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In electrified vehicles, auxiliary units can be a dominant source of noise, one of which is the refrigerant scroll compressor. Compared to vehicles with combustion engines, e-vehicles require larger refrigerant compressors, as in addition to the interior, also the battery and the electric motors have to be cooled. Currently, scroll compressors are widely used in the automotive industry, which generate one pressure pulse per revolution due to their discontinuous compression principle. This results in speed-dependent pressure fluctuations as well as higher-harmonic pulsations that arise from reflections. These fluctuations spread through the refrigeration cycle and cause the vibration excitation of refrigerant lines and heat exchangers. The sound transmission path in the air conditioning heat exchanger integrated in the dashboard is particularly critical. Various silencer configurations can be used to dampen these pulsations.

By building on mature internal combustion engine (ICE) hardware combined with dedicated hydrogen (H2) technology, the H2-ICE has excellent potential to accelerate CO2 reduction. H2-ICE concepts can therefore contribute to realizing the climate targets in an acceptable timeframe. In the landscape of H2-ICE combustion concepts, High Pressure Direct Injection (HPDI™) is an attractive option considering its high thermal efficiency, wide load range and its applicability to on-road as well as off-road heavy-duty equipment. Still, H2-HPDI is characterized by diffusion combustion, giving rise to significant NOx emissions. In this paper, the potential of H2-HPDI toward compliance with future emissions legislation is explored on a 1.8L single-cylinder research engine. With tests on multiple load-speed points, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) was shown to be an effective measure for reducing engine-out NOx, although at the cost of a few efficiency points.

This study explores the feasibility of using a sustainable lignin-based fuel, consisting of 44 % lignin, 50 % ethanol, and 6 % water, in conventional compression ignition (CI) marine engines. Through experimental evaluations on a modified small-bore CI engine, we identified the primary challenges associated with lignin-based fuel, including engine startup and shutdown issues due to solvent evaporation and lignin solidification inside the fuel system, and deposit formation on cylinder walls leading to piston ring seizure. To address these issues, we developed a fuel switching system transitioning from lignin-based fuel to cleaning fuel with 85 vol% of acetone, 10 vol% of water and 5 vol% of ignition improving additive, effectively preventing system clogs.

In the effort to achieve the goal of a climate-neutral transportation system, the use of hydrogen and other synthetic fuels plays a key role. As battery electric vehicles become more widespread, e-fuels could be used to defossilize the hard-to-electrify transportation sectors and to store energy produced from renewable and non-continuous energy sources. Among e-fuels, hydrogen and ammonia are very attractive because they are carbon-neutral and their oxidation does not lead to any CO2 emissions. Furthermore, hydrogen/ammonia mixtures overcome the issues that arise as each of the two fuels is separately used. In the automotive sector, the use of either hydrogen, ammonia or their blends require a characterization of such mixtures under engine-like conditions, that is, at high pressures and temperatures. The aim of this work is to evaluate the Laminar Flame Speed (LFS) of hydrogen/ammonia mixtures by varying the thermodynamic conditions and the molar composition of the reactants.

The reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and ever stricter regulations on pollutant emissions in the transport sector require research and development of new, climate-friendly propulsion concepts. The use of renewable hydrogen as a fuel for internal combustion engines promises to provide a good solution especially for commercial vehicles. For optimum efficiency of the combustion process, hydrogen-specific engine components are required, which need to be tested on the test bench and analysed in simulation studies. This paper deals with the simulation-based investigation and optimisation of fuel injection in a 6-cylinder PFI commercial vehicle engine, which has been modified for hydrogen operation starting from a natural gas engine concept.

Electrified vehicles are particularly quiet, especially at low speeds due to the absence of combustion noises. This is why there are laws worldwide for artificial driving sounds to warn pedestrians. These sounds are generated using a so-called Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS) which must maintain certain minimum sound pressure levels in specific frequency ranges at low speeds. The creation of the sound currently involves an iterative and sometimes time-consuming process that combines composing the sound on a computer with measuring the levels with a car on an outside noise test track. This continues until both the legal requirements and the subjective demands of vehicle manufacturers are met. To optimize this process and reduce the measurement effort on the outside noise test track, the goal is to replace the measurement with a simulation for a significant portion of the development.

Airframe section of rockets, missiles and launch vehicles are typically cylindrical in shape. The cylindrical shell is subjected to high axial load and an external pressure during its operation. The design of cylinders subjected to such loads is generally found to be critical in buckling. To minimize the weight of cylinders, it is typically stiffened with rings and stringers on the inner diameter to increase the buckling load factor. Conventionally the buckling load estimated by analytical or numerical means is multiplied by an empirical factor generally called Knockdown factor (kdf) to get the critical buckling load. This factor is considered to account for the variation between theory and experiment and is specified by handbooks or codes. In aerospace industry, NASA SP 8007 is commonly followed and it specifies the kdf as a lower bound fit curve for experimental data .

The study of aerodynamic forces in hypersonic environments is important to ensure the safety and proper functioning of aerospace vehicles. These forces vary with the angle of attack (AOA) and there exists an optimum angle of attack where the ratio of the lift to drag force is maximum. In this paper, computational analysis has been performed on a blunt cone model to study the aerodynamic characteristics when hypersonic flow is allowed to pass through the model. The flow has a Mach number of 8.44 and the angle of attack is varied from 0º to 20º. The commercial CFD solver ANSYS FLUENT is used for the computational analysis and the mesh is generated using the ICEM CFD module of ANSYS. Air is selected as the working fluid. The simulation is carried out for a time duration of 1.2 ms where it reaches a steady state and the lift and drag forces and coefficients are estimated. The pressure, temperature, and velocity contours at different angles of attack are also observed.

When an SI engine is equipped with individual cylinder pressure transducers, combustion timing of each cylinder can be precisely controlled by adjusting spark timing in real-time. In this paper, a novel method based on principal component analysis (PCA) is introduced to control the combustion timing with a significantly less computational burden than a conventional method.

The cylinder bore in an engine block is deformed under the assembling stress of the cylinder head and thermal stress. This distortion exacerbates the piston skirt friction and piston slap. Through a numerical and experimental study, this article analyzes the effect of an optimized bore profile on the engine performance. The piston skirt friction was estimated in a three-dimensional elastohydrodynamic (EHD) friction analysis. An ideal cylindrical bore under the rated load condition was assumed as the optimal bore profile that minimized the piston skirt friction without compromising the piston slap. The simulation study revealed that secondary motion of the piston immediately after firing the top dead center can be mitigated by narrowing the piston–bore clearance at the upper position of the cylinder.

Typically, modern automotive engine designs include separate cylinder heads and cylinder blocks and utilize a multilayer steel head gasket (MLS) to seal the resulting joint. Cylinder head bolts are used to hold the joint together and the non-linear properties of head gasket provide capability to seal the movement within the joint, which is essential for engine durability and performance. The current design of cylinder head gasket mainly evaluates the sealing performance in hot and cold state through finite element analysis. The sealing performance of cylinder head gasket is mainly determined by sealing pressure, fatigue and lateral movement in the joint, which have been widely studied [1]. However, no one has been involved in the study of factors affecting sealing pressure and lateral movement in the joint.

The absence of combustion information continues to be one of the key obstacles to the intelligent development of engines. Currently, the cost of integrating cylinder pressure sensors remains too high, prompting attention to methods for extracting combustion information from existing sensing data. Mean-value combustion models for engines are unable to capture changes of combustion parameters. Furthermore, the methods of reconstructing combustion information using sensor signals mainly depend on the working state of the sensors, and the reliability of reconstructed values is directly influenced by sensor malfunctions. Due to the concentration of operating conditions of hybrid vehicles, the reliability of priori calibration map has increased. Therefore, a combustion information reconstruction method based on priori calibration information and the fused feature deviations of existing sensing signals is proposed and named the "Deviation-based Centroid Displacement Method" (DCDM).

In order to study the tire friction characteristics under wet skid surface, the “pseudo” hydrodynamic pressure bearing effect is used to be equivalent to the hydrodynamics of water film, and an advanced Lugre tire hydroplaning dynamic model is developed by combining the arbitrary pressure distribution function. The water hydroplaning dynamic tests were carried out for 285/70R19.5 tire under wet of different water film thickness and dry conditions, and the parameters of the advanced Lugre tire dynamic model were identified. The results show that the tire water-skiing model proposed in this paper can effectively simulate the friction characteristics of tires under different water film thicknesses. Under dry conditions, 0.5mm water film and 1mm water film road conditions, the relative errors of the maximum tire friction coefficient between the tested and advanced Lugre tire model are 1.11%, 0.12% and 0.16%, respectively.

Ammonia shows promise as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines (ICEs) in reducing CO2 emissions due to its carbon-free nature and well-established infrastructure. However, certain drawbacks, such as the high ignition energy, the narrow flammability range, and the extremely low laminar flame speed, limit its widespread application. The dual fuel (DF) mode is an appealing approach to enhance ammonia combustion. The combustion characteristics of ammonia-diesel dual fuel mode and ammonia-PODE3 dual fuel mode were experimentally studied using a full-view optical engine and the high-speed photography method. The ammonia energy ratio (ERa) was varied from 40% to 60%, and the main injection energy ratio (ERInj1) and the main injection time (SOI1) were also varied in ammonia-PODE3 mode.

The global energy crisis and drastic climate change are continuously promoting the implementation of sustainable energy sources. To meet the emission standards and carbon-neutrality targets in vehicle industry, ammonia is considered to be one of the promising carbon-neutral fuels. However, running the engines on high amounts of ammonia may lead to significantly high ammonia slip. This originates huge safety concerns. Therefore, hydrogen is added in certain ratio with ammonia to promote combustion and reduce ammonia slip. Furthermore, adding diesel as a pilot fuel further facilitates the combustion reactions. This experimental study investigated the effect of different ammonia-hydrogen blend ratios on in-cylinder pressure, heat release rate, cumulative heat release, indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP), indicated thermal efficiency (ITE), CA5 and CA50. This effect of blend ratios was tested for varied diesel pilot amounts and timings.

The new idea discussed in this paper pertains to the carrier mechanism for spare wheels in heavy commercial vehicles. Typically, these vehicles are equipped with a spare wheel carrier featuring a rope mechanism for loading and unloading the spare wheel. The conventional placement of this system is on the side of the frame/chassis or within the limits of the side member. However, the tire-changing process in this system is often arduous, time-consuming, and requires significant effort. The proposed invention addresses these challenges by repositioning the spare wheel to a vertical orientation, facilitating easier access to its bolts and simplifying the removal process from the mountings. Furthermore, the innovation incorporates a three-way actuation system (Air Actuated, Electric motor-driven, or Hydraulic cylinder actuated mechanisms), thereby reducing the need for manual effort and enhancing driver comfort.

In electric vehicle applications, the majority of the traction motors can be categorized as Permanent Magnet (PM) motors due to their outstanding performance. As indicated in the name, there are strong permanent magnets used inside the rotor of the motor, which interacts with the stator and causes strong magnetic pulling force during the assembly process. How to estimate this magnetic pulling force can be critical for manufacturing safety and efficiency. In this paper, a full 3D magnetostatic model has been proposed to calculate the baseline force using a dummy non-slotted cylinder stator and a simplified rotor for less meshing elements. Then, the full 360 deg model is simplified to a half-pole model based on motor symmetry to save the simulation time from 2 days to 2 hours. A rotor position sweep was conducted to find the maximum pulling force position. The result shows that the max pulling force happens when the rotor is 1% overlapping with the stator core.

The wear of the piston ring-cylinder liner system in gasoline engines is inevitable and significantly impacts fuel economy. Utilizing a custom-built linear reciprocating tribometer, this study assesses the wear resistance of newly developed engine cylinder coatings. The custom device offers a cost-effective means for tribological evaluation, optimizing coating process parameters with precise control over critical operational factors such as normal load and sliding frequency. Unlike conventional commercial tribometers, it ensures a more accurate simulation of the engine cylinder system. However, existing research lacks a comprehensive comparative analysis and procedure to establish precision limits for such modified devices. This study evaluates the custom tribometer's repeatability compared to a commercial wear-testing instrument, confirming its potential as a valuable tool for advanced wear testing on engine cylinder samples.

A multi-dimensional cathode spot generation model is proposed to study the interaction between the plasma arc and cathode surface of a spark plug during the ignition process. The model is focused on the instationary (high current) arc phase immediately following breakdown, and includes detailed physics for the phenomena during spot formation such as ion collision, thermal-field emission, and metal vaporization, to simulate the surface heat source, current density and surface pressure. The spot formation for a platinum cathode is simulated using the VOF (volume of fluid) model within FLUENT, where the local metal is melted and deformed by pressure differences on the surface. A random walk model has been integrated to consider the movement of the arc center, resulting in the formation of different types of spots.