Search Results

Measurements in snow conditions performed in the past were rarely initiated and best suited for pure and extremely detailed quantification of microphysical properties of a series of microphysical parameters, needed for accretion modelling. Within the European ICE GENESIS project, a considerable effort of natural snow measurements has been made during winter 2020/21. Instrumental means, both in-situ and remote sensing were deployed on the ATR-42 aircraft, as well as on the ground (ground station at ‘Les Eplatures’ airport in the Swiss Jura Mountains with ATR-42 overflights). Snow clouds and precipitation in the atmospheric column were sampled with the aircraft, whereas ground based and airborne radar systems allowed extending the observations of snow properties beyond the flight level chosen for the in situ measurements.

The simulation of natural-like snow conditions in a controlled environment such as an Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) is a key component for safe, efficient and cost-effective design and certification of future aircraft and rotorcraft. Current capabilities do not sufficiently match the properties of natural snow, especially in terms of size and morphology. Within the Horizon 2020 project ICE GENESIS, a new technology has been developed aiming to better recreate natural snowflakes. The focus of the newly developed system was the generation of falling snow in a temperature range of +1°C to -4°C. Ground measurements and flight test campaigns have been performed to better characterize these conditions and provide requirements for wind tunnel facilities. The calibration results of the new snow generation system as well as snow accretion data on a NACA0012 test article with a chord length of 0.377 m are presented.

Fuel consumption and exhaust gas emission regulations are being tightened around the world year by year. Electric vehicles are needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Especially, Plug-in hybrid heavy-duty vehicles (PHEVs) are expected to become widespread. PHEVs enable all-electric modes, as well as hybrid modes, using both engines and electric motors, but the control system significantly affects the characteristics of fuel consumption and gas emission. In this study, we used new testing machine (we call extended HILS) to analyze the fuel consumption and gas emission for different plug-in hybrid control systems and investigated the optimal control method for PHEVs.

Fuel consumption rate (fuel economy) and exhaust gas emission regulations are being tightened around the world year by year. In Europe, the real driving emission (RDE) method for evaluating exhaust gas emitted from road-going vehicles was introduced after September 2017 for new types of light/medium-duty vehicles, in addition to the chassis dynamometer test using the worldwide harmonized light vehicles test procedure (WLTP). Further, the worldwide harmonized heavy-duty certification (WHDC) method was introduced after 2016 as an exhaust gas emission test method for heavy-duty vehicles. In each evaluation, the tests of vehicles and engines are initiated from cold states. Heavy-duty hybrid vehicles are evaluated using the vehicle simulation method. For example, the power characteristics of a engine model is obtained during engine warm operation. Therefore, various performances during cold start cannot be precisely evaluated by using simulator.

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between truck-pedestrian crash impact velocity and the risks of serious injury and fatality to pedestrians. We used micro and macro truck-pedestrian accident data from the Japanese Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA) database. We classified vehicle type into five categories: heavy-duty trucks (gross vehicle weight [GVW] ≥11 × 103 kg [11 tons (t)], medium-duty trucks (5 × 103 kg [5 t] ≤ GVW < 11 × 103 kg [11 t]), light-duty trucks (GVW <5 × 103 kg [5 t]), box vans, and sedans. The fatality risk was ≤5% for light-duty trucks, box vans, and sedans at impact velocities ≤ 30 km/h and for medium-duty trucks at impact velocities ≤20 km/h. The fatality risk was ≤10% for heavy-duty trucks at impact velocities ≤10 km/h. Thus, fatality risk appears strongly associated with vehicle class.

Next-generation vehicles which include Electric Vehicles and Hybrid Electric Vehicles are studied and expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The number of small delivery hybrid trucks has increased in the commercial vehicle class. The engine load of a commercial hybrid truck is reduced by using an electric motor. Fuel economy of the hybrid truck is improved with the assist. On the other hand, exhaust-gas temperature is decreased, and it has a negative effect on the purification performance of aftertreatment system. In this report, the fuel performance and emission gas characteristics of marketed small hybrid trucks were surveyed using the chassis dynamometer test system.

Glaciated icing conditions potentially leading to in-service event are often encountered in the vicinity of deep convective clouds. Nowcasting of these conditions with space-borne observations would be of a great help for improving flight safety and air-traffic management but still remains challenging. In the framework of the HAIC (High Altitude Ice Crystals) project, methods to detect and track regions of high ice water content from space-based geostationary and low orbit mission are investigated. A first HAIC/HIWC field campaign has been carried out in Australia in January-March 2014 to sample meteorological conditions potentially leading to glaciated icing conditions. During the campaign, several nowcasting tools were successfully operated such as the Rapid Development Thunderstorm (RDT) product that detects the convective areas from infrared geostationary imagery.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is among the new generation of combustion modes which can be applied to internal combustion engines. It is currently the topic of numerous studies in various fields. Due to its operating process, HCCI ensures a good efficiency, similar to that of compression ignition (CI) engines, and low particulate and nitric oxide (NOx) emissions. However, before promoting the use of this kind of engine, several challenges must be addressed, in particular controlling the combustion. Recent work showed that the combustion phasing can be controlled using low concentrations of ozone, an oxidizing chemical species. As ozone generators become increasingly compact, the integration of this kind of device in passenger cars can be considered. The present study investigates the effect of ozone on the combustion of different fuel mixtures. The engine was fuelled with various blends: a 95%methane/5%propane mixture and three different methane/hydrogen mixtures.

As an alternative to second generation ethanol, valeric esters can be produced from lignocellulose through levulinic acid. While some data on these fuels are available, only few experiments have been performed to analyze their combustion characteristics under engine conditions. Using a traditional spark ignition engine converted to mono-cylinder operation, we have investigated the engine performances and emissions of methyl and ethyl valerates. This paper compares the experimental results for pure valeric esters and for blends of 20% of esters in PRF95, with PRF95 as the reference fuel. The esters propagate faster than PRF95 which requires a slight change of ignition timing to optimise the work output. However, both the performances and the emissions are not significantly changed compared to the reference. Accordingly, methyl and ethyl valerate represent very good alternatives as biofuels for SI engines.

Study of DME diesel engines was conducted to improve fuel consumption and emissions of its. Additionally, DME trucks were built for the promotion and the road tests of these trucks were executed on EFV21 project. In this paper, results of diesel engine tests and DME truck driving tests are presented. As for DME diesel engines, the performance of a DME turbocharged diesel engine with LPL-EGR was evaluated and the influence of the compression ratio was also explored. As for DME trucks, a 100,000km road test was conducted on a DME light duty truck. After the road test, the engine was disassembled for investigation. Furthermore, two DME medium duty trucks have been developed and are now the undergoing practical road testing in each area of two transportation companies in Japan.

The use of biofuel is essential for the reduction of greenhouse gas emission. This paper highlights the use of biodiesel as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emission from the diesel engine of heavy-duty vehicles. Biodiesel is fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) obtained through ester exchange reaction by adding methanol to oil, such as rapeseed oil, soybean oil, palm oil, etc. The CO₂ emission from combustion of biodiesel is defined to be equivalent to the CO₂ volume absorbed by its raw materials or plants in their course of growth. On the other hand, however, biodiesel is known to increase the NOx emission when compared with operating with conventional diesel fuel, then suppressing this increase is regarded as a critical issue. This study is intended to identify the fuel properties of biodiesel free from increase in the NOx emission.

A new ignition-combustion concept named PCC (Plume Ignition Combustion Concept), which ignite rich mixture plume in the middle of injection period or right after injection of hydrogen is completed, is proposed by the authors in order to reduce NOx emissions in high engine load conditions with minimizing trade-offs on thermal efficiency. In this study fundamental requirements of hydrogen jet to optimize PCC are investigated by using single and multi-hole nozzle with a combination of high speed laser shadowgraphy to visualize propagating flame. As a result, it was infered that igniting the mixture plume in the middle of injection period with minimizing jet penetration to chamber wall is effective reducing NOx formation even further.

An unified model with a single set of kinetic parameters has been proposed for modeling laminar flame velocities of several alkanes using detailed kinetic mechanisms automatically generated by the EXGAS software. The validations were based on recent data of the literature. The studied compounds are methane, ethane, propane, n-butane, n-pentane, n-heptane, iso-octane, and two mixtures for natural gas and surrogate gasoline fuel. Investigated conditions are the following: unburned gases temperature was varied from 300 to 600 K, pressures from 0.5 to 25 bar, and equivalence ratios range from 0.4 to 2. For the overall studied compounds, the agreement between measured and predicted laminar burning velocities is quite good.

Compared with petroleum fuel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) demonstrates advantages in low CO2 emission because of propane and butane, which are the main components of LPG, making H/C ratio higher. In addition, LPG is suitable for high efficient operation of a spark ignition (SI) engine due to its higher research octane number (RON). Because of these advantages, that is, diversity of energy source and reduction of CO2, in the past several years, LPG vehicles have widely used as the alternate to gasoline vehicles all over the world. Consequently, it is absolutely essential for the performance increase of LPG vehicles to comprehend the combustion characteristics of LPG and to obtain the guideline for engine design and calibration. In this study, an LPG-SI engine was built up by converting fuel supply system of an in-line 4-cylinder gasoline engine, which has 1997 cm3 displacement with MPI system, to LPG liquid fuel injection system [1].

Real-time analysis of benzene in automobile exhaust gas was performed using the Jet-REMPI (supersonic jet / resonance enhanced multi-photon ionization) method. Real-time benzene concentration of two diesel trucks and one gasoline vehicle driving in Japanese driving modes were observed under ppm level at 1 s intervals. As a result, it became obvious that there were many differences in their emission tendencies, because of their car types, driving conditions, and catalyst conditions. In two diesel vehicle, benzene emission tendencies were opposite. And, in a gasoline vehicle, emission pattern were different between hot and cold conditions due to the catalyst conditions.

A development project for a hydrogen internal combustion engine (ICE) system for trucks supporting Japanese freightage has been promoted as a candidate for use in future vehicles that meet ultra-low emission and anti-global warming targets. This project aims to develop a hydrogen ICE truck that can handle the same freight as existing trucks. The core development technologies for this project are a direct-injection (DI) hydrogen ICE system and a liquid hydrogen tank system which has a liquid hydrogen pump built-in. In the first phase of the project, efforts were made to develop the DI hydrogen ICE system. Over the past three years, the following results have been obtained: A high-pressure hydrogen gas direct injector developed for this project was applied to a single-cylinder hydrogen ICE and the indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) corresponding to a power output of 147 kW in a 6-cylinder hydrogen ICE was confirmed.

The use of biodiesel fuels as an alternative fuel for petroleum diesel fuel is very effective for the reduction of CO2 emission, because biodiesel is produced from renewable biomass resources. Biodiesel is usually blended to conventional diesel fuel in various proportions. It is possible that this biodiesel blending causes the problems on emission characteristics of modern diesel engine, because it could be confirmed that the application of neat biodiesel to modern diesel engines whose control parameters were optimized for conventional diesel fuel deteriorated the emission performances. It is necessary to clarify the effect of biodiesel blending on exhaust emissions of modern diesel engine. Rapeseed oil methyl ester (RME) was selected as a biodiesel used in this study.

For fuel cell vehicles, which have attracted attention in recent years, the prevention of hydrogen leakage is an essential safety issue. Large fuel cell buses will require a large space to store the hydrogen system. The behavior of hydrogen that has leaked into such a large space is unknown. In this report, we studied hydrogen concentration distribution by leaking hydrogen into simulated spaces in two cases: (1) when hydrogen gas tanks are installed on the roof of the bus, and (2) when an electricity-generating system, such as fuel cell stacks, etc., is installed at the rear of the bus. The results of the experiments show that hydrogen concentration distribution is kept at a constant level throughout each location in the simulated space, depending on the opening area and hydrogen leakage rate. It was also found that the diffusivity of hydrogen in air is extremely high.

The biomass fuel is expected to solve the global warming due to a carbon neutral. A rapeseed oil methyl ester (RME) as biomass fuel was selected, and also a low sulfur diesel fuel is tested as reference fuel in this study. The experiments were carried out to improve diesel emissions and engine performance using high boost and high rate EGR system and a common rail injection system in a single cylinder engine. The diesel emissions and engine performance have been measured under the experimental conditions such as charging boost pressure from atmospheric pressure to 401.3kPa maximum and changing EGR rate from 0% to 40% maximum. RME contain about 10 mass % oxygen in the fuel molecule. Furthermore, RME does not contain aromatic hydrocarbons in the fuel. Due to these chemical properties, RME can be used at 40% high EGR condition.

Fuel cell vehicles that use high pressure hydrogen gas as a fuel should be able to immediately release hydrogen gas from the cylinder through pressure relief devices (PRDs) in the event of a vehicle fire. The release through PRDs prevents the cylinder from exploding due to the increased pressure of hydrogen gas, but the method of releasing the gas needs to be specified in order to avoid secondary disaster due to the spread of fire. Since hydrogen cylinders for fuel cell buses are different in terms of installation location and size from those for ordinary vehicles, the location of PRDs and the release direction of hydrogen gas should be separately examined. For example, the improper locations of PRDs would raise the possibility of explosion because of a delay in temperature rise, and the direct release of hydrogen gas from a cylinder installed on the rooftop of the bus may disperse the flame over a wide area.