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In order to extend the operability limit of the gasoline compression ignition (GCI) engine, as an avenue for low temperature combustion (LTC) regime, the effects of parametric variations of engine operating conditions on the performance of six-stroke GCI (6S-GCI) engine cycle are numerically investigated, using an in-house 3D CFD code coupled with high-fidelity physical sub-models along with the Chemkin library. The combustion and emissions were calculated using a skeletal chemical kinetics mechanism for a 14-component gasoline surrogate fuel. Authors’ previous study highlighted the effects of the variation of injection timing and split ratio on the overall performance of 6S-GCI engine and the unique mixing-controlled burning mode of the charge mixtures during the two additional strokes. As a continuing effort, the present study details the parametric studies of initial gas temperature, boost pressure, fuel injection pressure, compression ratio, and EGR ratio.

The series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle(HEV), which employs a planetary gear set to combine one internal combustion engine(ICE) and two electric motors(EMs), can take advantages of both series and parallel hybrid system. The efficient powertrain operating point of the system can be obtained by the instantaneous optimization of equivalent fuel consumption. However, heavy computational requirements and variable constraints of the optimization process make it difficult to build real-time control strategy. To overcome the difficulty, this study suggests the control strategy which divides the optimization process into 2 stages. In the first stage, a target of charge/discharge power is determined based on equivalent fuel consumption, then in the second stage, an engine operating point is determined taking power transfer efficiency into account.

In this study, a series of tests have been carried out to evaluate the effects of the injection rate and timing on bsfc, NOx, and PM emissions in a heavy-duty diesel engine with TICS FIE system. Injection line pressure, cylinder pressure, NOx and smoke were measured with various injection times and injection rates. The injection rate was altered at a fixed injection timing, which could be realized either by changing the TICS setting time or by using different cam profiles. The injection time was varied by using TICS timing control function at a given setting time. A parametric study of the injection rate in in-line pump system was tried to correlate injection rate variations with combustion characteristics and emission. Two parameters, the injection pressure rising rate and the initially injected fuel quantity were introduced to characterize fuel injection.

Air conditioning is defined as the process of treating air so as to control simultaneously its temperature, humidity, cleanliness and distribution to meet the requirements of the conditioned space. As in the definition, the important actions involved in the operation of an air conditioning system are temperature and humidity control, air purification and movement. For these conditions this paper proposes a Automatic Climate Control(ACC) system of the bus. The system has cooling, heating, and dehumidifying modes, and is governed by dual 8-bit microprocessors. These modes are broken down into sub-modules dealing with control of the compressor, blower speed, damper position, air purifier, ventilators, preheater, air mixing damper and so on.

In a multi-cylinder variable valve lift (VVL) engine, in spite of its high efficiency and low emission performance, operation of the variable valve lift brings about not only variation of the air-fuel ratio at the exhaust manifold, but also individual cylinder air-fuel ratio maldistribution. In this study, in order to reduce the air-fuel ratio variation and maldistribution, we propose an individual cylinder air-fuel ratio estimation algorithm for individual cylinder air-fuel ratio control. For the purpose of the individual cylinder air-fuel ratio estimation, air charging dynamics are modeled according to valve lift conditions. In addition, based on the air charging model, individual cylinder air-fuel ratios are estimated by multi-rate sampling from single universal exhaust gas oxygen (UEGO) sensor located on the exhaust manifold. Estimation results are validated with a one-dimensional engine simulation tool.

Acoustics comfort is a key point for the ground transportation market and in particular in the automotive area. A significant contributor to the noise levels in the cabin in the range 200Hz to 3000Hz is the HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) system, consisting of sub-systems such as the air intake duct, thermal mixing unit, blower, ducts, and outlet vents. The noise produced by an HVAC system is mainly due to aeroacoustics mechanisms related to the flow fluctuations induced by the blower rotation. The structure borne noise related to the surface induced vibrations and to the noise transmission through the dash or plastic panels may also contribute but is not considered in this study. This study presents a digital approach for HVAC aeroacoustics noise predictions related to the ducts and outlet vents. In order to validate the numerical method flow and acoustics measurements are performed on production HVAC systems placed in an anechoic room.

End-plates are highly stiff plates that hold together the components composing a fuel cell stack, i.e. Membrane Electrode Assemblies (MEAs), Gas Distribution Layers (GDLs) and bipolar plates, offering sufficient contact pressure between them. The proper contact pressure is required not only to improve energy efficiency of a stack by decreasing ohmic loss but also to prevent leakage of fluids such as hydrogen, air, or coolant. When a fuel cell starts in cold environment, heat generated in a fuel cell stack as a result of electrochemical reactions should not be used much to increase the temperature of endplates but to melt ice inside the stack to prevent ice-blocking and to increase the temperature near the three-phase-boundary on MEAs. However, to satisfy the high stiffness required, massive metallic endplates have been used despite their inferior thermal characteristics: high thermal conductivity and large thermal inertia.

As CO2 emissions from vehicles is gaining a global attention the low fuel consuming power-train is in much greater demand than before. Some alternatives are suggested but the HSDI diesel engine would be the most realistic solution. Vehicle simulation shows that low fuel consuming car can be realized by applying 1∼1.2L HSDI diesel engine in vehicles weighing about 750kg. While the direct injection diesel engine has been researched for a long time enhancement of mixing between air and fuel in a limited space makes it challenging area to develop a small swept volume HSDI diesel engine. We are investigating small HSDI diesel engine combustion technologies as an effort to realize low fuel consuming vehicle. Our main objective in this study is to have a better understanding of the combustion related parameters from such a small size HSDI diesel engine in order to improve engine performance.

This paper describes the development of THC reduction technologies compliant with SULEV regulations. Technologies embodied by the developmental work include improvement of fuel spay atomization, quick warm-up through coolant control shut off, and acceleration of fuel atomization for the fast rise of cylinder head temp inside the water jacket as well as the improvement of combustion state. The technologies likewise entail reduced HC while operating in lean A/F condition during engine warm-up with the cold lean-burn technology, individual cylinder A/F control for improvement of catalytic converting efficiency, aftertreatment such as thin-wall catalyst, HC absorber and EHC and etc., through vehicle application evaluation in cold start. We carried out an experimental as well as a practical study against SULEV regulations, and the feasibility of adopting these items in vehicle was likewise investigated.

High pressure fuel injection systems, such as common rail (CR) systems and electronically-controlled unit injector (EUI) systems, have been widely applied to modern heavy duty diesel engines. They are shown to be very effective for achieving high power density with high fuel efficiency and low exhaust gas emissions. However, the increased peak combustion pressure gives additional structural stress and thermal load to engine structure. Thus, proper material selection and thermal analysis of engine components are essential in order to meet the durability requirements of heavy-duty diesel engines adopting a high pressure injection system. In this paper, thermal analysis of a 12.9 ℓ diesel engine with an EUI system was studied. Temperatures were measured on a cylinder head, a piston and a cylinder liner. A specially designed linkage system was used to measure the piston temperatures. A radio-tracer technique was also used to verify the rotation of piston rings.

A comprehensive investigation was carried out in order to develop the idle sound quality for diesel V6 engine when the engine development process is applied to power-train system, which included new 8-speed automatic transmission for breaking down the noise contribution between the mechanical excitation and the combustion excitation. First of all, the improvement of dynamic characteristic can be achieved during the early stages of the engine development process using experimental modal analysis (EMA) & the robust design of each engine functional system. In addition, the engine structural attenuation (SA) is enhanced such that the radiated combustion noise of the engine can be maintained at a target level even with an increased combustion excitation. It was found that the engine system has better parts and worse parts in frequency range throughout the SA analysis. It is important that weak points in the system should be optimized.

Engine calibration on the powertrain test bed with transient mode is proposed with dynamic powertrain test bed having low inertia dynamometer. Automated ECU (Engine Control Unit) calibration system is completed with the combination of experimental design software, powertrain test bed, evaluation tools and their electrical interfaces. The process is composed up of the system interface definition, test design using DoE skill, test proceedings by step sequence of connecting systems, measured data collecting, mathematical model and optimization result extraction at the end. All the processes are automated by interfaces between the systems. Acceleration surge is minimized by proposed process by optimizing combustion control labels and tip in driveability is maximized by manipulating torque filter labels of EMS (Engine Management System) logic. Their detailed steps from the problem definition to the verification test results of improved design with vehicle test are presented.

In this study, single cylinder engines with different tumble ratio were made to show the effects of tumble motion on engine performance and flame propagation. Particle tracking velocimetry technique by using chopper was adopted to examine the in-cylinder flow field for the full understanding of tumble motion. And equivalent angular speed of tumble vortex was obtained from each crank angle and compared with tumble ratio derived from the steady state flow rig test. Flame propagation speed were obtained with the gasket ionization probe and the piston ionization probe. And the combustion pressure in cylinder was measured to analyze the combustion characteristics. In case of high tumble engine, BSFC and BSHC were decreased and BSNOx was increased at part load test, BMEP and combustion peak pressure was increased at full load test. Also, flame propagation characteristics could be understood by use of piston ionization probe.

This paper shows the cause and the solution to the uncommon noise which happens ½ order component of engine rpm when a vehicle with automatic transmission has an air conditioning load and “drive” range load on the engine. By measuring cylinder pressure, main bearing cap vibration, engine mount vibration, and interior noise simultaneously, the cause of the noise can be proved by analyzing and comparing the data. The cause of the uncommon noise is bending vibration of the crank shaft. To solve the problem, one can change the crank shaft dynamics by reducing the mass of the damper pulley.

Four ports which have slightly different shapes have been applied to 3-valve MPI SI engine to develop Axially Stratified Lean Combustion engine. The purpose of port modification test was to investigate the effects of swirl ratio and direction on engine performance and emissions. In the engine test injection characteristics, i.e. timing, flow rate, direction as well as port design significantly effected on the engine combustion. Especially, it was observed that injection timing was the most important factor for combustion stability, but its effect on performance has some differences in accordance with the port designs. To verify the relationship between port shape and injection timing, in-cylinder gas was sampled by high speed gas sampling device varing injection timing through whole intake and compression,. strokes at spark plug position and analyzed by gas chromatography.

In HMC, the fundamental research on the hydrogen fueled engine and vehicle has been carried out. For this engine, solenoid driven injector is used to supply gaseous hydrogen into the cylinder and various operating parameters have been changed to study the combustion characteristics of hydrogen. After these experiments on engine, hydrogen fueled vehicle has been constructed and it is controlled by ECU. The amount of emission from the hydrogen vehicle with stoichiometric operation is less than 1/3 of the ULEV legislation.

It is well known that the EHC (Electrically Heated Catalyst) is very effective for the reduction of cold-start hydrocarbon emissions. To optimize EHC applications for LEVI (Low Emission Vehicle) and ULEV (Ultra Low Emission Vehicle) standards, the effect of heating and secondary air injection on the emission purification efficiency in FTP (Federal Test Procedure) were evaluated with three different EHC system configurations. The exhaust manifold location EHC system in which the EHC with a light-off catalyst is installed near the exhaust manifold, yields 0.038g/mile of THC (Total Hydrocarbon emissions) when the test was performed according to the FFP with an engine-aged condition equivalent to 50,000miles. Therefore, the ULEV standards could be achieved through the system. A new battery system for the EHC and a single battery system for vehicle application were evaluated. Evaluation of the Ni-MH battery for EHC system is included.

Today, light connecting rods are vital to satisfying the demands of modern internal combustion engines. HYUNDAI Motor Company (HMC) has applied powder metal forged connecting rods instead of conventional hot forged connecting rods to obtain low product costs and to improve NVH characteristics and bearing reliability. Light connecting rods were developed through optimized design with high quality and low cost. Notably, the mass of a powder metal forged connecting rod is 17.7% lighter than that of a conventional hot forged type connecting rod, and its crank end is 22.5 % lighter than that of a conventional type connecting rod. Light connecting rods result in reduced crankshaft mass, so the mass of the main moving parts can be reduced. With this mass reduction, bearing reliability and NVH characteristics can be enhanced.

A new exhaust system has been developed to cope with post-SULEV (Super Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle) regulation by newly designed hardware of exhaust system. This paper will describe the various new technologies used for achieving the post-SULEV standards, such as Conicat (cone-type metal catalyst), dual-wall pipe, pipe-type metal catalyst, ultra thin wall monolith and HC trap system for the improvement of catalyst light-off time. The tested data on 2.0L SULEV vehicle indicate that Conicat(cone-type metal catalyst) and HC trap (hydrocarbon absorbing catalyst) have more positive characteristics, and are expected to show the enhanced HC reduction performance with the optimization of emission system.

An experiment has been carried out to investigate the combustion process in an operating S.I. engine (MPI and Multi- valve), using in-cylinder high speed gas sampling techniques. Measurements have been made of local air fuel ratios and time-resolved concentrations of combustion gases such as CO, CO2, THC, NOx, and O2, particularly focused on spark plug location. The effects of fuel injection timing, swirl generating air motion, sampling location, spark timing, speed and load have been considered. With the end of fuel injection at 120° ATDC on the intake stroke, A/F ratio at spark plug location has the leanest value for standard inlet port, while it has the richest value for swirl generating inlet port. The initial NOx concentration in the unburned gas region, diluted by the residual gases, has been substantially reduced between 5° BTDC and 15° ATDC crank angle prior to combustion.