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Gasoline-related factors that affect low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI) include the distillation properties of gasoline, manganese (Mn), ethanol, diesel fuel, detergent for aftermarket, and iron (Fe). The combined effect of Mn with ethanol or high calcium engine oil (high-Ca oil) has not been sufficiently clarified. Therefore, appropriate countermeasures for LSPI have not yet been implemented. To clarify the effect of the gasoline properties and additives on LSPI, engine tests were conducted using gasoline with different “PM Index” values, an indicator of distillation properties, different concentrations of Mn, ethanol, diesel fuel, detergent, Fe, and high-Ca oil. The results showed that the LSPI frequency tended to increase with the PM Index, Mn up to 60 ppm, diesel fuel up to 2 vol.%, and detergent up to three times the standard amount.

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.

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.

The spray structure and vaporization processes of flash-boiling sprays in a constant volume chamber under a wide range of superheated conditions were experimentally investigated by a high speed imaging technique. The Engine Combustion Network’s Spray G injector was used. Four fuels including gasoline, ethanol, and gasoline-ethanol blends E30 and E50 were investigated. Spray penetration length and spray width were correlated to the degree of the superheated degree, which is the ratio of the ambient pressure to saturated vapor pressure (pa/ps). It is found that parameter pa/ps is critical in describing the spray transformation under flash-boiling conditions. Three distinct stages namely the slight flash-boiling, the transition flash-boiling, and the flare flash-boiling are identified to describe the transformation of spray structures.

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.

Light-duty China-6, which is among the most stringent vehicle exhaust emission standards globally, mandates the monitoring and reporting of real driving emissions (RDE) from July, 2023. In the process of regulation promulgation and verification, more than 300 RDE tests have been performed on over 50 China-5 and China-6 certified models. This technical paper endeavors to summarize the experience of RDE practice in China, and discuss the impacts of some boundary conditions (including vehicle dynamic parameters, data processing methods, hybrid propulsion and testing altitude) on the result of RDE measurement. In general, gasoline passenger cars confront few challenges to meet the upcoming RDE NOx requirement, but some China-5 certified samples, even powered by naturally-aspirated engines may have PN issues. PN emissions from some GDI-hybrid powertrain systems also need further reduction to meet China-6 RDE requirements.

Particulate matter emissions are becoming a big issue for GDI engines as the emission regulations being more stringent. Methanol has been considered to be an important alternative fuel to reduce soot emissions. To understand the effect of methanol addition on soot and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) formation, the 2-D distributions of soot volume fraction and different size PAHs relative concentrations in methanol/gasoline laminar diffusion flames were measured by TC-LII and PLIF techniques. The effect of methanol was investigated under the conditions of the same carbon flow and the same flame height. The methanol volume fraction was set as M0/20/40/60/80. The results showed that the natural luminescent flame lift-off height and soot lift-off height increases consistently with the increasing methanol content due to the increase of outlet velocity of fuel vapor.

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.

Soot emission, known as PM (particulate matter), is becoming a big issue for GDI engines as the emission regulations being increasingly stricter. It is found that ethanol, as an oxygenated bio-fuel, can reduce the soot emission when added to gasoline. In order to fully understand the effect of ethanol on soot reducing, the soot characteristics of ethanol/gasoline blends were studied on laminar diffusion flames. In this experiment, the blending ratio of ethanol/gasoline was set as E0/20/40/60/80. Considering the carbon content decreasing due to ethanol addition, carbon mass flow rate was remained constant. The two-dimensional distributions of soot volume fraction were measured quantitatively by using two-color laser induced incandescence technique. The results showed that ethanol is able to decrease the soot significantly, but the effect of ethanol on soot reduction is weakened with the increasing ethanol ratio.

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.

Along with the booming expansion of private car preservation, many Chinese cities are now struggling with hazy weather and ground-level ozone contamination. Although central government has stepped up efforts to purify skies above China, counter-strategies to curb ground-level ozone is comparatively weak. By using maximum incremental reactivity (MIR) method, this paper estimated the ozone forming potential for twenty-five Euro-3 to Euro-5 passenger cars burning conventional gasoline, methanol-gasoline, ethanol-gasoline, neat methanol and compressed natural gas (CNG). The results showed that, for all the fuel tested, VOC/NOx ratios and SR values decreased with the upgrading of emission standard. Except for Euro-3 M100 and Euro-4 M85, SR values for alternative fuel were to different degrees smaller than those for gasoline. When the emission standard was shifted from Euro-4 to Euro-5, OFP values estimated for gasoline vehicle decreased.

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.

As a probable solution to both energy and environmental crisis, methanol and methanol gasoline have been used as gasoline surrogates in several provinces of China. Most recently, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China is drafting a special emission standard for methanol-fueled light-duty vehicles. Given the scarcity of available data, this paper evaluated regulated emissions, carbonyl compounds and particulate matter from a China-5 certificated gasoline/methanol dual-fuel vehicle over New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). The results elucidated that in context with gasoline mode, CO emitted in methanol mode decreased 11.2%, while no evident changes of THC and NOx emissions were noticed with different fueling regimes. The total carbonyls and formaldehyde have increased by 39.5% and 19.8% respectively after switching from gasoline to methanol. A remarkable decrease of 65.6% in particulate matter was observed in methanol mode.

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.

This study proposes a method for presenting maneuver request information of accelerator pedal to a driver via the accelerator pedal itself. By applying periodic force like vibration on an accelerator pedal, information is transferred to the driver without displacing the accelerator pedal. In this study, the authors focus on a saw-tooth wave as the periodic force. When the saw-tooth-waved force is applied on the accelerator pedal, a human driver feels as if the accelerator pedal is knocked by someone periodically. In addition, information about the quantity of requested maneuver can be transferred by the amplitude of the saw-tooth wave. Based on these facts, the saw-tooth wave is modified and optimized empirically with ten human drivers so that the information of direction is transferred most reliably. In addition, the relationship between the amplitude of the saw-tooth wave and requested quantity of the pedal maneuver that the drivers feel is formulated.

Compressed natural gas (CNG) is widely used as an alternative option in spark ignition engines because of its better fuel economy and in part cleaner emissions. To cope with the haze weather in Beijing, about 2000 gasoline/CNG dual-fuel taxis are servicing on-road. According to the government's plan, the volume of alternative fuel and pure electric vehicle will be further increased in the future. Thus, it is necessary to conduct an evaluation on the effectiveness of alternative fuel on curbing vehicular emissions. This research examined the regulated emissions and particulate matter of gasoline/CNG dual-fuel taxi over New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). Emission tests in gasoline- and CNG-fuelled, cold- and warm-start modes were done for all five taxies. Test vehicles, Hyundai Elantra, are powered by 1.6L spark-ignited engines incorporated with 5-gear manual gearboxes.