piston slap is analysed with reference to major-minor thrust relationship, cylinder to cylinder variation, piston-slap force diagram and vibration-frequency curves. The experimental results suggest that all reciprocating engines would exhibit a complex vibration pattern due to piston slap at harmonic series of discrete frequencies, and the reason for this is analysed. The vibration transmitted by engine structure in response to the in-cylinder pressure development is termed here as ‘Vibration due to Combustion’ and is assessed from the spectrum of the Combustion Pressure curves and their derivatives in terms of time.

This paper outlines the design philosophy and evaluation of the new “H” series variable displacement, medium pressure, open-circuit, axial piston hydraulic pumps. The “H” series is based on previously existing, technically successful, rotating group designs, but has significant design improvements affecting the areas of: Unit Weight Envelope Size Ease of Assembly, Disassembly, Repairability and Modification Alternate Fluid Capabilities The “H” series is a family of naturally aspirated pumps nominally rated at 250 or 275 bar (3625 or 4000 psig), depending on system operating parameters. The geometric displacements of the four units in the series are as follows: 57cc (3.5 cu. in./rev.) 74cc (4.5 cu. in./rev.) 98cc (6.0 cu. in./rev.) 131cc (8.0 cu. in./rev.)

Viking 29 is being built under a U.S. Department of Energy contract by the Vehicle Research Institute (VRI) at Western Washington University and JX Crystals of Issaquah, WA to demonstrate a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) generator. The 10 kW TPV generator being developed for use in a vehicle makes use of gallium antimonide (GaSb) photovoltaic (PV) cells surrounding a central emitter heated by a compressed natural gas flame to 1700 Kelvin. The infrared photons generated activate the PV cells to produce electricity which maintains a charge in the battery. Preliminary emission testing has shown that this generator is 50 times cleaner than an equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE).

A test cell was developed for evaluating a 6-speed automatic transmission. The target vehicle had an internal combustion 5.4L gasoline V8 engine. An electric dynamometer was used to closely simulate the engine characteristics. This included generating mean torque from the ECU engine map, with a transient capability of 10,000 rpm/second. Engine inertia was simulated with a transient capability of 20,000 rpm/second, and torque pulsation was simulated individually for each piston, with a transient capability of 50,000 rpm/second. Quantitative results are presented for the correlation between the engine driven and the dynamometer driven transmission performance over more than 60 test cycles. Concerns about using the virtual engine in validation testing are discussed, and related to the high frequency transient performance required from the electric dynamometer. Qualitative differences between the fueled engine and electric driven testing are presented.

In Motorsports the understanding of the real engine performance within a complete circuit lap is a crucial topic. On the basis of the telemetry data the engineers are able to monitor this performance and try to adapt the engine to the vehicle's and race track's characteristics and driver's needs. However, quite often the telemetry is the sole analysis instrument for the Engine-Vehicle-Driver (EVD) system and it has no prediction capability. The engine optimization for best lap-time or best fuel economy is therefore a topic which is not trivial to solve, without the aid of suitable, reliable and predictive engineering tools. A complete EVD model was therefore built in a GT-SUITE™ environment for a Motorsport racing car (STCC-VW-Scirocco) equipped with a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) turbocharged S.I. engine and calibrated on the basis of telemetry and test bench data.

Four multigrade engine oils, containing the same base oil plus SE additive package but VI improvers of differing shear stability, were evaluated in 80 000 km of high-speed, high-temperature vehicle service. Bearing, piston ring and valve guide wear, as well as oil consumption, oil filter plugging and engine cleanliness were all worse for the engines operated on the low-shear stability oils. The wear differences were traced to differences in high-shear-rate viscosity, while the cleanliness, filter plugging and oil consumption differences occurred because of excessive wear or polymer shear degradation. These results suggest that engine oil viscosity should be specified under high-shear-rate conditions.

A new liquid-liquid injection technique with a rigid swirling water flow and a single shot photograph was developed to make observation of a fuel-air mixing process, and then to understand its characteristic quantitatively. In this technique, a liquid fuel was injected into an other liquid to simulate the process of diffusion in a piston cavity of an actual engine. This experiment has been made employing four different configurations of plastic piston cavities; dish, troidal, bowl and square type. These cavities were filled with water and rotated to generate the rigid swirling water flow. Observations from the bottom and side view indicated that the mixing process in the square configuration markedly depends on the orientation of the spray, due to both effects of the swirl and the impingement of the spray on the side wall. The technique is a potential to visually understand the mixing process.

In the previous study design of two-component normal paraffin fuel was attempted considering the components and blending ratio. Only the thermodynamic analysis of combustion and analysis of emission characteristics were performed to evaluate the design performance. In this study mixture formation behavior and combustion phenomena of pure and mixed n-paraffin fuels were investigated by direct visualization in an AVL engine with bottom view piston. The experiments included laser-illuminated high-speed photography of the fuel injection phase and combustion phase to investigate physical differences. The results obtained for the proposed fuels are compared with the results of conventional diesel fuel. It was found that the two component normal paraffin fuels with similar thermo physical properties have very similar spray development pattern but evaporation rates are different.

Understanding of the oil film formation mechanism around a piston skirt is very important to reduce the friction loss at piston skirt. We have investigated lubricant oil film behavior around piston skirt which is affected by piston slap under motoring condition. In this study, a cylinder liner of a commercial engine is displaced with a quartz cylinder. Photographic observations of oil film behavior between the cylinder liner and the piston skirt were performed with two kinds of methods; direct monochromatic photography and LIF (Laser Induced Fluorescence) image using a high speed camera. The oil film distributions were determined from oil boundary observed by the direct photography, and oil film thickness was estimated from the LIF intensity. Differences of the oil film distributions and the oil film thickness depending on piston shapes were investigated for four types of pistons.

In this article, the effects on the jet process of natural gas through an outward-opening nozzle were analyzed at different pressure ratios (PR). The visualization and analysis of the jet process was based on Schlieren methods. High-speed Schlieren imaging was used to capture the growth of the transient gas jet in a constant volume vessel (CVV) under atmospheric conditions. The experimental results revealed an increase in the radial and axial penetrations in accordance with an increase in the PR. The jet process of the outward-opening nozzle can be divided into two stages, according to the ratio of the radial penetration to the axial penetration. The spread angle increased with the advancement of the gas jet at the initial phase of the jet process. After this phase, the spread angle decreased to a constant value. The appearance of the constant value is directly related to the PR. The peak velocity increased with an increase in the PR.

In this study, in order to clarify the mechanism of preignition occurrence in highly boosted SI engine at low speed and high load operating conditions, directphotography of preignition events and light induced fluorescence imaging of lubricant oil droplets during preignition cycles were applied. An endoscope was attached to the cylinder head of the modified production engine. Preigntion events were captured using high-speed video camera through the endoscope. As a result, several types of preignition sources could be found. Preignition caused by glowing particles and deposit fragments could be observed by directphotography. Luminous flame was observed around the piston crevice area during the exhaust stroke of preignition cycles.

Investigation of knocking combustion in a hydrogen spark-ignition engine is one of the major challenges for future vehicle development. The knock phenomenon in a Spark-Ignition (SI) engine is caused by autoignition of the unburned gas ahead of the flame. The explosive combustion of the end-gas creates a pressure wave that leads to damage of the cylinder wall and the piston head of the engine. We observed autoignition in the end-gas region due to compression by the propagating flame front using a high-speed colour video camera through the optically accessible cylindrical quartz window on the top of the cylinder head. Moreover, a high-speed monochrome video camera operating at a speed of 250, 000 frame/s was used to measure the pressure wave propagation. The goal of this research was to improve our ability to describe the effect of the autoignition process on the end-gas and propagating pressure wave during knocking combustion with the help of a high-speed video camera.

A square-piston engine simulator used at Berkeley to study both spark-ignited and diesel engine processes is described. The square piston configuration provides optical access to fluid mechanical and combustion processes through two fiat quartz windows used as cylinder walls. Results from three previous research projects are reviewed to illustrate the engine's capabilities. Since these studies, we developed and used a color schlieren cinematography system to record in-cylinder processes. Color schlieren movies of both spark-ignition and diesel combustion reveal the essential fluid mechanical and combustion features within the engine. For these movies, we redesigned the diesel fuel system and installed a new liquid fuel injection system for spark-ignited operation. By preventing fuel and soot condensation on the windows, these new fuel systems improved the quality of our Schlieren images.

High pressure injection of natural gas is being investigated as a mean of fueling diesel engines and meeting increasingly stringent EPA regulations on emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulates. In the work described in this paper, the penetration into air of a sonic jet of methane emerging from a suddenly opened poppet valve has been modelled analytically and measured using flow visualization. The injection pressure ratios were in the range 1.5 to 5 and the conical jet sheet Reynolds numbers were in the range 7000 to 56000. Schlieren photographs revealed that the conical sheet gas jet exhibits an unstable behaviour between the upper and lower plates which simulate the fire deck and the piston. The integral model developed indicates the principal parameters on which the gaseous jet penetration depends and establishes the requirements for scaling. The conical sheet jet penetration is found to be approximately 30% less than that of round holes, given the same flow area.

This study focuses on the combustion visualization of spark ignition combustion in an optical single cylinder engine using natural gas and propane at several air to fuel ratios and speed-load operating points. Propane and natural gas fuels were compared as they are the most promising gaseous alternative fuels for reciprocating powertrains, with both fuels beginning to find wide market penetration on the fleet level across many regions of the world. Additionally, when compared to gasoline, these gaseous fuels are affordable, have high knock resistance and relatively low carbon content and they do not suffer from the complex re-fueling and storage problems associated with hydrogen.