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Although the brake thermal efficiency of the state-of-the-art Atkinson-cycle hybrid engines have reached 41%, such engines typically have a low specific power. The ideal hybrid engines for SUVs should have a high thermal efficiency as well as a high specific power. Jiangling Motors recently developed a 4-cylinder, 1.5L TGDI hybrid Miller engine for powering mid-size SUVs, which has achieved 42% brake thermal efficiency, 19.3-bar BMEP, and 73.3-kW/L specific power. The engine has a high compression ratio, a long stroke, and is equipped with a low-pressure EGR system. It can operate with the stoichiometric mixture on the full engine map, with the help of the water-cooled exhaust manifold and the intelligent thermal management system.

In this study, thermal runaway of a 3-cell Li-ion battery module is analyzed using a 3D finite-element-analysis (FEA) method. The module is stacked with three 70Ah lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) pouch cells and indirectly cooled with a liquid-cooled cold plate. Thermal runaway of the module is assumed to be triggered by the instantaneous increase of the middle cell temperature due to an abusive condition. The self-heating rate for the runaway cell is modeled on the basis of Accelerating Rate Calorimetry (ARC) test data. Thermal runaway of the battery module is simulated with and without cooling from the cold plate; with the latter representing a failed cooling system. Simulation results reveal that a minimum of 165°C for the middle cell is needed to trigger thermal runaway of the 3-cell module for cases with and without cold plate cooling.

The performance and life of Li-ion battery packs for electric vehicle (EV), hybrid electrical vehicle (HEV), and plug-in hybrid electrical vehicle (PHEV) applications are influenced significantly by battery operation temperatures. Thermal management of a battery pack is one of the main factors to be considered in the pack design, especially for those with indirect air or indirect liquid cooling since the cooling medium is not in contact with the battery cells. In this paper, thermal behavior of Li-ion pouch cells in a battery system for PHEV applications is studied. The battery system is cooled indirectly with liquid through aluminum cooling fins in contact with each cell and a liquid cooled cold plate for each module in the battery pack. The aluminum cooling fins function as a thermal bridge between the cells and the cold plate. Cell temperature distributions are simulated using a finite element analysis approach under cell utilizations corresponding to PHEV applications.

Thermal behavior of a lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery module for hybrid electrical vehicle (HEV) applications is analyzed in this study. The module is stacked with 12 high-power pouch Li-ion battery cells. The cells are cooled indirectly with air through aluminum fins sandwiched between each two cells in the module, and each of the cooling fins has an extended cooling surface exposed in the cooling air flow channel. The cell temperatures are analyzed using a quasi-dimensional model under both the transient module load in a user-defined cycle for the battery system utilizations and an equivalent continuous load in the cycle. The cell thermal behavior is evaluated with the volume averaged cell temperature and the cell heat transfer is characterized with resistances for all thermal links in the heat transfer path from the cell to the cooling air. Simulations results are compared with measurements. Good agreement is observed between the simulated and measured cell temperatures.

The temperature distribution is studied theoretically in a battery module stacked with 12 high-power Li-ion pouch cells. The module is cooled indirectly with ambient air through aluminum heat-sink plates or cooling plates sandwiched between each pair of cells in the module. Each of the cooling plates has an extended cooling fin exposed in the cooling air channel. The cell temperatures can be controlled by changing the air temperature and/or the heat transfer coefficient on the cooling fin surfaces by regulating the air flow rate. It is found that due to the high thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of the cooling plates, heat transfer of the cooling plate governs the cell temperature distribution by spreading the cell heat over the entire cell surface. Influence of thermal from the cooling fins is also simulated.

Ideal operation temperatures for Li-ion batteries fall in a narrow range from 20°C to 40°C. If the cell operation temperatures are too high, active materials in the cells may become thermally unstable. If the temperatures are too low, the resistance to lithium-ion transport in the cells may become very high, limiting the electrochemical reactions. Good battery thermal management is crucial to both the battery performance and life. Characteristics of various battery thermal management systems are reviewed. Analyses show that the advantages of direct and indirect air cooling systems are their simplicity and capability of cooling the cells in a battery pack at ambient temperatures up to 40°C. However, the disadvantages are their poor control of the cell-to-cell differential temperatures in the pack and their capability to dissipate high cell generations.

In this paper, a thermodynamic model is discussed for a single cylinder diesel engine with its intake and exhaust systems simulating a turbo-charged V8 diesel engine. Following criteria are used in determination of the gas exchange systems of the single cylinder engine (SCE): 1) the level of pressure fluctuations in the intake and exhaust systems should be within the lower and upper bounds of those simulated by the thermodynamic model for the V8 engine and patterns of the pressure waves should be similar; 2) the intake and exhaust flows should be reasonably close to those of the V8 engine; 3) the cylinder pressures during the combustion and gas exchange should be reasonably close to those of the V8 engine under the same conditions for the valve timing, fuel injection, rate of heat release and in-cylinder heat transfer. The thermodynamic model for the SCE is developed using the 1D engine thermodynamic simulation tool AVL BOOST.

Waste heat recovery (WHR) has been recognized as a promising technology to achieve the fuel economy and green house gas reduction goals for future heavy-duty (HD) truck diesel engines. A Rankine cycle system with ethanol as the working fluid was developed at AVL Powertrain Engineering, Inc. to investigate the fuel economy benefit from recovering waste heat from a 10.8L HD truck diesel engine. Thermodynamic analysis on this WHR system demonstrated that 5% fuel saving could be achievable. The fuel economy benefit can be further improved by optimizing the design of the WHR system components and through better utilization of the available engine waste heat. Although the WHR system was designed for a stand-alone system for the laboratory testing, all the heat exchangers were sized such that their heat transfer areas are equivalent to compact heat exchangers suitable for installation on a HD truck diesel engine.

The passenger cabin heating and cooling has a considerable impact on the fuel economy for buses, especially during the waiting period. This problem becomes more significant for the hybrid buses for which the impact of the auxiliary load on the fuel economy is almost twice that on the conventional buses. A second-law analysis conducted in this study indicates that a heat-driven AC system has higher energy utilization efficiency than the conventional AC system. On the basis of this analysis, a concept waste-heat-driven absorptive aqua-ammonia heat pump system is proposed and analyzed. Results of the analysis show that the heat-driven system can reduce the engine auxiliary load significantly because it eliminates the conventional AC compressor. In the AC mode, its energy utilization efficiency can be up to 50%. In the heating mode, the effective efficiency for heating can be up to 100%.

This paper discusses the performance of the radial plunger pump used in the contemporary diesel common-rail fuel systems for rail-pressure supply. On the ground of the pump mechanism, the transient flow, drive torque, and efficiency of the pump are analyzed for various operation conditions. The analysis shows that the number of plungers and utilization of the pump capacity govern fluctuations in the pump discharge. The pump flow can be characterized by a discharge function which applies to both full- and part-capacity pump flows. At the full pump capacity, the discharge fluctuation is determined solely by the number of plungers: a pump with an odd number of plungers has more ripples and lower amplitudes in its discharge than a pump with an even number of plungers does. A pump operates at a part capacity has more fluctuations in the discharge than when at the full capacity.

A novel fuel tank for storing liquid dimethyl ether (DME) has been developed. This fuel tank was made of cast aluminum with a water capacity of 40 liters. It contains two fluids: liquid DME and a vapor-liquid mixture of propane. A diaphragm separates the two fluids. The propane in the tank is a pressurizing fluid that pressurizes DME into a subcooled-liquid state; and, it also functions as a driving fluid that pumps the liquid DME from the tank to the injection pump using its vapor pressure. These features characterize the tank as a thermodynamic pump. Several hundred hours of tank tests at various temperatures have been conducted. Results of tank filling-discharge cycles simulating those in vehicle applications demonstrated that the concept of the two-fluid thermodynamic pump works and that the tank design is successful.

A variable-displacement, 275-bar dimethyl-ether pump for a common-rail injection system has been developed successfully. The pump is an inlet-throttled, wobble-plate-actuated, multi-plunger system. Results of the pump tests/simulations show that the pump can deliver fuel according to the engine requirement at different speeds due to its variable-displacement feature, which is obtained by controlling the discharge phase angle via the two-phase filling characteristic of the pump. Although the pump is designed for dimethyl ether, its concept is general and thus may be applied to the common-rail systems for other fuels.