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Hydrogen ICE can achieve carbon neutrality and is adaptable to medium and heavy-duty vehicles, for which electricity is not always a viable option. It can also be developed using high-quality conventional diesel/gasoline engine technology. Furthermore, it allows for the conversion of existing engines to hydrogen ICE, making it highly marketable. The reliability and durability of MPI hydrogen ICE is better than that of DI, and MPI has an advantage over DI in terms of cruising range because the low-pressure injection of hydrogen reduces the remaining hydrogen in the tank. Improving MPI output is, however, an important subject, and achieving this requires suppressing abnormal combustion such as pre-ignition. In this study, an inline four-cylinder 5L turbo-charged diesel engine was converted to a hydrogen engine. Hydrogen injectors were installed in the intake ports and spark plugs were installed instead of diesel fuel injectors.

The mechanism of lubricant dilution by post injection fuel in a diesel engine was investigated. The operating conditions of the engine were changed, and oil was sampled from each part of the piston and the crankcase, and the dilution ratio was analyzed. Also, photochromism was used to visualize the oil and fuel flow. Dilution ratios obtained from oil sampling and photochromism showed the same tendency.

When the belt contacts a pulley in a pushing belt-type CVT, vibration is generated by frictional force due to rubbing between the individual elements that are components of the belt, which is said to increase wear and noise. The authors speculated that the source of that vibration is misalignment of the secondary pulley and primary pulley V-surfaces. To verify that phenomenon, a newly developed micro data logger was attached to an element of a mass-produced metal pushing V-belt CVT and the acceleration was measured at rotations equal to those at drive (1000 to 2500 r/m). In addition, the results of calculations using a behavior analysis model showed that changes in pulley misalignment influence element vibration, and that the magnitude of the vibration is correlated to the change in the metal pushing V-belt alignment immediately before the element contacts the pulley.

An apparatus that automatically samples lubricating oil and measures the size distribution of particles in the oil has been developed in order to monitor the state of engines and transmissions in operation. It is a widely known fact that when an engine or transmission seizes or experiences unusual wear, comparatively large pieces of wear debris are released. The goal of the use of the apparatus is to detect these particles of wear debris, stop testing before damage occurs, and clarify the causes. Seizure was, therefore, artificially induced in a transmission, and the wear debris in the oil was closely analyzed following the test. The results showed that when the simulated seizure occurred, large, elongated particles of wear debris were produced. Similar wear debris was observed in oil recovered from the market following the seizure of a component, and at present this is believed to be a type of wear debris characteristic of seizure.

Downsizing and slowing down of engine speed reduce mechanical losses and improve fuel economy. However, they exacerbate lubrication condition. The oil film thickness of the bearing of the small end of the connecting rod, which was one of the sliding surfaces with the severest lubrication condition in a diesel engine, was measured in this study to clarify the lubrication condition. Optical fibers were embedded in the bearing, and oil film was measured by means of the laser induced fluorescence method. It was found that oil film thickness was affected combustion gas pressure and distortion of the piston pin.

A mean value turbocharged engine model is useful in terms of accuracy and convenience for fuel economy strategies or engine controller development. Turbocharging process is a feedback system with a positive gain, i.e. increasing exhaust work leads to increasing a cycle work. The gain of the feedback system is determined mainly by exhaust work ratio in a cycle and inertia of the turbine. The work ratio was investigated based on engine test with EGR. A turbocharging process model was obtained using the work ratio in a cycle and theoretical equations. The model is applied to investigate manifold absolute pressure response with EGR.

Gasoline engines have the trace-knock phenomena induced by the fast combustion which happens a few times during 100 cycles. And that constrains the thermal efficiency improvement due to limiting the ignition timing advance. So the authors have been dedicating a trace-knock simulation so that we could obtain any pieces of information associated with trace-knock characteristics. This simulation consists of a turbulent combustion model, a cycle-by-cycle variation model and a chemical calculation subprogram. In the combustion model, a combustion zone is considered in order to obtain proper turbulent combustion speed through wide range of engine speed. From a cycle-by-cycle variation analysis of an actual gasoline engine, some trace-knock features were detected, and they were involved in the cycle-by-cycle variation model. And a reduced elementary reaction model of gasoline PRF (primary reference fuel) was customized to the knocking prediction, and it was used in the chemical calculation.

Clarifying the mechanism of oil transporting upward at around an oil ring of a piston is necessary for calculating engine oil consumption. This study aimed to clarify the function of oil drain holes in the oil ring groove of a piston. The effect of the oil drain holes in the groove on oil consumption was investigated. Also the pressure balance around the oil ring was measured. It was found that the drain holes in the groove lowered oil consumption. It was assumed that lower pressure in the groove with the drain holes caused less oil flow into the third land.

The authors have previously proposed a plume ignition and combustion concept (i.e., PCC combustion), in which a hydrogen fuel is directly injected to the combustion chamber in the latter half of compression stroke and forms a richer mixture plume. By combusting the plume, both cooling losses and NOx formation are reduced. In this study, thermal efficiency was substantially improved and NOx formation was reduced with PCC combustion by optimizing such characteristics as direction and diameter of the jets in combination with combustion of lean mixture. Output power declined due to the lean mixture, however, was recovered by supercharging while keeping NOx emissions at the same level. Thermal efficiency was further improved by slightly re-optimizing the jet conditions.

The friction reduction of a piston/piston-ring assembly is effective for fuel economy of an engine, and a friction measurement method is required for developing low friction pistons, piston-rings and lubricants. Most suitable method for friction measurement for piston assemblies is “floating liner method”. It has load sensors between a floating cylinder liner and cylinder block, and the sensors can detect friction force acting on the liner. Many apparatuses using floating liner method are developed. They are roughly divided to two categories. In one of them, floating liner is supported by load-washers which axis is set parallel to the center line of the cylinder liner. In another type, floating liner is supported by three-component force sensors installed on the side face of the cylinder. In this paper, five types of floating liner devices were compared.

In order to develop various parts and components of vehicles, understanding the effects of their structures and thermal performance on the fuel consumption and cruising distance is important. However, because of the limited information available to parts suppliers, it is not always easy to predict and study vehicle fuel efficiency and cruising range performance under arbitrary driving conditions. In this study, the authors have developed an RFD (Regression Fuel-consumption Diagram) method to predict the cruising performance of internal-combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) based only on the published information given to suppliers by using standard reference vehicles, which had been regressed and identified for control characteristics and fuel consumption diagrams. As an example of the application of the RFD method to realistic situation, the effects of the driving mode and air-conditioning on the fuel consumption of ICEV are studied.

Improving fuel efficiency often affects NVH performance. Modifying a vehicle’s design in the latter stages of development to improve NVH performance is often costly. Therefore, to optimize the cost performance, a Multi-Attribute Balancing (MAB) approach should be employed in the early design phases. This paper proposes a solution based on a unified 1D system simulation model across different vehicle performance areas. In the scope of this paper the following attributes are studied: Fuel economy, Booming, Idle, Engine start and Drivability. The challenges to be solved by 1D simulation are the vehicle performance predictions, taking into account the computation time and accuracy. Early phase studies require a large number of scenarios to evaluate multiple possible parameter combinations employing a multi-attribute approach with a systematic tool to ease setup and evaluation according to the determined performance metrics.

In order to verify cooling loss reduction effect of internal combustion engine, method for measuring wall surface temperature and heat flux with high accuracy is required. Various methods have been proposed for measuring the cooling loss from the combustion gas to the combustion chamber wall, newly coaxial type thin-film temperature sensor was developed for wall temperature and heat flux measurement by the authors. This sensor consists of thin-film and body and center wire have three junction positions in the case where three materials are different. Therefore, it is necessary to use the same materials for thin-film and body or thin-film and center wire to make two junction points. In this study, sputtering method that can be formed various kinds of alloy materials and film thickness of 0.1~1μm on the sensor surface was chosen.

The piston rings, the engine sliding parts, are required to further contribute on mechanical loss reduction in order to improve fuel efficiency. However, many cases of the abnormal combustion due to oil upward flow, as well as the increase in oil consumption have been reported. Therefore, elucidation of the mechanism of those phenomena is still an urgent task. It is widely known that the distribution of the sliding face pressure in between the piston ring and the cylinder bore largely influence the oil flow via the sliding face of the piston ring. However, there are many unknown aspects in this field. Therefore, verification of the sliding face pressure during the actual operation is necessary in order to elucidate the mechanism of oil consumption. The thin-film sensor, since it has little influence on shape, is widely used as a measurement method of the sliding face pressure between two different faces, however this method has never been applied to the piston ring in the past.

In a previous study by the authors, austenite (γ phase) formed on the topmost of pulleys after long term operation of continuously variable transmission (CVT) [1]. In general, martensite arising from heat treatment forms on the surface of pulleys and gears. Therefore, the sliding surface has a body-centered cubic (BCC) metal structure, and transformation into and existence of austenite (γ phase) is difficult unless there is a thermal history exceeding the eutectoid point. For the verification of that possibility, it was crucial to obtain temperature variation on the sliding surface. The major problem for such measurements was rotation of parts inside an operating CVT. In this study, uniquely developed measurement system enabled non-contact temperature measurement near the contact portion. Results were substituted to heat conduction equation to predict the temperature at the exact contact portion.

In order to establish standard method to evaluate cooling loss in combustion chamber of internal combustion engines based on measurement of instantaneous heat flux / wall temperature with higher response and accuracy than previously reported coaxial type thin-film temperature sensor by applying thin film fabrication technology based on PVD method (Physical Vapor Deposition method) which improved to realize higher responsiveness than the conventional sensor was developed by the authors, and it was confirmed that the sensor has sufficient durability in conditions in which the hydrogen jet and flame directly contacts surface of the sensor by thin-film material change. The influence of the improvement on the measurement accuracy was verified by numerical analysis including thermoproperty evaluation. In this report, the configuration of measurement system that can measure minute voltage from the sensor with low noise and high response is reported.

For various densities of gas jets including very light hydrogen and relatively heavy ones, the penetration length and diffusion process of a single high-speed gas fuel jet injected into air are computed by performing a large eddy simulation (LES) with fewer arbitrary constants applied for the unsteady three-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equation. In contrast, traditional ensemble models such as the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equation have several arbitrary constants for fitting purposes. The cubic-interpolated pseudo-particle (CIP) method is employed for discretizing the nonlinear terms. Computations of single-component nitrogen and hydrogen jets were done under initial conditions of a fuel tank pressure of gas fuel = 10 MPa and back pressure of air = 3.5 MPa, i.e., the pressure level inside the combustion chamber after piston compression in the engine.

In order to improve shift response, durability and transmission efficiency of the CVT system, it is essential to precisely understand the behavior of individual belt elements. Although there have been some previous works measuring the strain or load on belt elements, they have been performed for speed ranges that are far below actual vehicle operation speeds due to limits in measurement techniques. We therefore developed measurement equipment that can be fitted on a CVT belt to enable measurement during actual CVT operation, and obtained the strain on belt elements under transient conditions including acceleration and transmission ratio shifts. The results showed that the strain peaks due to normal force on V faces of elements around the entrance and/or exit of the pulleys. The bending component of the strain fluctuated on the straight section from the secondary pulley to the primary pulley.

In order to develop various parts and components of electric vehicles, understanding the effects of their structures and thermal performance on the energy consumption and cruising distance is important. However, such essential and detailed information is generally not always available to suppliers of vehicle parts and components. This paper presents the development of a simple model of the energy consumption by an electric vehicle in order to roughly calculate the cruising performance based only on the published information to give to suppliers, who otherwise cannot obtain the necessary information. The method can calculate the cruising distance within an error of 4% compared to the published information. The effects of the glass and body heat transfer characteristics on the cruising performance in winter were considered as an example application of the proposed model.

A simple method is frequently used to calculate a reciprocating engine’s bearing load from the measured cylinder pressure. However, it has become apparent that engine downsizing and weight reduction cannot be achieved easily if an engine is designed based on the simple method. Because of this, an actual load on a bearing was measured, and the measured load values were compared with a bearing load distribution calculated from cylinder pressure. As a result, it was found that some of actual loads were about half of the calculated ones at certain crank angles. The connecting rod’s elastic deformation was focused on as a factor behind such differences, and the rod’s deformation due to the engine’s explosion load was studied. As a result, it was found that the rod part of the engine’s connecting rod was bent by 0.2 mm and became doglegged. Additional investigation regarding these findings would allow further engine downsizing.