Search Results

The computer-aided engineering (CAE) automation study requires a large disk space and a premium processor. If all finite element (FE) models run locally, it may crash the local machine, and if the FE model runs on high-performance computing (HPC), transferring data from the server to the local machine to do the optimization may cause latency issues. This automation study provides a unique road map to optimize the design by working efficiently using the initial setup on the local machine, running an analysis of a large number of FE models on HPC, and performing optimization on the server. CAE Automation process has been demonstrated using a case study on a driveline component, crush spacer. Crush spacer is a very critical engineering design because, first, it provides the minimum required preload to the bearing inner races to keep them in position and, second, it endures a number of duty cycles.

The principal objective of the present work is to investigate the fundamental characteristics of a commercially available outwardly opening twin-fluid injector, which utilizes air-assisted atomization principle to attain pulse-type injection of fuel-air mixture. The electromagnetic characteristics of this injector were simulated and the effects of dominating parameters on the electromagnetic force to drive injector were ascertained. On that basis, this paper elaborates on the fundamental characteristics of air-assisted spray using gasoline and kerosene with the employment of two types of optical testing techniques. The spray morphological evolution under varied fuel injection durations and ambient pressures were captured with high-speed shadowgraph thus the corresponding external macroscopic characteristics were obtained and further compared. Spray droplet velocity and diameter at fixed monitoring location were measured by using PDPA (Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer).

As a new type of energy, free-piston linear generator (FPLG) attracts more research on its stable operation and power performance, while less on its combustion and emission performance. So, in this paper, the emission characteristics of FPLG in two different modes are studied through a port fuel injection (PFI) mode which was verified by the experiment and a gasoline direct injection (GDI) mode. The results showed that: both the GDI mode and the PFI mode produced large amounts of nitrogen oxide (NOx) during the working process. But the GDI mode produced before the PFI mode and it produced nearly 2 times than the PFI mode. However, the formation rate of NOx in GDI mode is much lower than that in PFI mode. Meanwhile, in both modes, 90% of NOX was generated in the cylinder at the temperature higher than 1750K, and only about 10% of NOX was generated at a temperature lower than 1750K.

The deformation of injector components cannot be disregarded as the pressure of the system increases. Deformation directly affects the characteristics of needle movement and injection quantity. In this study, structural deformation of the nozzle, the needle and the control plunger under different pressures is calculated by a simulation model. The value of the deformation of injector components is calculated and the maximum deformation location is also determined. Furthermore, the calculated results indicates that the deformation of the control plunger increases the control chamber volume and the cross-section area between the needle and the needle seat. A MATLAB model is established to The influence of structural deformation on needle movement characteristics and injection quantity is investigate by a numerical model. The results show that the characteristic points of needle movement are delayed and injection quantity increases due to the deformation.

An opposed piston two-stroke engine is more suitable for use in an unmanned aerial vehicle because of its small size, excellent self-balancing, stable operation, and low noise. Consequently, in this study, based on experimental data for a prototype opposed piston two-stroke engine, numerical simulation models were established using GT-POWER for 1D simulation and AVL-FIRE for 3D CFD simulation. The mesh grid and solver parameters for the numerical model of the CFD simulation were determined to guarantee the accuracy of the numerical simulation, before studying and optimizing the ventilation efficiency of the engine with different dip angles. Furthermore, the fuel spray and combustion were analyzed and optimized in details.

Hydrogen fuel is a future energy to solve the problems of energy crisis and environmental pollution. Hydrogen internal combustion engines can combine the advantage of hydrogen without carbon pollution and the main basic structure of the traditional engines. However, the power of the port fuel injection hydrogen engines is smaller than the same volume gasoline engine because the hydrogen occupies the volume of the cylinder and reduces the air mass flow. The turbocharger can increase the power of hydrogen engines but also increase the NOx emission. Hence, a comprehensive controlling strategy to solve the contradiction of the power, BTE and NOx emission is important to improve the performance of hydrogen engines. This paper shows the controlling strategy for a four-stroke, 2.3L hydrogen engine with a turbocharger. The controlling strategy divides the operating conditions of the hydrogen engine into six parts according to the engine speeds and loads.

This research examined the focused design, elastic design, energy decoupling, and torque roll axis (TRA) decoupling methods for mount optimization design. Requiring some assumptions, these methods are invalid for some load conditions and constraints. The linearity assumption is advantageous and simplifies both design and optimization analysis, facilitating engineering applications. However, the linearity is rarely seen in real-world applications, and there is no practical method to directly measure the reaction forces in the three locally orthogonal directions, preventing validation of existing methods by experimental results. For nonlinear system identification, there are additional challenges such as unobservable internal variables and the uncertainty of measured data.

This study addresses the virtual optimization of the technical specifications for a recently developed Advanced Pedestrian Legform Impactor (aPLI). The aPLI incorporates a number of enhancements for improved lower limb injury predictability with respect to its predecessor, the FlexPLI. It also incorporates an attached Simplified Upper Body Part (SUBP) that enables the impactor’s applicability to evaluate pedestrian’s lower limb injury risk also with high-bumper cars. The response surface methodology was applied to optimize both the aPLI’s lower limb and SUBP specifications, while imposing a total mass upper limit of 25 kg that complies with international standards for maximum weight lifting allowed for a single operator in the laboratory setting. All parameters were virtually optimized considering variable interaction, which proved critical to avoid misleading specifications.

The electronic control of direct injection fuel system, which could improve engine fuel efficiency, dynamics and engine emission performance through good atomization, precise control of fuel injection time and improvement of fuel-gas mixture, is the key technology to achieve the stratified combustion and lean combustion. In this paper, a direct injection injector that based on voice coil motor was designed aiming at the technical characteristics of one 800cc two-stroke cam-less engine. Prior to a one - dimensional simulation model of injector was established by AMEsim and the maximal fuel injection demand was met via the optimization of the main parameters of the injector, the structure of the voice coil motor was optimized by magnetic equivalent circuit method. After that, the maximal flow rate of the injector was verified by the injector bench test while the atomization characteristic of the injector was verified by using a high-speed camera.

The control valve is the most important implementation part of a high pressure common rail system, and its flow characteristics have a great influence on the performance of an injector. In this paper, based on the structure and the working principle of an electromagnetic injector in a high pressure common rail system, a simulation model of the injector is established by AMESim software. Some key parameters of the control valve, including the volume of the control chamber, the diameter of the orifice Z (feeding orifice), the diameter of the orifice A (discharge orifice) and the hole diameter of the fuel diffusion hole are studied by using this model. The results show that these key structural parameters of the control valve have a great influence on the establishment of the control chamber pressure and the action of the needle valve.

Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) is a very effective aftertreatment device to limit particulate emissions from diesel engines. As the amount of soot collected in the DPF increases, the pressure loss increases. Therefore, DPF regeneration needs to be performed. Injected fuel into the exhaust line upstream of the Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC), hydrocarbons are oxidized on the DOC, which increases the exhaust gas temperature at the DPF inlet. It is also necessary that the injected fuel is completely vaporized before entering the DOC, and uniformly mixed with the exhaust gases in order to make the DOC work efficiency. However, ensuring complete evaporation and an optimum mixture distribution in the exhaust line are challenging. Therefore, it is important that the fuel spray feature is grasped to perform DPF regeneration effectively. The purpose of this study is the constructing a simulation model.

The pressure fluctuation characteristics of a constant pressure fuel system has great influence on its fuel injection characteristics. It is, therefore important to understand the impacts of these fluctuations in order to better study and optimize the fuel injection characteristics. In this study, the pressure fluctuation characteristics of the high pressure common rail system have been investigated experimentally. The transient pressure at different positions in the high pressure common rail system have been measured. The phase of pressure fluctuation during the injection process has been analyzed and the corresponding fluctuating characteristic parameters have been characterized for each phase. The changes in pressure wave propagation velocity, fuel injection pressure drop amplitude, wave amplitude, period and decay time are obtained by studying the fluctuation characteristic parameters caused by fuel pressure and temperature change.

The combustion characteristics of hydrogen-air mixtures have significance significant impact on the performance and control of hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines and the combustion velocity is an important parameter in characterizing the combustion characteristics of the mixture. A four-cylinder hydrogen internal combustion engine was used to study hydrogen combustion; the combustion characteristics of a hydrogen mixture were experimentally studied in a constant-volume incendiary bomb, and the turbulent premixed combustion characteristics of hydrogen were calculated and analyzed. Turbulent hydrogen combustion comes under the folded laminar flame model. The turbulent combustion velocity in lean hydrogen combustion is related not only to the turbulent velocity and the laminar burning velocity, but also to the additional turbulence term caused by the instability of the flame.

With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. To seek for an optimized volumetric ratio for ABE-diesel blends, the previous work in our team has experimentally investigated and analyzed the combustion features of ABE-diesel blends with different volumetric ratio (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %) in a constant volume chamber. It was found that an increased amount of acetone would lead to a significant advancement of combustion phasing whereas butanol would compensate the advancing effect. Both spray dynamic and chemistry reaction dynamic are of great importance in explaining the unique combustion characteristic of ABE-diesel blend. In this study, a semi-detailed chemical mechanism is constructed and used to model ABE-diesel spray combustion in a constant volume chamber.

Design optimization methods are commonly used for weight reduction subjecting to multiple constraints in automotive industry. One of the major challenges remained is to deal with a large number of design variables for large-scale design optimization problems effectively. In this paper, a new approach based on fuzzy rough set is proposed to address this issue. The concept of rough set theory is to deal with redundant information and seek for a reduced design variable set. The proposed method first exploits fuzzy rough set to screen out the insignificant or redundant design variables with regard to the output functions, then uses the reduced design variable set for design optimization. A vehicle body structure is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and compare with a traditional weighted sensitivity based main effect approach.

One of the major challenges in multiobjective, multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) is the long computational time required in evaluating the new designs' performances. To shorten the cycle time of product design, a data mining-based strategy is developed to improve the efficiency of heuristic optimization algorithms. Based on the historical information of the optimization process, clustering and classification techniques are employed to identify and eliminate the low quality and repetitive designs before operating the time-consuming design evaluations. The proposed method improves design performances within the same computation budget. Two case studies, one mathematical benchmark problem and one vehicle side impact design problem, are conducted as demonstration.

The cylinder-by-cylinder variations have many bad impacts on the engine performance, such as increasing the engine speed fluctuation, enlarging the torsional vibration and noise. To deal with this problem, the impact mechanism of cylinder-by-cylinder variations on low order torsional vibration has been studied in this paper, and subsequently a new individual cylinder control strategy was designed by processing the instantaneous crankshaft rotation speed signal, detecting the cylinder-by-cylinder variation and using feed-back control. The acceleration characteristics of each cylinder in each engine cycle were compared with each other to extract the variation index. The feed-back control algorithm was based on the regulation of the fuel injection according to the detected variation level.

Robustness/Reliability Assessment and Optimization (RRAO) is often computationally expensive because obtaining accurate Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) may require a large number of design samples. This is especially true where computationally expensive high fidelity CAE simulations are involved. Approximation methods such as the Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) and other Response Surface Methods (RSM) have been used to reduce the number of time-consuming design samples needed. However, for certain types of problems require the RRAO, one of the first question to consider is which method can provide an accurate and affordable UQ for a given problem. To answer the question, this paper tests the PCE, RSM and pure sampling based approaches on each of the three selected test problems: the Ursem Waves mathematical function, an automotive muffler optimization problem, and a vehicle restraint system optimization problem.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a relatively new stochastic optimization algorithm and has gained much attention in recent years because of its fast convergence speed and strong optimization ability. However, PSO suffers from premature convergence problem for quick losing of diversity. That is to say, if no particle discovers a new superiority position than its previous best location, PSO algorithm will fall into stagnation and output local optimum result. In order to improve the diversity of basic PSO, design of experiment technique is used to initialize the particle swarm in consideration of its space-filling property which guarantees covering the design space comprehensively. And the optimization procedure of PSO is divided into two stages, optimization stage and improving stage. In the optimization stage, the basic PSO initialized by Optimal Latin hypercube technique is conducted.

Diesel combustion and emissions is largely spray and mixing controlled. Spray and combustion models enable characterization over a range of conditions to understand optimum combustion strategies. The validity of models depends on the inputs, including the rate of injection profile of the injector. One method to measure the rate of injection is to measure the momentum, where the injected fuel spray is directed onto a force transducer which provides measurements of momentum flux. From this the mass flow rate is calculated. In this study, the impact of impingement distance, the distance from injector nozzle exit to the anvil connected to the force transducer, is characterized over a range of 2 - 12 mm. This characterization includes the impact of the distance on the momentum flux signal in both magnitude and shape. At longer impingement distances, it is hypothesized that a peak in momentum could occur due to increasing velocity of fuel injected as the pintle fully opens.