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Vehicle functional requirements, emission regulations, and thermal limits all have a direct impact on the design of a powertrain cooling airflow system. Given the expected increase in emission-related heat rejection, suppliers and vehicle manufacturers must work together as partners in the design, selection, and packaging of cooling system components. The goal of this two-day course is to introduce engineers and managers to the basic principles of cooling airflow systems for commercial and off-road vehicles.

Increasingly stringent regulations relating to the emissions of passenger cars and commercial vehicles demand alternative powertrain technologies in order to effectively achieve the climate targets. Hydrogen can play a crucial role as alternative energy carrier regarding the EU targets for CO2-neutral mobility towards 2050. Therefore, it represents a reasonable choice not only for fuel cell powered vehicles, but also for fueling internal combustion engines (ICE). This paper focuses on the numerical investigation of high-pressure hydrogen injection and the mixture formation inside a high-tumble ICE with a conventional liquid fuel injector for passenger cars. Since the traditional 3D-CFD approach of simulating the inner flow of an injector requires a very high spatial and temporal resolution, the enormous computational effort, especially for full engine simulations, is a big challenge for an effective virtual development of modern ICEs.

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.

Nowadays, green hydrogen can play a crucial role in a successful clean energy transition, thus reaching net zero emissions in the transport sector. Moreover, hydrogen exploitation in internal combustion engines is favoured by its suitable combustion properties and quasi-zero harmful emissions. High flame speeds enable a lean combustion approach, which provides high efficiency and reduces NOx emissions. However, high air flow rates are required to achieve the load levels typical of heavy-duty applications. In this framework, the present study aims to investigate the required boosting system of a 6-cylinder, 13-liter heavy-duty spark ignition engine through 1D numerical simulation. A comparison among various architectures of the turbocharging system and the size of each component is presented, thus highlighting limitations and potentialities of each architecture and providing important insights for the selection of the best turbocharging system.

Commercial vehicle powertrain is called to respect a challenging roadmap for CO2 emissions reduction, quite complex to achieve just improving technologies currently on the market. In this perspective alternative solutions are gaining interest, and the use of green H2 as fuel for ICE is considered a high potential solution with fast and easy adoption. NOx emission is still a problem for H2 ICE and can be managed operating the engine with lean air fuel ratio all over the engine map. This combustion strategy will challenge the boosting system as lean H2 combustion will require quite higher air flow compared to diesel for the same power density in steady state. Similar problem will show up in transient response particularly when acceleration starts from low load and the exhaust gases enthalpy is very poor and insufficient to spin the turbine. The analysis presented in this paper will show and quantify the positive impact that a supercharger has on both the above mentions problems.

Heavy duty truck engines are quite difficult to electrify, due to the large amount of energy required on-board, in order to achieve a range comparable to that of diesels. This paper considers a commercial 6-cylinder engine with a displacement of 12.8 L, developed in two different versions. As a standard diesel, the engine is able to deliver more than 420 kW at 1800 rpm, whereas in the CNG configuration the maximum power output is 330 kW at 1800 rpm. Maintaining the same combustion chamber design of the last version, a theoretical study is carried out in order to run the engine on Hydrogen, compressed at 700 bar. The study is based on GT-Power simulations, adopting a predictive combustion model, calibrated with experimental results. The study shows that the implementation of a combustion system running on lean mixtures of Hydrogen, permits to cancel the emissions of CO2, while maintaining the same power output of the CNG engine.

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The absence of combustion information continues to be one of the key obstacles to the intelligent development of engines. Currently, the cost of integrating cylinder pressure sensors remains too high, prompting attention to methods for extracting combustion information from existing sensing data. Mean-value combustion models for engines are unable to capture changes of combustion parameters. Furthermore, the methods of reconstructing combustion information using sensor signals mainly depend on the working state of the sensors, and the reliability of reconstructed values is directly influenced by sensor malfunctions. Due to the concentration of operating conditions of hybrid vehicles, the reliability of priori calibration map has increased. Therefore, a combustion information reconstruction method based on priori calibration information and the fused feature deviations of existing sensing signals is proposed and named the "Deviation-based Centroid Displacement Method" (DCDM).

In recent years, with the development of computing infrastructure and methods, the potential of numerical methods to reasonably predict aerodynamic noise in turbocharger compressors of heavy-duty diesel engines has increased. However, aerodynamic acoustic modeling of complex geometries and flow systems is currently immature, mainly due to the greater challenges in accurately characterizing turbulent viscous flows. Therefore, recent advances in aerodynamic noise calculations for automotive turbocharger compressors were reviewed and a quantitative study of the effects for turbulence models (Shear-Stress Transport (SST) and Detached Eddy Simulation (DES)) and time-steps (2° and 4°) in numerical simulations on the performance and acoustic prediction of a compressor under various conditions were investigated.

The work examined the practicality of converting a modern production 6 cylinder 7.7 litre heavy-duty diesel engine for flex dual-fuel operation with ammonia as the main fuel. A small amount of diesel fuel (pilot) was used as an ignition source. Ammonia was injected into the intake ports during the intake stroke, while the original direct fuel injection equipment was retained and used for pilot diesel injection. A bespoke engine control unit was used to control the injection of both fuels and all other engine parameters. The aim was to provide a cost-effective retrofitting technology for existing heavy-duty engines, to enable eco-friendly operation with minimal carbon emissions. The tests were carried out at a baseline speed of 600 rpm for the load range of the engine (10-90%), with minimum pilot diesel quantity and as high as 90% substitution ratio of ammonia for diesel fuel.

Ammonia is one of the carbon-free alternatives considered for power generation and transportation sectors. But ammonia’s lower flame speed, higher ignition energy, and higher nitrogen oxides emissions are challenges in practical applications such as internal combustion engines. As a result, modifications in engine design and control and the use of a secondary fuel to initiate combustion such as natural gas are considered for ammonia-fueled engines. The higher-octane number of methane (the main component in natural gas) and ammonia allows for higher compression ratios, which in turn would increase the engine's thermal efficiency. One simple approach to initiate and control combustion for a high-octane fuel at higher compression ratios is to use a spark plug. This study experimentally investigated the operation of a heavy-duty compression ignition engine converted to spark ignition and ammonia-methane blends.

In crank- train system, the prime objective of crankshaft is to facilitate the transformation of reciprocating motion of connecting rod into rotational motion at flywheel end. Moreover, the contribution of mass from crankshaft is in the same order as of flywheel assembly mass which accounts to approximately 40% to 50% of total mass of engine. Therefore, to accomplish the development of an efficient engine it is vital to optimize the crankshaft based on simulation parameters like balance rate, mass, torsional frequency, web shear stress etc. In the given work, crankshaft has been designed and developed for an engine used in light duty commercial vehicle. The defined work demonstrates the application of 1D simulation tool AVL Excite in development phase of the engine. To establish equilibrium between the weight and simulation guidelines, many iterations of models were evaluated and finally we were able to achieve mass reduction of nearly 8% from the base model.

To help ensure that engine components are as reliable as customers need them to be, we have thus far evaluated them by establishing development target values based on market requirements, having engineers design parts to meet these requirements, then performing durability tests. These durability requirements are calculated to provide a margin of safety for use in the marketplace. However, depending on the part, these evaluation criteria can be overly aggressive against how it is used in the market, having led to a decrease in development efficiency as engine systems become more advanced. Therefore, in this study, we focused on the subject of high-cycle fatigue, which affects numerous components and is highly scalable, and built up a process for estimating the life span of components that would enable us to conduct appropriate evaluations that reflect how parts are truly used in the market.