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Knowing the tire pressure during driving is essential since it affects multiple tire properties such as rolling resistance, uneven wear, and how prone the tire is to tire bursts. Tire temperature and cavity pressure are closely tied to each other; a change in tire temperature will cause an alteration in tire cavity pressure. This article gives insights into which tire temperature measurement position is representative enough to estimate pressure changes inside the tire, and whether the pressure changes can be assumed to be nearly isochoric. Climate wind tunnel and road measurements were conducted where tire pressure and temperature at the tire inner liner, the tire shoulder, and the tread surface were monitored. The measurements show that tires do not have a uniform temperature distribution. The ideal gas law is used to estimate the tire pressure from the measured temperatures.

A viable option to reduce global warming related to internal combustion engines is to use renewable fuels, for example methanol. However, the risk of knocking combustion limits the achievable efficiency of SI engines. Hence, most high load operation is run at sub-optimal conditions to suppress knock. Normally the fuel is a limiting factor, however when running on high octane fuels such as methanol, other factors also become important. For example, oil droplets entering the combustion chamber have the possibility to locally impact both temperature and chemical composition. This may create spots with reduced octane number, hence making the engine more prone to knock. Previous research has confirmed a connection between oil droplets in the combustion chamber and knock. Furthermore, previous research has confirmed a connection between oil droplets in the combustion chamber and exhaust particle emissions.

The formation of deposits in the fuel systems of heavy-duty engines, using drop-in fuels, has been reported in recent years. Drop-in fuels are of interest because they allow higher levels of alternative fuels to be blended with conventional fuels that are compatible with today’s engines. The precipitation of insolubles in the drop-in fuel can lead to clogging of fuel filters and internal injector deposits, resulting in increased fuel consumption and engine drivability problems. The possible mechanisms for the formation of the deposits in the fuel system are not yet fully understood. Several explanations such as operating conditions, fuel quality and contamination have been reported. To investigate injector deposit formation, several screening laboratory test methods have been developed to avoid the use of more costly and complex engine testing.

Modern spark-ignited (SI) engines offer excellent emission reduction when operated with a stoichiometric mixture and a three-way catalytic converter. A challenge with stoichiometric compared to diluted operation is the knock propensity due to the high reactivity of the mixture. This limits the compression ratio, thus reducing engine efficiency and increasing exhaust temperature. The current work evaluated a model of conditions at inlet valve closing (IVC) and top dead center (TDC) for steady state operation. The IVC temperature model is achieved by a cycle-to-cycle resolved residual gas fraction estimator. Due to the potential charge cooling effect from methanol, a method was proposed to determine the fraction of fuel sourced from a wall film. Determining the level of charge cooling is important as it heavily impacts the IVC and TDC temperatures.

Stoichiometric operation of a Port Fueled Injection (PFI) Spark-Ignited (SI) engine with a three-way catalytic converter offers excellent CO2 reduction when run on renewable fuel. The main drawbacks with stoichiometric operation are the increased knock propensity, high exhaust temperature and reduced efficiency. Knock is typically mitigated with a reactive knock controller, with retarded ignition timing whenever knock is detected and the timing then slowly advanced until knock is detected again. This will cause some cycles to operate with non-ideal ignition timing. The current work evaluates the possibility to predict knock using the measured and modelled temperatures at Inlet Valve Closing (IVC) and Top Dead Center (TDC). Feedback effects are studied beyond steady state operation by using induced ignition timing disturbances.

The use of turbochargers with downsized internal combustion engines improves road vehicles’ energy efficiency but introduces additional sound sources of strong acoustic annoyance on the turbocharger’s compressor side. In the present study, direct noise computations (DNC) are carried out on a passenger vehicle turbocharger compressor. The work focuses on assessing the influence of grid parameters on the acoustic predictions, to further advance the maturity of the acoustic modelling of such machines with complex three-dimensional features. The effect of the boundary layer mesh structure, and of the spatial resolution of the mesh, on the simulated acoustic signatures is investigated on detached eddy simulations (DES). Refinements in the core mesh are applied in areas of major acoustic production, to generate cells with sizes proportional to the local Taylor microscale values.

Vehicle electrification is one of the biggest trends in the automotive industry. Without the presence of combustion engine, which is the main noise source on conventional vehicles, noise from other components becomes more perceivable; among these components, the cooling fan is one of the major noise sources, especially during battery charging. The design of cooling fan modules is usually carried out in the early stage before building prototype vehicles. Therefore, understanding the installation effects of the cooling fan on the radiated sound is essential to secure good customer satisfaction. In this study, three different measurement setups of cooling fans are carried out: free field, wall mounted, and in-vehicle measurement. Four cooling fan prototypes with different fan blade designs are used in each measurement. Correlations of these measurements are investigated through comparisons of the measurement results.

An afterburner-assisted turbocharged single-cylinder 425 cc two-stroke SI-engine is described in this simulation study. This engine is intended as a Backup Range Extender (REX) application for heavy-duty battery electric vehicles (BEV) when external electric charging is unavailable. The 425 cc engine is an upscaled version of a 125 cc port-injected engine [26] which demonstrated that the selected technology could provide a specific power level of 400 kW/L and the desired 150 kW in a heavy duty BEV application. The 425 cc single cylinder two-stroke engine is an existing engine as one half of a 850 cc snowmobile engine. This simulation study includes upscaling of the swept volume, impact on engine speed and gas exchange properties. In the same way as for the 125cc engine [26], the exhaust gases reaches the turbine through a tuned exhaust pipe and an afterburner or oxidation catalyst.

This paper investigates the FPGA resources for the implementation of in-cycle closed-loop combustion control algorithms. Closed-loop combustion control obtains feedback from fast in-cylinder pressure measurements for accurate and reliable information about the combustion progress, synchronized with the flywheel encoder. In-cycle combustion control requires accurate and fast computations for their real-time execution. A compromise between accuracy and computation complexity must be selected for an effective combustion control. The requirements on the signal processing (evaluation rate and digital resolution) are investigated. A common practice for the combustion supervision is to monitor the heat release rate. For its calculation, different methods for the computation of the cylinder volume and heat capacity ratio are compared. Combustion feedback requires of virtual sensors for the misfire detection, burnt fuel mass and pressure prediction.

The ignition dynamics of an ethanol-diesel direct injection compression ignition engine is investigated based on 3D RANS simulations. Experimental results of a previous test campaign on a single-cylinder research engine equipped with two direct injectors are used to validate the CFD model. Four reference engine conditions are considered, including split and overlapped injections of ethanol and diesel at low and high load. Combustion driven by the separate direct injection of pure ethanol and diesel as pilot fuel is simulated with AVL Fire and AVL Tabkin adopting the flamelet generated manifold combustion model. The in-cylinder pressure and apparent rate of heat release traces computed in the simulations are found to be consistent with the corresponding experimental results.

Thermoacoustic engine has been proven to be a promising technology for automotive exhaust waste heat recovery to save fossil fuel and reduce emission thanks to its ability to convert heat into acoustic energy which, hence, can be harvested in useful electrical energy. In this paper, based on the practical thermodynamic parameters of the automotive exhaust gas, including mass flow rate and temperature, two traveling-wave thermoacoustic engines are designed and optimized for the typical heavy-duty and light-duty vehicles, respectively, to extract and reutilize their exhaust waste heat. Firstly, nonlinear thermoacoustic models for each component of a thermoacoustic engine are established in the frequency domain, by which any potential steady operating point of the engine is available.

In heavy-duty engines, Euro VI legislation regulates the total particle number (PN) in the exhaust based on the particle measurement program (PMP) guidelines. By PMP directives, the exhaust sample is diluted and conditioned to contain non-volatile particles before measuring the PN. The fraction of non-volatile and volatile particles changes along the exhaust after-treatment system and could affect the total PN measured. Therefore, it is of interest to compare the performance of the dilution systems at different positions along the after-treatment system. For this purpose, a standard PMP compliant two-stage dilution system (DS1) with evaporation tube (ET) was compared with a close coupled two-stage ejector dilution system (DS2). In DS2, the non-volatile PN was measured with a dilution temperature of 350°C (same as the DS1 ET temperature) while the volatile PN was measured with a dilution temperature of 150°C.

The constrained indicated efficiency optimization of the set-point reference for in-cycle closed-loop combustion regulators is investigated in this article. Closed-loop combustion control is able to reduce the stochastic cyclic variations of the combustion by the adjustment of multiple-injections, a pilot and main injection in this work. The set-point is determined by the demand on engine load, burned pilot mass reference and combustion timing. Two strategies were investigated, the regulation of the start of combustion (SOC) and the center of combustion (CA50). The novel approach taken in this investigation consists of including the effect of the controlled variables on the combustion dispersion, instead of using mean-value models, and solve the stochastic optimization problem. A stochastic heat release model is developed for simulation and calibrated with extensive data from a Scania D13 six-cylinder engine. A Monte Carlo approach is taken for the simulations.

Alcohols offer high resistance to autoignition which is necessary to attain the required load in heavy duty (HD) spark ignition (SI) engines. Dilution increases thermal efficiency and reduces propensity to autoignition making it an important combustion strategy. Reliable and robust prediction at increased dilution is necessary to support development of high efficiency spark ignition engines and the transition to renewable fuels. A previous experimental study demonstrated 25 bar gross IMEPg for ethanol and methanol at λ=1.4 excess air ratio and over 48% indicated efficiency at λ=1.6 on a single cylinder engine. Based on this dataset, a semi-predictive model (SITurb) was fitted for a range of excess air ratios and engine loads. With the default model, poor accuracy was observed above λ=1.4. Ignition delay was incorrectly predicted at λ=1.6 and λ=1.8.

In this paper, a High-Temperature Electrical Low-Pressure Impactor (HT-ELPI+) was used to measure particles from a light-duty direct injected spark ignited (DISI) engine fueled with gasoline and ethanol. The HT-ELPI+ measured volatile and non-volatile particle emissions down to 6 nm without the need for dilution. Particle emissions were measured at four operating points while sweeping the end of injection, and at idle operation. The total particle number (PN) and particle size distribution (number and mass) for both non-volatile and volatile emissions were measured with the HT-ELPI+ and compared to the measured PN using two 71.4 times diluted Condensation Particle Counters (CPCs) with two different cut-off sizes, with 23 nm and 7 nm cut-off, respectively. The results show an increase in particle emissions in terms of particle mass and total particle number for ethanol compared to gasoline. The difference in soot mass emissions is small between the fuels.

Power dense internal combustion engines (ICEs) are interesting candidates for onboard charging devices in different electric powertrain applications where the weight, volume and price of the energy storage components are critical. Single-cylinder naturally aspirated two-stroke spark-ignited (SI) engines are very small and power dense compared to four-stroke SI engines and the installation volume from a single cylinder two-stroke engine can become very interesting in some concepts. During charged conditions, four-stroke engines become more powerful than naturally aspirated two-stroke engines. The performance level of a two-stroke SI engines with a charging system is less well understood since only a limited number of articles have so far been published. However, if charging can be successfully applied to a two-stroke engine, it can become very power dense.

Biofuel can enable a sustainable transport solution and lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to standard fuels. This study focuses on biodiesel, implemented in the easiest way as drop in fuel. When mixing biodiesel into diesel one can run into problems with solubility causing contaminants precipitating out as insolubilities. These insolubilities, also called soft particles, can cause problems such as internal injector deposits and nozzle fouling. One way to overcome the problem of soft particles is by filtration. It is thus of great interest to be able to quantify fuel filters’ ability to intercept soft particles. The aim of this study is to test different fuel filters for heavy-duty engines and their ability to filter out synthetic soft particles. A custom-built fuel filter rig is presented, together with some of its general design requirements. For evaluation of the efficiency of the filters, fuel samples were taken before and after the filters.

The increased rates of research on complex fuel blends in engine applications poses a need for more efficient and accurate fuel blending processes in engine laboratories. Making the fuel blending process automatic, effective, accurate and flexible saves time, storage space and cost without compromising the tests of future fuel alternatives. To meet these requirements, an automatic fuel blending system, following a sequential batch process, was designed and tested for engine laboratory application. The fuel blending system was evaluated in terms of functionality, safety, accuracy and repeatability. The functionality and safety was evaluated through a risk analysis. Whereas, the accuracy and repeatability of the system was investigated through blend preparation tests. The results show that the minimum fuel mass limitation of the system is 0.5 kg. This allows for blends with fuel ratios as low as 7 vol-% to be prepared by the system.

Pilot injections are normally used for the reduction of diesel engine emissions and combustion noise. Nonetheless, with a penalty on the indicated thermal efficiency. The cost is reduced by the minimization of the pilot mass, which on its counterpart increases the risk of pilot misfire. Pilot misfire can have a higher penalty on the indicated efficiency if it is not compensated adequately. This paper investigates how in-cycle closed-loop combustion control techniques can reduce the effects of pilot misfire events. By closed-loop combustion control, pilot misfire can be detected and counteracted in-cycle. Two injection strategies are investigated. The first is the control of the main injection, the second includes an additional second pilot injection. Based on the in-cycle misfire diagnose, two architectures are investigated. The first uses a cycle-to-cycle controller to set the main injection under each scenario.

In-cylinder heat losses in diesel engines reduce engine efficiency significantly and account for a considerable amount of injected fuel energy. A great part of the heat losses during diesel combustion presumably arises from the impingement of the flame. The present study compares the heat losses at the point where the flame impinges onto the piston bowl wall and the heat losses between two impingement points. Measurements were performed in a full metal heavy-duty diesel engine with a small optical access through a removed exhaust valve. The surface temperature at the impingement point of the combusting diesel spray and at a point in between two impingement points was determined using phosphor thermometry. The dynamic heat fluxes and the heat transfer coefficients which result from the surface temperature measurements are estimated. Simultaneous cylinder pressure measurements and high-speed videos are associated to individual surface temperature measurements.