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The prime target of IEA (international energy association) to reduce global average emission by 50% in 2030 has prompted focused R&D on automotive emission reduction as well as NEV (new energy vehicles). Of these strategies, engine downsizing constitutes the group of strategies employed to meet lower emission and fuel consumption targets in IC engines. Downsizing strategies have been proved successful in reducing emissions. There is widespread trend of downsizing existing engines with a goal to produce lower emissions along with equal or better performance. To achieve the stated goals downsized engines are usually charged or employ higher compression ratios. This raises NVH as well as structural issues that need further analysis. While the concept of downsizing has been studied in deep, its structural effects and NVH related issues are of concern. This paper throws light into different engine downsizing strategies and their effect on NVH.

Comfort is a key factor in the automobile industry. Vehicles are designed to provide optimum comfort levels to passengers and drivers. The agricultural industry is a vital sector and requires long hours of operation for which comfort levels are a priority. To achieve these comfort levels Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) engineering is done, which includes computer-aided and prototype testing to troubleshoot problems and provide necessary solutions. This research work is based on the final stage of tractor development, during which an abnormal rattle noise was observed. This paper presents the airborne and structure-borne NVH study on a tractor by measuring sound pressure and vibration levels at vehicle and engine levels. A preliminary inspection of the tractor indicated the presence of abnormal noise during operation. For a detailed study, the engine was removed from the vehicle and mounted on a testbench to conduct a series of tests.

Climate change is a global phenomenon now and countries across the globe are working towards reducing emissions by bringing in stricter legislations on emissions and CO2. India is also facing huge challenges on pollutions in large cities. Reports suggest that 7 of the 10 most polluted cities of the world lie in India. The growing public opinion towards cleaner air and reduced greenhouse gaseous emissions has sensitized the matter and has led to drafting of strict emission legislations in India during the past few years. The leap frogging from BS 4 to BS 6 in 2020 by skipping BS 5 norms showed the intent of the GOI towards emission reduction. The BS 6 legislation is not limiting to meeting norms with legislative emission cycle but will also focus from year 2023 onto real driving emissions on actual roads. GOI is also proposing to implement fleet CO2 emission norms (CAFÉ) by 2022 to regulate the CO2 emissions.

The ever-increasing cost of automotive powertrain development is due to the more complex technologies required to meet the latest emissions legislation and customer expectations. Manufacturers need to conduct extensive development loops of test bench and on-road testing to verify the hardware, emission control system, corresponding ECU software function development. Increased resources are required to build up a comparably large number of prototype vehicles to calibrate all the ECU algorithms and functionalities. Increasing powertrain complexity leads typically to a strong increase of conventional calibration efforts. Therefore, there is a strongly increasing need for an advanced calibration approach based on multi-facial XiL simulation.

Vehicles are one of the main sources of pollution in India, which produce substantial amount of pollutants. Gaseous pollutants are reason for major health problems; hence emission legislations are becoming increasingly stringent all over the world. India is also following the global trend of migrating in the Off-highway segment from Trem IIIA to Stage V legislation by 2024. This legislation change is calling for technological upgrade of all existing engines. EGR has been successfully proved as a useful technology to reduce NOx by decreasing the oxygen concentration and the peak temperature of the combustion. Due to compact design and space restriction, the distance required for the homogeneous mixing of fresh air and EGR is not enough. Therefore, the mixing of the EGR and distribution of the EGR over the cylinders may not be equal.

Super ultra-low NOX emission engine concepts are essential to comply with future emission legislations. To meet the future emission standards, application of advanced diesel exhaust aftertreatment systems (EATS), such as Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC), Lean NOX Trap (LNT), Selective Catalytic Reduction coatings on Soot Filters (SCRF) and underfloor SCR, is required. Effective customized thermal management strategies are essential to ensure fast light-off of the EATS after engine cold start, and to avoid significant cooldown during part load operation. The authors describes the investigation of different exhaust gas heating measures, such as intake throttling, late fuel injection, exhaust throttling, advanced exhaust cam phasing, retarded intake cam phasing, cylinder deactivation, full turbine bypass, electric catalyst heating and electrically heated intake manifold strategies.

Advanced powertrains for modern vehicles require the optimization of conventional combustion engines in combination with tailored electrification and vehicle connectivity strategies. The resulting systems and their control devices feature many degrees of freedom with a large number of available adjustment parameters. This obviously presents major challenges to the development of the corresponding powertrain control logics. Hence, the identification of an optimal system calibration is a non-trivial task. To address this situation, physics-based control approaches are evolving and successively replacing conventional map-based control strategies in order to handle more complex powertrain topologies. Physics-based control approaches enable a significant reduction in calibration effort, and also improve the control robustness.

The Bharat Stage (CEV/Tractor) IV & V emission legislations will come into force in Oct 2020 & Apr 2024 respectively, posing a major engineering challenge in terms of system complexity, reliability, costs and development time. Solutions for the EU Stage-V NRMM legislation in Europe, from which the BS-V limits are derived, have been developed and are ready for implementation. To a certain extent these European solutions can be transferred to the Indian market. However, certain market-specific challenges are yet to be defined and addressed. In addition, a challenging timeline has to be considered for application of advanced technologies and processes during the product development. In this presentation, the emission roadmap will be introduced in the beginning, followed by a discussion of potential technology solutions on the engine itself as well as on the after treatment components.

Upcoming China 4th stage of fuel consumption regulation and China 6a emission legislation require improvement of many existing engines. This paper summarizes an upgrade of combustion system and mechanical layout for a four-cylinder engine family. Based on an existing production process for a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter gasoline engine, a 1.8-liter down-speeded and turbocharged gasoline engine is derived. Starting development by analysis of engine base geometry, a layout for a Miller-Cycle gas exchange with early closing of intake valves is chosen. Requirements on turbocharger configuration are investigated with one-dimensional gas exchange simulation and combustion process will be analyzed by means of 3D-CFD simulation. Challenging boundary conditions of a very moderate long-stroke layout with a stroke/bore-ratio of only 1.037 in combination with a cost efficient port fuel injection system and fixed valve lift profiles are considered.

In-use compliance under LEV III emission standards, GHG, and fuel economy targets beyond 2025 poses a great opportunity for all ICE-based propulsion systems, especially for light-duty diesel powertrain and aftertreatment enhancement. Though diesel powertrains feature excellent fuel-efficiency, robust and complete emissions controls covering any possible operational profiles and duty cycles has always been a challenge. Significant dependency on aftertreatment calibration and configuration has become a norm. With the onset of hybridization and downsizing, small steps of improvement in system stability have shown a promising avenue for enhancing fuel economy while continuously improving emissions robustness. In this paper, a study of current key technologies and associated emissions robustness will be discussed followed by engine and aftertreatment performance target derivations for LEV III compliant powertrains.

The emission legislations are becoming increasingly strict all over the world and India too has taken a big leap in this direction by signaling the migration from Bharat Stage 4 (BS 4) to BS 6 in the year 2020. This decision by the Indian government has provided the Indian automotive industry a new challenge to find the most optimal solution for this migration, with the existing BS 4 engines available in their portfolio. Indian market for the LCV segment is highly competitive and cost sensitive where the overall vehicle operation cost (vehicle cost + fluid consumption cost) is the most critical factor. The engine and after-treatment technology for BS 6 emission levels should consider the factors of minimizing the additional hardware cost as well as improving the fuel efficiency. Often both of which are inversely proportional. The presented study involves the optimization of after treatment component size, layout and various systems for NOx and PM reduction.

Despite the trend in increased prosperity, the Indian automotive market, which is traditionally dominated by highly cost-oriented producion, is very sensitive to the price of fuels and vehicles. Due to these very specific market demands, the U-LCV (ultra-light commercial vehicle) segment with single cylinder natural aspirated Diesel engines (typical sub 650 cc displacement) is gaining immense popularity in the recent years. By moving to 2016, with the announcement of leapfrogging directly to Bharat Stage VI (BS VI) emission legislation in India, and in addition to the mandatory application of Diesel particle filters (DPF), there will be a need to implement effective NOx aftertreament systems. Due to the very low power-to-weight ratio of these particular applications, the engine operation takes place under full load conditions in a significant portion of the test cycle.

The Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI) emission legislation will come into force in 2020, posing a major engineering challenge in terms of system complexity, reliability, cost and development time. Solutions for the EURO VI on-road legislation in Europe, from which the BS-VI limits are derived, have been developed and have already been implemented. To a certain level these European solutions can be transferred to the Indian market. However, several market-specific challenges are yet to be defined and addressed. In addition, a very strict timeline has to be considered for application of advanced technologies and processes during the product development. In this paper, the emission roadmap will be introduced in the beginning, followed by a discussion of potential technology solutions on the engine itself as well as on the exhaust aftertreatment side. This includes boosting and fuel injection technologies as well as different exhaust gas recirculation methods.

The decision to leapfrog from the Bharat Stage (BS) IV emission standards directly to the BS VI standards not only effects passenger and commercial vehicles but also India’s by far largest vehicle class, with regards to sales and production, the two-wheelers. The BS VI norm will not only tighten the emission standards, but it will also increase the required emission mileage level and upgrade the On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) requirements, also by introducing In-Use Monitor Performance Ratio (IUMPR) standards. While OBD was already introduced for passenger and commercial vehicles with BS IV in 2010, OBD will be then newly introduced for two-wheelers. The OBD system monitors the vehicle’s in-use emission performance, informs the driver via the malfunction indication light (MIL) on the dashboard in case of an emission relevant failure, standardises the diagnostic code handling and regulates a standardised access to the electronic control units (ECUs) for maintenance and inspection purposes.

Improvements in the efficiency of internal combustion engines has led to a reduction in exhaust gas temperatures. The simultaneous tightening of exhaust emission limits requires ever more complex emission control methods, including aftertreatment whose efficiency is crucially dependent upon the exhaust gas temperature. Double-walled (also called air-gap) exhaust manifold and turbine housing modules made from sheet metal have been used in gasoline engines since 2009. They offer the potential in modern Diesel engines to reduce both the emissions of pollutants and fuel consumption. They also offer advantages in terms of component weight and surface temperatures in comparison to cast iron components. A detailed analysis was conducted to investigate the potential advantages of insulated exhaust systems for modern diesel engines equipped with DOC and SCR coated DPF (SDPF).

In the near future engine emitted carbon dioxides (CO2) are going to be limited for all vehicle categories with respect to the Green House Gases (GHG) norms. To tackle this challenge, new concepts need to be developed. For this reason waste heat recovery (WHR) is a promising research field. For commercial vehicles the first phase of CO2 emission legislation will be introduced in the USA in 2014 and will be further tightened towards 2030. Besides the US, CO2 emission legislation for commercial engines will also be introduced in Europe in the near future. The demanded CO2 reduction calls for a better fuel economy which is also of interest for the end user, specifically for the owners of heavy duty diesel vehicles with high mileages. To meet these future legislation objectives, a waste heat recovery system is a beneficial solution of recovering wasted energies from different heat sources in the engine.

Electrification is a key enabler to reduce emissions levels and noise in commercial vehicles. With electrification, Batteries are being used in commercial hybrid vehicles like city buses and trucks for kinetic energy recovery, boosting and electric driving. A battery management system monitors and controls multiple components of a battery system like cells, relays, sensors, actuators and high voltage loads to optimize the performance of a battery system. This paper deals with the development of modular control architecture for battery management systems in commercial vehicles. The key technical challenges for software development in commercial vehicles are growing complexity, rising number of functional requirements, safety, variant diversity, software quality requirements and reduced development costs. Software architecture is critical to handle some of these challenges early in the development process.

Within a project of the Research Association for Combustion Engines e.V., different measures for rising the temperature of exhaust gas aftertreatment components of both a passenger car and an industrial/commercial vehicle engine were investigated on a test bench as well as in simulation. With the passenger car diesel engine and different catalyst configurations, the potential of internal and external heating measures was evaluated. The configuration consisting of a NOx storage catalyst (NSC) and a diesel particulate filter (DPF) illustrates the potential of an electrically heated NSC. The exhaust aftertreatment system consisting of a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and a DPF shows in simulation how variable valve timing in combination with electric heated DOC can be used to increase the exhaust gas temperature and thus fulfill the EU6 emission limits.

This study investigated dual-fuel operation with a light duty Diesel engine over a wide engine load range. Ethanol was hereby injected into the intake duct, while Diesel was injected directly into the cylinder. At low loads, high ethanol shares are critical in terms of combustion stability and emissions of unburnt hydrocarbons. As the load increases, the rates of heat release become problematic with regard to noise and mechanical stress. At higher loads, an advanced injection of Diesel was found to be beneficial in terms of combustion noise and emissions. For all tests, engine-out NOx emissions were kept within the EU-6.1 limit.

The continuously strengthened requirements regarding air quality and pollutant reduction as well as GHG emissions further complicate the compliance with legal standards. Especially in view of cost-sensitive applications this demand strongly collides with the EMS set-up and the sensor requirements with still increasing overall system complexity. The paper in hand describes a novel air path control approach, which offers the potential for a flexible use of multiple EGR routes to meet upcoming legislations more robustly, while providing a significant reduction of calibration effort and sensor content at the same time. By using a direct emission based cylinder charge control, also alterations in operational ambient conditions are covered with system reactions according to physical-based rules to enhance the engine-out emission performance without need for tuning of corrections of any air path set point.