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The hydrogen engine is one of the promising technologies that enables carbon-neutral mobility, especially in heavy-duty on- or off-road applications. In this paper, a methodological procedure for the design of the combustion system of a hydrogen-fueled, direct injection spark ignited commercial vehicle engine is described. In a preliminary step, the ability of the commercial 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code AVL FIRE classic to reproduce the characteristics of the gas jet, introduced into a quiescent environment by a dedicated H2 injector, is established. This is based on two parts: Temporal and numerical discretization sensitivity analyses ensure that the spatial and temporal resolution of the simulations is adequate, and comparisons to a comprehensive set of experiments demonstrate the accuracy of the simulations. The measurements used for this purpose rely on the well-known schlieren technique and use helium as a safe substitute for H2.

Increasingly stringent tailpipe emissions regulations have prompted renewed interest in catalyst heating technology – where an integrated device supplies supplemental heat to accelerate catalyst ‘light-off’. Bosch and Boysen, following a collaborative multi-year effort, have developed a Rapid Catalyst Heating System (RCH) for gasoline-fueled applications. The RCH system provides upwards of 25 kW of thermal power, greatly enhancing catalyst performance and robustness. Additional benefits include reduction of precious metal loading (versus a ‘PGM-only’ approach) and avoidance of near-engine catalyst placement (limiting the need for enrichment strategies). The following paper provides a technical overview of the Bosch/Boysen (BOB) Rapid Catalyst Heating system – including a detailed review of the system’s architecture, key performance characteristics, and the associated impact on vehicle-level emissions.

In the context of the energy transition, CO2-neutral solutions are of enormous importance for all sectors, but especially for the mobility sector. Hydrogen as an energy carrier has therefore been the focus of research and development for some time. However, the development of hydrogen combustion engines is in many respects still in the conception phase. Automotive system providers and engineering companies in the field of software development and simulation are showing great interest in the topic. In a joint project with the industrial partners Robert Bosch GmbH and AVL Germany, combustion in a H2-DI-engine for use in light-duty vehicles was methodically investigated using the CFD tool AVL FIRE®. The collaboration between Robert Bosch GmbH and the Institute for Mobile Systems (IMS) at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg has produced a model study in which model approaches for the combustion of hydrogen can be analyzed.

Historically, whenever the automotive solutions’ state of art reaches a saturation level, the integration of new verticals of technology has always raised new opportunities to innovate, enhance and optimize automotive solutions. The predictive powertrain solutions using connectivity elements (e.g., navigation unit, e-Horizon or cloud-based services) are one of such areas of huge interest in automotive industry. The prior knowledge of trip destination and its route characteristics has potential to make prediction of powertrain modes or events in certain order and therefore it can add value in various application areas such as optimized energy management, lower fuel consumption, superior safety and comfort, etc.

For electric vehicles the ability for regenerative braking reduces the use of friction brakes. Particularly on the rear axle of vehicles with reduced dynamic requirements such as urban vehicles, this can offer a potential for downsizing or, in extreme cases, even the elimination of the friction brakes on the rear axle. Due to the fact that the rear axle service brakes also represent the typical parking brake location in SoA (State-of-Art) vehicles, a rigorous rethinking of the parking brake concept is necessary to incorporate safe vehicle standstill management for such novel brake system topology. This research study introduces a novel parking brake design that covers SoA but also legal requirements while retaining potentials associated with the elimination of the rear service brakes such as cost and packaging.

Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) test environments are the ideal virtual platforms for enabling continuous-development, -integration, -testing -delivery or -deployment commonly referred as Continuous-X (CX) of the complex functionalities in the current automotive industry. This trend especially is contributed by several factors such as the industry wide standardization of the model exchange formats, interfaces as well as architecture definitions. The approach of frontloading software testing with SiL test environments is predominantly advocated as well as already adopted by various Automotive OEMs, thereby the demand for innovating applicable methods is increasing. However, prominent usage of the existing monolithic architecture for interaction of various elements in the SiL environment, without regarding the separation between functional and non-functional test scope, is reducing the usability and thus limiting significantly the cost saving potential of CX with SiL.

Large Eddy Simulations (LES) and tracer-based Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) measurements were performed to study the dynamics of fuel wall-films on the piston top of an optically accessible, four-valve pent-roof GDI research engine for a total of eight operating conditions. Starting from a reference point, the systematic variations include changes in engine speed (600; 1,200 and 2,000 RPM) and load (1000 and 500 mbar intake pressure); concerning the fuel path the Start Of Injection (SOI=360°, 390° and 420° CA after gas exchange TDC) as well as the injection pressure (10, 20 and 35 MPa) were varied. For each condition, 40 experimental images were acquired phase-locked at 10° CA intervals after SOI, showing the wall-film dynamics in terms of spatial extent, thickness and temperature.

Safety-critical embedded software has to satisfy stringent quality requirements. One such requirement, imposed by all contemporary safety standards, is that no critical run-time errors must occur. Runtime errors can be caused by undefined or unspecified behavior of the programming language; examples are buffer overflows or data races. They may cause erroneous or erratic behavior, induce system failures, and constitute security vulnerabilities. A sound static analyzer reports all such defects in the code, or proves their absence. Sound static program analysis is a verification technique recommended by ISO/FDIS 26262 for software unit verification and for the verification of software integration. In this article we propose an analysis methodology that has been implemented with the static analyzer Astrée. It supports quick turn-around times and gives highly precise whole-program results.

Future emission norms in India (BS6) necessitates the 2 wheeler industry to work towards emission optimization measures. Engine operation at stoichiometric Air-Fuel Ratio (AFR) would result in a good performance, durability and least emissions. To keep the AFR close to stoichiometric condition, an Oxygen sensor is placed in the exhaust system, which detects if air-fuel mixture is rich (λ<1) or lean (λ>1) and provides feedback to fuel injection system for suitable fuel control. O2 sensor has a ceramic element, which needs to be heated to a working temperature for its functioning. The ceramic element would break (thermal shock) if water in liquid form comes in contact with it when the element is hot.

Particulate emissions from Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines have been an important topic of recent research interest due to their known environmental effects. This review paper will characterise the influence of different gasoline direct injection fuel systems on particle number (PN) emissions. The findings will be reviewed for engine and vehicle measurements with appropriate driving cycles (especially real driving cycles) to evaluate effects of the fuel injection systems on PN emissions. Recent technological developments alongside the trends of the influence of system pressure and nozzle design on injector tip wetting and deposits will be considered. Besides the engine and fuel system it is known that fuel composition will have an important effect on GDI engine PN emissions. The evaporation qualities of fuels have a substantial influence on mixture preparation, as does the composition of the fuel itself.

The heat transfer process in a reciprocating engine is dominated by forced convection, which is drastically affected by mean flow, turbulence, flame propagation and its impingement on the combustion chamber walls. All these effects contribute to a transient heat flux, resulting in a fast-changing temporal and spatial temperature distribution at the surface of the combustion chamber walls. To quantify these changes in combustion chamber surface temperature, surface temperature measurements on the piston of a single cylinder diesel engine were taken. Therefore, thirteen fast-response thermocouples were installed in the piston surface. A wireless microwave telemetry system was used for data transmission out of the moving piston. A wide range of parameter studies were performed to determine the varying influences on the surface temperature of the piston.

The success of model-based ECU-functions relies on precise and efficient modeling of the behavior of combustion engines. Due to the limited computing power, usually a combination of physical models and calibration parameters is preferred for engine modeling in ECU. The parameters can be scalars, 1 or 2-dimensional empirical models, such as look-up table for volumetric efficiency and effective area of the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). A novel algorithm is proposed to automatically calibrate the look-up tables characterizing stationary functional relationships in ECU-function of the air system of a diesel engine with minimum calibration cost. The algorithm runs in the framework of online design of experiment (DoE), in which Gaussian process model (GPM) is adopted to approximate the relationships of interest.

A major source for soot particle formation in Gasoline-Direct-Injection (GDI) engines are fuel-rich zones near walls as a result of wall wetting during injection. To address this problem, a thorough understanding of the wall film formation and evaporation processes is necessary. The wall temperature before, during and after fuel impingement is an important parameter in this respect, but is not easily measured using conventional methods. In this work, a recently developed laser-based phosphor thermography technique is implemented for investigations of spray-induced surface cooling. This spatially and temporally resolved method can provide surface temperature measurements on the wetted side of the surface without being affected by the fuel-film. Zinc oxide (ZnO) particles, dispersed in a chemical binder, were deposited onto a thin steel plate obtaining a coating thickness of 17 μm after annealing.

This study presents a methodology to predict particle number (PN) generation on a naturally aspirated 4-cylinder gasoline engine with port fuel injection (PFI) from wall wetting, employing numerical CFD simulation and fuel film analysis. Various engine parameters concerning spray pattern, injection timing, intake valve timing, as well as engine load/speed were varied and their impact on wall film and PN was evaluated. The engine, which was driven at wide open throttle (WOT), was equipped with soot particle sampling technology and optical access to the combustion chamber of cylinder 1 in order to visualise non-premixed combustion. High-speed imaging revealed a notable presence of diffusion flames, which were typically initiated between the valve seats and cylinder head. Their size was found to match qualitatively with particulate number measurements. A validated CFD model was employed to simulate spray propagation, film transport and droplet impingement.

A previous study by the authors has shown an efficiency benefit of up to Δηi = 10 % for stratified operation of a high pressure natural gas direct injection (DI) spark ignition (SI) engine compared to the homogeneous stoichiometric operation with port fuel injection (PFI). While best efficiencies appeared at extremely lean operation at λ = 3.2, minimum HC emissions were found at λ = 2. The increasing HC emissions and narrow ignition time frames in the extremely lean stratified operation have given the need for a detailed analysis. To further investigate the mixture formation and flame propagation und these conditions, an optically accessible single-cylinder engine was used. The mixture formation and the flame luminosity have been investigated in two perpendicular planes inside the combustion chamber.

The official Indian accident statistics show that the number of road accidents and fatalities are one of the highest worldwide. These official statistics provide important facts about the current accident situation. It is suspected that for various reasons not all accidents are reported to the official statistic. This study estimates the degree of underreporting of traffic accidents with casualties in India. In order to get a national overview of the traffic accident situation it is necessary to improve the knowledge about underreported accidents. Therefore, the in-depth accident database of “Road Accident Sampling System India” (RASSI) was analyzed [1]. This project is organized by a consortium that has collected traffic accidents scientifically in four different regions since 2011 on the spot which have been reported either by police or by local hospitals and own patrol by RASSI engineers.

As automobiles become increasingly smarter, the need to understand within the automotive software the physical behavior of its parts is growing as well. The laws of physics governing such behavior are mostly formulated as differential equations, which today are usually created or obtained from various modeling tools. For solving them, the tools offer several solvers to satisfy the requirements of different problems. E.g. simple and fast explicit low order solvers for non-stiff problems and more complex implicit solvers for stiff problems. Though the modeling and code generation features as available in such tools are desirable for embedded automotive software, they cannot be used directly due to special restrictions with respect to hard realtime constraints. One such restriction is the organization of automotive software in components complying with the AUTOSAR standard which is not widely supported by the modeling tools.

Engine management systems combined with fuel injectors allow a precise fuel metering for a robust combustion process. Stricter emission legislations increase the requirements for these port fuel injection systems (PFI), whereas the price is still the main driver in the emerging low cost 2-wheeler market. Therefore, a holistic mechatronic approach is developed by Bosch, which allows an improved fuel metering over life time and furthermore provides new possibilities for diagnosis without changing the injector itself. This example of an intelligent software solution provides the possibility to further improve the accuracy of the fuel metering of an injector. By use of the information contained in the actuation voltage and current, the opening and closing times of the injector are derivable.

Many software functions currently available in the engine control units have been developed for several years (decades in some cases), reengineered or adapted due to new requirements, what may add to their inherent complexity an unnecessary complication. This paper deals with the study and implementation of a software reengineering strategy for the embedded domain, which is in transfer from research department to product development, here applied to improve maintainability of flex fuel functions. The strategy uses the SCODE “Essential Analysis”, an approach for the embedded system domain. The method allows to reduce the system complexity to the unavoidable inherent problem complexity, by decomposing the system into smaller sub problems based on its essential physics. A case study was carried out to redesign a function of fuel adaptation. The analysis was performed with the support of a tool, which covers all the phases of the method.

To satisfy future emission classes, e.g. EU6c, the particulate number (PN) of Direct-Injection Spark-Ignition (DISI) engines must be reduced. For these engines, different components influence the combustion process and thus also the formation of soot particles and deposits. Along with other engine components, the injector nozzle influences the particulate number and deposits in both fuel spray behavior and nozzle “tip wetting”. In case of non-optimized nozzle layouts, fuel may impinge on the piston and the liner in an unfavorable way, which implies low-oxygen diffusive combustion by retarded vaporizing wall films. For the tip wetting, wall films are present on the actual surface of the nozzle tip, which is also caused by unadapted nozzles. For non-optimized nozzles, the latter effect can become quite dominant. This paper deals with systematic nozzle development activities towards low-deposit nozzle tips and thus decreasing PN values.