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Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) coolers are widely used on diesel engines to reduce in-cylinder NOx formation. A common problem is the accumulation of a fouling layer inside the heat exchanger, mainly due to thermophoresis that leads to deposition of particulate matter (PM), and condensation of hydrocarbons (HC) from the diesel exhaust. From a recent investigation of deposits from field samples of EGR coolers, it was confirmed that the densities of their deposits were much higher than reported in previous studies. In this study, the experiments were conducted in order to verify hypotheses about deposit growth, especially densification. An experimental set up which included a custom-made shell and tube type heat exchanger with six surrogate tubes was designed to control flow rate independently, and was installed on a 1.9 L L-4 common rail turbo diesel engine.

Prior work in the literature have shown that pre-chamber spark plug technologies can provide remarkable improvements in engine performance. In this work, three passively fueled pre-chamber spark plugs with different pre-chamber geometries were investigated using in-cylinder high-speed imaging of spectral emission in the visible wavelength region in a single-cylinder direct-injection spark-ignition gasoline engine. The effects of the pre-chamber spark plugs on flame development were analyzed by comparing the flame progress between the pre-chamber spark plugs and with the results from a conventional spark plug. The engine was operated at fixed conditions (relevant to federal test procedures) with a constant speed of 1500 revolutions per minute with a coolant temperature of 90 oC and stoichiometric fuel-to-air ratio. The in-cylinder images were captured with a color high-speed camera through an optical insert in the piston crown.

Investigating combustion characteristics of oxygenated gasoline and gasoline blended ethanol is a subject of recent interest. The non-linearity in the interaction of fuel components in the oxygenated gasoline can be studied by developing chemical kinetics of relevant surrogate of fewer components. This work proposes a new reduced four-component (isooctane, heptane, toluene, and ethanol) oxygenated gasoline surrogate mechanism consisting of 67 species and 325 reactions, applicable for dynamic CFD applications in engine combustion and sprays. The model introduces the addition of eight C1-C3 species into the previous model (Li et al; 2019) followed by extensive tuning of reaction rate constants of C7 - C8 chemistry. The current mechanism delivers excellent prediction capabilities in comprehensive combustion applications with an improved performance in lean conditions.

This paper presents experimental results that validate eco-driving and eco-heating strategies developed for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). By exploiting vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, traffic signal timing, and queue length estimations, optimized and smoothed speed profiles for the ego-vehicle are generated to reduce energy consumption. Next, the planned eco-trajectories are incorporated into a real-time predictive optimization framework that coordinates the cabin thermal load (in cold weather) with the speed preview, i.e., eco-heating. To enable eco-heating, the engine coolant (as the only heat source for cabin heating) and the cabin air are leveraged as two thermal energy storages. Our eco-heating strategy stores thermal energy in the engine coolant and cabin air while the vehicle is driving at high speeds, and releases the stored energy slowly during the vehicle stops for cabin heating without forcing the engine to idle to provide the heating source.

High-pressure gasoline injection can improve combustion efficiency and lower engine-out emissions; however, the spray characteristics of high-pressure gasoline (>500 bar) are not well known. Effects of different injector nozzle geometry on high-pressure gasoline sprays were studied using a constant volume chamber. Five nozzles with controlled internal flow features including differences in nozzle inlet rounding, conicity, and outlet diameter were investigated. Reference grade gasoline was injected at fuel pressures of 300, 600, 900, 1200, and 1500 bar. The chamber pressure was varied using nitrogen at ambient temperature and pressures of 1, 5, 10, and 20 bar. Spray development was recorded using diffuse backlit shadowgraph imaging methods.

This study experimentally investigates the impact of Miller cycle strategies on the combustion process, emissions, and thermal efficiency in heavy-duty diesel engines. The experiments were conducted at constant engine speed, load, and engine-out NOx (1160 rev/min, 1.76 MPa net IMEP, 4.5 g/kWh) on a single cylinder research engine equipped with a fully-flexible hydraulic valve train system. Early Intake Valve Closing (EIVC) and Late Intake Valve Closing (LIVC) timing strategies were compared to a conventional intake valve profile. While the decrease in effective compression ratio associated with the use of Miller valve profiles was symmetric around bottom dead center, the decrease in volumetric efficiency (VE) was not. EIVC profiles were more effective at reducing VE than LIVC profiles. Despite this difference, EIVC and LIVC profiles with comparable VE decrease resulted in similar changes in combustion and emissions characteristics.

This research evaluates the capability of data-science models to classify the combustion events in Cooperative Fuel Research Engine (CFR) operated under Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) conditions. A total of 10,395 experimental data from the CFR engine at the University of Michigan (UM), operated under different input conditions for 15 different fuel blends, were utilized for the study. The combustion events happening under HCCI conditions in the CFR engine are classified into four different modes depending on the combustion phasing and cyclic variability (COVimep). The classes are; no ignition/high COVimep, operable combustion, high MPRR, and early CA50. Two machine learning (ML) models, K-nearest neighbors (KNN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM), are compared for their classification capabilities of combustion events. Seven conditions are used as the input features for the ML models viz.

An experimental investigation of non-intrusive combustion sensing was performed using a tri-axial accelerometer mounted to the engine block of a small-bore high-speed 4-cylinder compression-ignition direct-injection (CIDI) engine. This study investigates potential techniques to extract combustion features from accelerometer signals to be used for cycle-to-cycle engine control. Selection of accelerometer location and vibration axis were performed by analyzing vibration signals for three different locations along the block for all three of the accelerometer axes. A magnitude squared coherence (MSC) statistical analysis was used to select the best location and axis. Based on previous work from the literature, the vibration signal filtering was optimized, and the filtered vibration signals were analyzed. It was found that the vibration signals correlate well with the second derivative of pressure during the initial stages of combustion.

Connected vehicles (CVs) have situational awareness that can be exploited for control and optimization of the powertrain system. While extensive studies have been carried out for energy efficiency improvement of CVs via eco-driving and planning, the implication of such technologies on the thermal responses of CVs (including those of the engine and aftertreatment systems) has not been fully investigated. One of the key challenges in leveraging connectivity for optimization-based thermal management of CVs is the relatively slow thermal dynamics, which necessitate the use of a long prediction horizon to achieve the best performance. Long-term prediction of the CV speed, unlike the short-range prediction based on vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications-based information, is difficult and error-prone.

Aircraft components are commonly produced with 7000 series aluminum alloys (AA) due to its weight, strength, and fatigue properties. Auto Industry is also choosing more and more aluminum component for weight reduction. Current additive manufacturing (AM) methods fall short of successfully producing 7000 series AA due to the reflective nature of the material along with elements with low vaporization temperature. Moreover, lacking in ideal thermal control, print inherently defective products with such issues as poor surface finish alloying element loss and porosity. All these defects contribute to reduction of mechanical strength. By monitoring plasma with spectroscopic sensors, multiple information such as line intensity, standard deviation, plasma temperature or electron density, and by using different signal processing algorithm, AM defects have been detected and classified.

The diesel engine with direct injection of hydrogen gas has clear advantages over the hydrogen engine with forced ignition of a hydrogen-air mixture. Despite of this, the concept of hydrogen-diesel engine has not investigated until now. In the paper, a detailed study of the working process of hydrogen-diesel engine carried out for the first time. Based on the results of the experimental studies and mathematical modeling, it has established that the behavior of thermo-physical processes in the combustion chamber of hydrogen-diesel engine, in a number of cases, differs fundamentally from the processes that take place in the conventional diesel engines. There have been identified the reasons for their difference and determined the values of the operating cycle parameters of hydrogen diesel engine, which provide the optimal correlation between the indicator values and the environmental performance.

The article solves the problem of increasing the energy efficiency of the traction electric drive in the low load conditions. The set objective is achieved by analogy with internal combustion engines by decreasing the consumed energy using the amplitude control of the three-phase voltage of the induction machine. The basis of the amplitude control is laid by the constancy criterion of the overload capacity with respect to the electromagnetic torque, which provides a reliable reserve from a "breakdown" of the induction machine mode in a wide range of speeds and loads. The control system of the traction electric drive contains a reference model of electromechanical energy conversion represented by the generalized equations of the instantaneous balance of the active and reactive power and the mechanical load. The induction machine is controlled by two adaptive variables: the electromagnetic torque and the voltage amplitude.

The current study presents the results of an experiment on driver performance including reaction time, eye-attention movement, mental workload, and subjective preference when different features of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) warnings (Forward Collision Warning) are displayed, including different locations (HDD (Head-Down Display) vs HUD (Head-Up Display)), modality of warning (text vs. pictographic), and a new concept that provides a dynamic bird’s eye view for warnings. Sixteen drivers drove a high-fidelity driving simulator integrated with display prototypes of the features. Independent variables were displayed as modality, location, and dynamics of the warnings with driver performance as the dependent variable including driver reaction time to the warning, EORT (Eyes-Off-Road-Time) during braking after receiving the warning, workload and subject preference.

Little information is available on passenger preferences for posture and support in highly reclined seat configurations. To address this gap, a laboratory study was conducted with 24 adult passengers at seat back angles from 23 to 53 degrees. Passenger preferences for head and neck posture with and without head support were recorded. This paper presents the characteristics of the passengers’ preferred head support with respect to thorax, head, and neck posture.

There is a strong evidence that the overrepresentation of teen drivers in motor vehicle crashes is mainly due to their poor hazard perception skills, i.e., they are unskilled at appropriately detecting and responding to roadway hazards. This study evaluates two cuing systems designed to help teens better understand their driving environment. Both systems use directional color-coding to represent different levels of proximity between one’s vehicle and outside agents. The first system provides an overview of the location of adjacent objects in a head-up display in front of the driver and relies on drivers’ focal vision (focal cuing system). The second system presents similar information, but in the drivers’ peripheral vision, by using ambient lights (peripheral cuing system). Both systems were retrofitted into a test vehicle (2014 Toyota Camry). A within-subject experiment was conducted at the University of Michigan Mcity test-track facility.

Early exhaust valve opening (eEVO) increases the exhaust gas temperature by faster termination of the power stroke and is considered as a potential warm up strategy for diesel engines aftertreatment thermal management. In this study, first, it is shown that when eEVO is applied, the engine main variables such as the boost pressure, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and injection (timing and quantity) must be re-calibrated to develop the required torque, avoid exceeding the exhaust temperature limits and keep the air fuel ratio sufficiently high. Then, a two-step procedure is presented to optimize the engine operation after the eEVO system is introduced, using a validated diesel engine model. In the first step, the engine variables are optimized at a constant eEVO shift. In the second step, optimal eEVO trajectories are calculated using Dynamic Programming (DP) for a transient test cycle.

Combined direct and port fuel injection (i.e., dual injection) in spark ignition engines is of increasing interest due to the advantages for fuel flexibility and the individual merits of each system for improving engine performance and reducing engine-out emissions. Greater understanding of the impact of dual injection will enable deriving the maximum benefit from the two injection systems. This study investigates the effects of dual injection on combustion, especially knock propensity and tolerance to exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) dilution at different levels of EGR. A baseline for comparison with dual injection results was made using direct injection fueling only. A splash blended E20 fuel was used for the direct injection only tests. For the dual injection tests, gasoline, representing 80% by volume of the total fuel, was injected using the direct injector, and ethanol, representing 20% by volume of the total fuel, was injected using the port fuel injector.

This study uses full drive cycle simulation to compare the fuel consumption of a vehicle with a turbocharged (TC) engine to the same vehicle with an alternative boosting technology, namely, a hybrid supercharger, in which a planetary gear mechanism governs the power split to the supercharger between the crankshaft and a 48 V 5 kW electric motor. Conventional mechanically driven superchargers or electric superchargers have been proposed to improve the dynamic response of boosted engines, but their projected fuel efficiency benefit depends heavily on the engine transient response and driver/cycle aggressiveness. The fuel consumption benefits depend on the closed-loop engine responsiveness, the control tuning, and the torque reserve needed for each technology. To perform drive cycle analyses, a control strategy is designed that minimizes the boost reserve and employs high rates of combustion dilution via exhaust gas recirculation (EGR).

This presentation is an assessment of the turbulence-stress scale-similarity in an IC engine, which is used for modeling subgrid dissipation in LES. Residual stresses and Leonard stresses were computed after applying progressively smaller spatial filters to measured and simulated velocity distributions. The velocity was measured in the TCC-II engine using planar and stereo PIV taken in three different planes and with three different spatial resolutions, thus yielding two and three velocity components, respectively. Comparisons are made between the stresses computed from the measured velocity and stress computed from the LES resolved-scale velocity from an LES simulation. The results present the degree of similarity between the residual stresses and the Leonard stresses at adjacent scales. The specified filters are systematically reduced in size to the resolution limits of the measurements and simulation.

Non-reacting spray behaviors of the Engine Combustion Network “Spray G” gasoline fuel injector were investigated at flash and non-flash boiling conditions in an optically accessible single cylinder engine and a constant volume spray chamber. High-speed Mie-scattering imaging was used to determine transient liquid-phase spray penetration distances and observe general spray behaviors. The standardized “G2” and “G3” test conditions recommended by the Engine Combustion Network were matched in this work and the fuel was pure iso-octane. Results from the constant volume chamber represented the zero (stationary piston) engine speed condition and single cylinder engine speeds ranged from 300 to 2,000 RPM. As expected, the present results indicated the general spray behaviors differed significantly between the spray chamber and engine. The differences must be thoughtfully considered when applying spray chamber results to guide spray model development for engine applications.