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Eco Approach and Departure (Eco-AnD) is a Connected Automated Vehicle (CAV) technology aiming to reduce energy consumption for crossing a signalized intersection or set of intersections in a corridor that features vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication capability. This research focuses on developing a Dynamic Programming (DP) based algorithm for a PHEV operating in Charge Depleting mode. The algorithm used the Reduced Order Energy Model (ROM) to capture the vehicle powertrain characteristics and road grade to capture the road dynamics. The simulation results are presented for a real-world intersection and 20-25% energy benefits are shown by comparing against a simulated human driver speed profile. The vehicle-level validation of the developed algorithm is carried out by performing closed-course track testing of the optimized speed solutions on a real CAV vehicle.

The AutoDrive Challenge competition sponsored by General Motors and SAE gives undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to get hands-on experience with autonomous vehicle technology and development as they work towards their degree. Michigan Technological University has participated in the AutoDrive Challenge since its inception in 2017 with students participating through MTU’s Robotic System Enterprise. The MathWorks Simulation Challenge has been a component of the competition since its second year, tasking students with the development of perception, control and testing algorithms using MathWorks software products. This paper presents the pedagogical approach graduate student mentors used to enable students to build their understanding of autonomous vehicle concepts using familiar tools. This approach gives undergraduate students a productive experience with these systems that they may not have encountered in coursework within their academic program.

Extreme Fast Charging (XFC) infrastructure is crucial for an increase in electric vehicle (EV) adoption. However, an unmanaged implementation may lead to negative grid impacts and huge power costs. This paper presents an optimal energy management strategy to utilize grid-connected Energy Storage Systems (ESS) integrated with XFC stations to mitigate these grid impacts and peak demand charges. To achieve this goal, an algorithm that controls the charge and discharge of ESS based on an optimal power threshold is developed. The optimal power threshold is determined to carry out maximum peak shaving for given battery size and SOC constraints.

Water injection has been used to reduce the charge temperature and mitigate knocking due to its higher latent heat of vaporization compared to gasoline fuel. When water is injected into the intake manifold or into the cylinder, it evaporates by absorbing heat energy from the surrounding and results in charge cooling. However, the effect of detailed evaporation process on the combustion characteristics under gasoline direct injection relevant conditions still needs to be investigated. Therefore, spray study was firstly conducted using a multi-hole injector by injecting pure water and water-methanol mixture into constant volume combustion chamber (CVCC) at naturally aspirated and boosted engine conditions. The target water-fuel ratio was fixed at 0.5. Mie-scattering and schlieren images of sprays were analyzed to study spray characteristics, and evaluate the amount of water vaporization.

The medium and heavy-duty powertrain industry trend is to reduce reliance on diesel fuel and is aligned with continued efforts of achieving ultra-low emissions and high brake efficiencies. Compression Ignition (CI) of late cycle Directly Injected (DI) Natural Gas (NG) shows the potential to match diesel performance in terms of brake efficiency and power density, with the benefit of utilizing a lower carbon content fuel. A primary challenge is to achieve stable ignition of directly injected NG over a wide engine speed and load range without the need for a separate ignition source. This project aims to demonstrate the CI of DI NG through experimental studies with a Single Cylinder Research Engine (SCRE), leading to the development of a mono-fueled NG engine with equivalent performance to that of current diesel technology, 25% lower CO2 emissions, and low engine out methane emissions.

Fuel spray interactions with piston surfaces and cylinder walls in internal combustion engines have been extensively studied in the past decades. However, there still exists an imperative knowledge gap on the fundamental understanding of dynamic droplet-wall interactions. Particularly, the impinging angle of droplet has been barely investigated as it renders asymmetrical droplet behaviors. This paper aims to provide detailed data of droplet-inclined surface impingement physics which could further support spray-wall model development. The experimental work of single diesel droplet impinging on an inclined dry surface was conducted under isothermal (25°C) conditions. Various droplet impact angle (φ) was achieved by adjusting surface tilting angle which was set from 0° to 45° in current study. A single diesel droplet impinged onto the inclined surface with different Weber number (around 20 ~ 800).

The piezoelectric cylinder pressure transducer is one of the most critical tools for internal combustion (IC) engine research and development. However, not all cylinder pressure transducers perform equally in every application, and the fidelity of transducers can vary across different models and manufacturers. Even slightly dissimilar models from the same manufacturer can have significantly different performance in areas such as sensitivity and resistance to intra-cycle thermal shock. These performance differences can lead to errors and inconsistencies in the calculation of combustion metrics like mean effective pressure (MEP), the polytropic compression and expansion exponents (PolyC and PolyE), and mass fraction burn (MFB) calculations. The variations can lead to suboptimal hardware and calibration choices during the engine development phase.

Off-road vehicle operation requires constant decision-making under great uncertainty. Such decisions are multi-faceted and range from acquisition decisions to operational decisions. A major input to these decisions is terrain information in the form of soil properties. This information needs to be propagated to path planning algorithms that augment them with other inputs such as visual terrain assessment and other sensors. In this sequence of steps, many resources are needed, and it is not often clear how best to utilize them. We present an integrated approach where a mission’s overall performance is measured using a multiattribute utility function. This framework allows us to evaluate the value of acquiring terrain information and then its use in path planning. The computational effort of optimizing the vehicle path is also considered and optimized. We present our approach using the data acquired from the Keweenaw Research Center terrains and present some results.

The aim of this paper is to computationally investigate the combustion behavior and energy recovery processes of a six-stroke gasoline compression ignition (6S-GCI) engine that employs a continuously variable valve duration (CVVD) technique, under highly diluted, low-temperature combustion (LTC) conditions. The effects of variation of parameters concerning injection spray targeting (number of fuel injector holes. injector nozzle size and spray included angle) and combustion chamber geometry (piston bowl design) are analyzed using an in-house 3D CFD code coupled with high-fidelity physical sub-models with the Chemkin library in conjunction with a skeletal chemical kinetics mechanism for a 14-component gasoline surrogate fuel.

In order to further understand the sequence of events leading to stochastic preignition in a spark-ignition engine, a methodology previously developed by the authors was used to evaluate the propensity of a wide range of fuels to establishing propagating flames under conditions representative of those at which stochastic preignition (SPI) occurs. The fuel matrix included single component hydrocarbons, binary mixtures, and real fuel blends. The propensity of each fuel to establish a flame was correlated to multiple fuel properties and shown to exhibit consistent blending behaviors. No single parameter strongly predicted a fuel’s propensity to establish a flame, while multiple reactivity-based parameters exhibited moderate correlation. A two-stage model of the flame establishment process was developed to interpret and explain these results.

This paper presents a combined numerical and experimental investigation of the characteristics of spark discharge in a spark-ignition engine. The main objective of this work is to gain insights into the spark discharge process and early flame kernel development. Experiments were conducted in an inert medium within an optically accessible constant-volume combustion vessel. The cross-flow motion in the vessel was generated using a previously developed shrouded fan. Numerical modeling was based on an existing discharge model in the literature developed by Kim and Anderson. However, this model is applicable to a limited range of gas pressures and flow fields. Therefore, the original model was evaluated and improved to predict the behavior of spark discharge at pressurized conditions up to 45 bar and high-speed cross-flows up to 32 m/s. To accomplish this goal, a parametric study on the spark channel resistance was conducted.

The study of spray-wall interaction is of great importance to understand the dynamics that occur during fuel impingement onto the chamber wall or piston surfaces in internal combustion engines. It is found that the maximum spreading length of an impinged droplet can provide a quantitative estimation of heat transfer and energy transformation for spray-wall interaction. Furthermore, it influences the air-fuel mixing and hydrocarbon and particle emissions at combusting conditions. In this paper, an analytical model of a single diesel droplet impinging on the wall with different inclined angles (α) is developed in terms of βm (dimensionless maximum spreading length, the ratio of maximum spreading length to initial droplet diameter) to understand the detailed impinging dynamic process.

This paper investigates an optimal design of a diesel engine and after-treatment systems for a series hybrid electric forklift application. A holistic modeling approach is developed in GT-Suite® to establish a model-based hardware definition for a diesel engine and an after-treatment system to accurately predict engine performance and emissions. The used engine model is validated with the experimental data. The engine design parameters including compression ratio, boost level, air-fuel ratio (AFR), injection timing, and injection pressure are optimized at a single operating point for the series hybrid electric vehicle, together with the performance of the after-treatment components. The engine and after-treatment models are then coupled with a series hybrid electric powertrain to evaluate the performance of the forklift in the standard VDI 2198 drive cycle.

Gasoline compression ignition (GCI) technology shows the potential to obtain high thermal efficiencies while maintaining low soot and NOx emissions in light-duty engine applications. Recent experimental studies and numerical simulations have indicated that high reactivity gasoline-like fuels can further enable the benefits of GCI combustion. However, there is limited empirical data in the literature studying the gasoline compression ignition process at relevant in-cylinder conditions, which are required for further optimizing combustion system designs. This study investigates the temporal and spatial evolution of the compression ignition process of various high reactivity gasoline fuels with research octane numbers (RON) of 71, 74 and 82, as well as a conventional RON 97 E10 gasoline fuel. A ten-hole prototype gasoline injector specifically designed for GCI applications capable of injection pressures up to 450 bar was used.

Autonomous vehicle operation is dependent upon accurate position estimation and thus a major concern of implementing the autonomous navigation is obtaining robust and accurate data from sensors. This is especially true, in case of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor data. The IMU consists of a 3-axis gyro, 3-axis accelerometer, and 3-axis magnetometer. The IMU provides vehicle orientation in 3D space in terms of yaw, roll and pitch. Out of which, yaw is a major parameter to control the ground vehicle’s lateral position during navigation. The accelerometer is responsible for attitude (roll-pitch) estimates and magnetometer is responsible for yaw estimates. However, the magnetometer is prone to environmental magnetic disturbances which induce errors in the measurement.

Automotive exhaust noise is one of the major sources of noise pollution and it is controlled by passive control system (mufflers) and active control system (loudspeakers and active control algorithm). Mufflers are heavy, bulky and large in size while loudspeakers have a working temperature limitation. Carbon nanotube (CNT) speakers generate sound due to the thermoacoustic effect. CNT speakers are also lightweight, flexible, have acoustic and light transparency as well as high operating temperature. These properties make them ideal to overcome the limitations of the current exhaust noise control systems. An enclosed, coaxial CNT speaker is designed for exhaust noise cancellation application. The development of a 3D multi-physics (coupling of electrical, thermal and acoustical domains) model, for the coaxial speaker is discussed in this paper. The model is used to simulate the sound pressure level, input power versus ambient temperature and efficiency.

Under low-temperature combustion for the high fuel efficiency and low emissions achievement, the fuel impingement often occurs in diesel engines with direct injection especially for a short distance between the injector and piston head/cylinder wall. Spray impingement plays an important role in the mixing-controlled combustion phase since it affects the air-fuel mixing rate through the disrupted event by the impingement. However, the degree of air entrainment into the spray is hard to be directly evaluated. Since the high spray expansion rate could allow more opportunity for fuel to mix with air, in this study, the expansion rate of impinged flame is quantified and compared with the spray expansion rate under non-vaporizing conditions. The experiments were conducted in a constant volume combustion chamber with an ambient density of 22.8 kg/m3 and the injection pressure of 150 MPa.

Fuel spray-wall interaction frequently occurs on intake manifold wall in the port fuel injection engine and on the piston in the direct injection engine, especially during the cold start. The heat transfer between the spray and wall is involved in this interaction process and influences the dynamics of the impinged spray which can further affect the engine performance. The physics of impact dynamics of a single droplet serves as a fundamental for better comprehension of spray impingement. In our previous studies, we have focused on diesel droplets, at ambient temperature, impinging on both heated and non-heated wall and found impinged droplet morphology differences. To understand the effect of heat transfer and thermophysical properties on dynamics of droplet-wall interaction better, droplet temperature variation was introduced in this study. Therefore, different conditions were framed to explore the impact of thermophysical properties of the droplet.

Engine cylinder pressure is traditionally measured with a piezo-electric pressure transducer, and as such, must be referenced or pegged to a known value. Frequently, the cylinder pressure is pegged to the pressure in the intake manifold plenum whereby the manifold absolute pressure (MAP) at the end of the intake stroke is measured and the cylinder pressure trace for the entire cycle is adjusted such that the cylinder pressure is set equal to the manifold pressure at the end of the intake stroke. However, any error in pegging induces an error in the cylinder pressure trace, which has an adverse effect on the entire combustion analysis. This research is focused on assessing the pegging error for several pegging methods across a wide range of engine operating conditions, and ultimately determining best practices to minimize error in pegging and the calculated combustion metrics. The study was conducted through 1D simulations using the commercially available GT-Power.

The fuel spray impingement on the piston head and/or chamber often occurs in compact IC engines. The impingement plays one of the key roles in combustion because it affects the air-fuel mixing process. In this study, the impinged combustion has been experimentally investigated to understand the mechanism and dynamics of flame-wall interaction. The experiments were performed in a constant volume combustion chamber over a wide range of ambient conditions. The ambient temperature was varied from 800 K to 1000 K and ambient gas oxygen was varied from 15% to 21%. Diesel fuel was injected with an injection pressure of 150 MPa into ambient gas at a density of 22.8 kg/m3. The natural luminosity technique was applied in the experiments to explore the impinged combustion process. High-speed images were taken using a high-speed camera from two different views (bottom and side). An in-house Matlab program was used to post-process the images.