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With a transition towards electric vehicles for the transport sector, there will be greater reliance put upon battery packs; therefore, battery pack modelling becomes crucial during the design of the vehicle. Accurate battery pack modelling allows for: the simulation of the pack and vehicle, more informed decisions made during the design process, reduced testing costs, and implementation of superior control systems. To create the battery cell model using MATLAB/Simulink, an electrical equivalent circuit model was selected due to its balance between accuracy and complexity. The model can predict the state of charge and terminal voltage from a current input. A battery string model was then developed that considered the cell-to-cell variability due to manufacturing defects. Finally, a full battery pack model was created, capable of modelling the different currents that each string experiences due to the varied internal resistance.

This study describes an innovative monolith structure designed for applications in automotive catalysis using an advanced manufacturing approach developed at Imperial College London. The production process combines extrusion with phase inversion of a ceramic-polymer-solvent mixture in order to design highly ordered substrate micro-structures that offer improvements in performance, including reduced PGM loading, reduced catalyst ageing and reduced backpressure. This study compares the performance of the novel substrate for CO oxidation against commercially available 400 cpsi and 900 cpsi catalysts using gas concentrations and a flow rate equivalent to those experienced by a full catalyst brick when attached to a vehicle. Due to the novel micro-structure, no washcoat was required for the initial testing and 13 g/ft3 of Pd was deposited directly throughout the substrate structure in the absence of a washcoat.

One of the most critical aspects in the development of a kinetic model for automotive applications is the method used to control the switch between limiting factors over the period of the chemical reaction, namely mass transfer and reaction kinetics. This balance becomes increasingly more critical with the automotive application with the gas composition and gas flow varying throughout the automotive cycles resulting in a large number of competing reactions, with a constantly changing space velocity. A methodology is presented that successfully switches the limitation between mass transfer and reaction kinetics. This method originally developed for the global kinetics model using the Langmuir Hinshelwood approach for kinetics is presented. The methodology presented is further expanded to the much more complex micro-kinetics approach taking into account various kinetic steps such as adsorption/desorption and surface reactions.

With emission legislation becoming ever more stringent, automotive companies are forced to invest heavily into solutions to meet the targets set. To date the most effective way of treating emissions is through the use of catalytic converters. Current testing methods of catalytic converters whether being tested on a vehicle or in a lab reactor can be expensive and offer little information about what is occurring within the catalyst. It is for this reason and the increased price of precious metal that kinetic modeling has become a popular alternative to experimental testing. Many kinetic models and kinetic parameters have appeared in literature in recent years, a comparison of these kinetic parameters for the global reaction of CO oxidation is presented.

This paper describes an experimental comparison of loop and cross scavenged single-cylinder research engines. The cross scavenged engines have employed the QUB type deflector piston. The initial results show that the QUB cross scavenged engine exhibited inferior performance characteristics. Utilizing the QUB single cycle test rig, a study of the QUB cross scavenging system has shown that the bore-to-stroke ratio significantly influences the scavenging behaviour; reduction of the bore-to-stroke ratio from over-square values gave improved characteristics. On the basis of this finding, a new cross scavenged cylinder barrel was designed. In a subsequent series of dynamometer tests, improvements in power, fuel economy and emission characteristics were recorded for the new cylinder. These improved results approximate closely to those recorded for the loop scavenged engine and are considerably superior to those of the original cross scavenged cylinder.

This paper demonstrates the very useful technique of calculating air-to-fuel ratio, AFR, from exhaust gas emissions for a two-stroke cycle engine. Such methods are widely used for four-stroke engines where direct air flow measurement has now become redundant. Two modified methods are presented and compared with three standard methods, showing the accuracy to be quite good for a large set of test data from a standard two-stroke engine. A procedure for estimating AFR of the in-cylinder burning region, using trapping efficiencies, is presented for stratified charge engines, such as those with direct fuel injection. Accuracy of emissions measurement is assessed by calculating the total dry exhaust emissions, a method which could easily be automated for general test cell use. Finally, exhaust gas molecular weight and wet/dry ratio calculations are considered.

This paper outlines some developments in engine modelling techniques and details the results of an extensive validation exercise. This validation was conducted in two distinct parts: firstly, on a specially constructed rig, and, secondly, using engine test results. The test rig described was constructed in such a way as to rigourously test the theories employed. Comparisons were made between measured and predicted pressure traces and air mass flow. The predicted results are shown to be in good agreement with all measurements recorded. The performance of a complete engine simulation is also described and compared with actual dynamometer test results. The accuracy of this model is clearly demonstrated for all engine performance parameters.