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Multiple-injection strategies are widely used in DI diesel engines. However, the interaction of the injection pulses is not yet fully understood. In this work, a split injection into a combustion vessel is studied by multiple optical imaging diagnostics. The vessel provides quiescent high-temperature, high-pressure ambient conditions. A common-rail injector which is equipped with a three-hole nozzle is used. The spray is visualized by Mie scattering. First and second stage of ignition are probed by formaldehyde laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) and OH* chemiluminescence imaging, respectively. In addition formation of soot is characterized by both laser-induced incandescence (LII) and natural luminosity imaging, showing that low-sooting conditions are established. These qualitative diagnostics yield ensemble-averaged, two-dimensional, time-resolved distributions of the corresponding quantities.

The most challenging part of the engine combustion development is the reduction of pollutants (e.g. CO, THC, NOx, soot, etc.) and CO2 emissions. In order to achieve this goal, new combustion techniques are required, which enable a clean and efficient combustion. For compression ignition engines, combustion rate shaping, which manipulates the injected fuel mass to control the in-cylinder pressure trace and the combustion rate itself, turned out to be a promising opportunity. One possibility to enable this technology is the usage of specially developed rate shaping injectors, which can control the injection rate continuously. A feasible solution with series injectors is the usage of multiple injections to control the injection rate and, therefore, the combustion rate. For the control of the combustion profile, a detailed injector model is required for predicting the amount of injected fuel. Simplified 0D models can easily predict single injection rates with low deviation.

A new approach is presented to modelling wall heat transfer in the exhaust port and manifold within 1D gas exchange simulation to ensure a precise calculation of thermal exhaust enthalpy. One of the principal characteristics of this approach is the partition of the exhaust process in a blow-down and a push-out phase. In addition to the split in two phases, the exhaust system is divided into several sections to consider changes in heat transfer characteristics downstream the exhaust valves. Principally, the convective heat transfer is described by the characteristic numbers of Nusselt, Reynolds and Prandtl. However, the phase individual correlation coefficients are derived from 3D CFD investigations of the flow in the exhaust system combined with Low-Re turbulence modelling. Furthermore, heat losses on the valve and the seat ring surfaces are considered by an empirical model approach.

Exhaust aftertreatment systems must function sufficiently over the full useful life of a vehicle. In Europe this is currently defined as 160.000 km. With the introduction of Euro 7 it is expected that the required mileage will be extended to 240.000 km. This will then be consistent with the US legislation. In order to quantify the emission impact of exhaust system degradation, an Euro 7 exhaust aftertreatment system is aged by different accelerated approaches: application of the Standard Bench Cycle, the ZDAKW cycle, a novel ash loading method and borderline aging. The results depict the impact of oil ash on the oxygen storage capacity. For tailpipe emissions, the maximum peak temperatures are the dominant aging factor. The cold start performance is effected by both, thermal degradation and ash accumulation. An evaluation of this emission increase requires appropriate benchmarks.

In order to reduce development cost and time, frontloading is an established methodology for automotive development programs. With this approach, particular development tasks are shifted to earlier program phases. One prerequisite for this approach is the application of Hardware-in-the-Loop test setups. Hardware-in-the-Loop methodologies have already successfully been applied to conventional as well as electrified powertrains considering various driving scenarios. Regarding driving performance and energy demand, electrified powertrains are highly dependent on the dc-link voltage. However, there is a particular shortage of studies focusing on the verification of variable dc-link voltage controls by Hardware-in-the-Loop setups. This article is intended to be a first step towards closing this gap. Thereto, a Hardware-in-the-Loop setup of a battery electric vehicle is developed.

The growing number of passenger car variants and derivatives in all global markets, their high degree of software differentiability caused by regionally different legislative regulations, as well as pronounced market-specific customer expectations require a continuous optimization of the entire vehicle development process. In addition, ever stricter emission standards lead to a considerable increase in powertrain hardware and control complexity. Also, efforts to achieve market and brand specific multistep adjustable drivability characteristics as unique selling proposition, rapidly extend the scope for calibration and testing tasks during the development of powertrain control units. The resulting extent of interdependencies between the drivability calibration and other development and calibration tasks requires frontloading of development tasks.

New 12 V/48 V power net architectures are potential solutions to close the gap between customer needs and legislative requirements. In order to exploit their potential, an increased effort is needed for functional implementation and hardware integration. Shifting of development tasks to earlier phases (frontloading) is a promising solution to streamline the development process and to increase the maturity level at early stages. This study shows the potential of the frontloading of development tasks by implementing a virtual 48 V mild hybridization in an engine-in-the-loop (EiL) setup. Advanced simulation technics like functional mock-up interface- (FMI) based co-simulation are utilized for the seamless integration of the real-time (RT) simulation models and allow a modular simulation framework as well as a decrease in development time.

Within a public founded project test cell investigations were undertaken to identify parameters which predominantly influence the development of critical deposits in injection nozzles. A medium-duty diesel engine was operated in two different coking cycles with a zinc-free lubricant. One of the cycles is dominated by rated power, while the second includes a wide area of the operation range. During the experiments the temperatures at the nozzle tip, the geometries of the nozzle orifice and fuel properties were varied. For a detailed analysis of the deposits methods of electron microscopy were deployed. In the course of the project optical access to all areas in the nozzle was achieved. The experiments were evaluated by means of the monitoring of power output and fuel flow at rated power. The usage of a SEM (scanning electron microscope) and a TEM (transmission electron microscope) revealed images of the deposits with a magnification of up to 160 000.

The use of state-of-the-art model-based calibration tools generate only limited benefits for seamless validation in powertrain calibration due to the often neglected system-level simulation of a closed-loop vehicle environment. This study presents a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL)-based virtual calibration approach to establish an accurate virtual calibration platform using physical plant models. It is based on a customisable real-time HiL simulation environment. The use of physical models to predict the behaviour of a complete powertrain makes the HiL test bench particularly suited for Engine Control Unit (ECU) calibration. With the virtual test rig approach, the calibration for the critical extended driving and ambient conditions of the new Real Driving Emissions (RDE) requirements can efficiently be optimised. This technique offers a clear advantage in terms of reducing calibration time and costs.

Direct injection (DI) compressed natural gas (CNG) engines are emerging as a promising technology for highly efficient and low-emission engines. However, the design of DI systems for compressible gas is challenging due to supersonic flows and the occurrence of shocks. An outwardly opening poppet-type valve design is widely used for DI-CNG. The formation of a hollow cone gas jet resulting from this configuration, its subsequent collapse, and mixing is challenging to characterize using experimental methods. Therefore, numerical simulations can be helpful to understand the process and later to develop models for engine simulations. In this article, the results of high-fidelity large-eddy simulation (LES) of a stand-alone injector are discussed to understand the evolution of the hollow cone gas jet better.

Elastokinematic parameters of the axle stiffness are one of the important effects for vehicle dynamics, which are usually considered in full-vehicle real-time models. In order to integrate such effects into real-time models, a multibody axle model is placed on the suspension test rig and is clamped at mounting points. Statically defined load cases are applied on the wheel, and finally, lookup tables are generated, which represent the elastokinematics for the real-time environment. In this case, the Body-In-White (BIW) is considered to be ideally stiff. However, the elasticity of BIW significantly influences the elastokinematics behavior as well and should be integrated into real-time models. The present paper introduces an efficient approach to integrate the BIW compliance effects into lookup tables in addition to the suspension stiffness under consideration of the Elastokinematics By Inertia Force method (EBIF method).

In Common-Rail DI Diesel Engines, multiple injection strategies are considered as one of the methodologies to achieve optimum performance and emission reduction. However, multiple injections open a whole new horizon of parameters which affect the combustion process. These parameters include the number of injection events, the duration between the starts of each injection event, the splitting of the total fuel mass on the different injection events, etc. In the present work, the influence of the number of injection events and the influence of the duration between the starts of each injection event on emission levels are investigated. Combustion and pollutant formation were experimentally investigated in a Common-Rail DI Diesel engine. The engine was operated at conventional part-load conditions with 2000 rpm, no external EGR, and an injected fuel mass of 15 mg/cycle.

The droplet velocity is an important parameter for breakup, evaporation, and combustion of Diesel sprays, but it is very difficult to measure it by widely used laser diagnostic techniques like PDA, PIV and LCV under realistic high-pressure and high-temperature conditions. This is basically caused by laser beam steering and multiple scattering of light due to very high droplet densities, in particular close to the nozzle. It was demonstrated recently, that these problems can be greatly reduced by the laser flow tagging (LFT) technique. For this purpose, the model fuel is doped with a phosphorescent tracer. A number of droplet groups within the spray are tagged by illuminating them with focused beams of a pulsed laser, and their velocities are measured by recording the phosphorescence twice after each laser pulse using a double-frame ICCD.

Today, automated vehicles mostly rely on ego vehicle sensors such as cameras, radar or LiDAR sensors that are limited in their sensing capability and range. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication has the potential to appropriately complement these sensors and even allow for a cooperative, proactive interaction of vehicles. As such, V2X communication might play a vital role on the way to smart and efficient traffic solutions. In the public funded research project UK Autodrive, we are currently investigating and experimentally evaluating V2X-based applications based on dedicated short range communication (DSRC). Moreover, the novel application intersection priority management (IPM) is part of the research project. IPM aims at automating intersections in such a way that vehicles can pass safely and even more efficiently without the use of traffic lights or signs.

This paper will present a multi-domain (electrical and thermal) model of a three phase voltage source converter and its implementation in Modelica language. An averaged model is utilised for the electrical domain, and a power balance method is used for linking the DC and AC sides. The thermal domain focuses in deriving the converter losses by deriving the analytical equations of the space vector modulation to derive a function for the duty cycle of each converter leg. With this, the conduction and switching losses are calculated for the individual switches and diodes, without having to model their actual switching behaviour. The model is very fast to simulate, as no switching events are needed, and allows obtaining the simulation of the electrical and thermal behaviour in the same simulation package..

Auto transformer rectifier units (ATRUs) are commonly used in aircraft applications such as electric actuation for harmonic mitigation due to their high reliability and relative low cost. However, those components and the magnetic filter components associated to it are the major contributors to the overall size and weight of the system. Optimization of the magnetic components is essential in order to minimize weight and size, which are major market drivers in aerospace industry today. This requires knowledge of the harmonic content of the current. This can be obtained by simulation, but the process is slow. In order to enable fast and efficient design space exploration of optimal solutions, an algebraic calculation process is proposed in this paper for multi-pulse ATRUs (e.g. 12-pulse and 18-pulse rectifiers), starting from existing solution proposed for 6 pulse rectifier in the literature.

Modern vehicles become increasingly software intensive. Software development therefore is critical to the success of the manufacturer to develop state of the art technology. Standards like ISO 26262 recommend requirement-based verification and test cases that are derived from requirements analysis. Agile development uses continuous integration tests which rely on test automation and evaluation. All these drove the development of a new model-based software verification environment. Various aspects had to be taken into account: the test case specification needs to be easily comprehensible and flexible in order to allow testing of different functional variants. The test environment should support different use cases like open-loop or closed-loop testing and has to provide corresponding evaluation methods for continuously changing as well as for discrete signals.

With the implementation of the “Worldwide harmonized Light duty Test Procedure” (WLTP) and the highly dynamic “Real Driving Emissions” (RDE) tests in Europe, different engineering methodologies from virtual calibration approaches to Engine-in-the-loop (EiL) methods have to be considered to define and calibrate efficient exhaust gas aftertreatment technologies without the availability of prototype vehicles in early project phases. Since different types of testing facilities can be used, the effects of test benches as well as real and virtual vehicle operators have to be determined. Moreover, in order to effectively reduce harmful emissions, the reproducibility of test cycles is essential for an accurate and efficient application of exhaust gas aftertreatment systems and the calibration of internal combustion engines.

Nowadays, collision avoidance systems (CAS) are an intensive research topic since the majority of all traffic accidents are collisions that are caused due to inattention or unadjusted driving behavior of the driver. Up to date prototypic CAS are based on on-board environmental sensors, such as camera or radar systems, that scan the vehicle's surrounding environment in order to assess the situation's hazardousness. The functionality of the used sensors under varying environmental conditions and the limited sensor covering area require an enormous effort to ensure a reliable detection of obstacles, and thus limit the application of the systems. In order to expand the operating field of such systems, a Galileo-based CAS will be developed within the project ‘Galileo above’ (application centre for ground based traffic).

In-use compliance under LEV III emission standards, GHG, and fuel economy targets beyond 2025 poses a great opportunity for all ICE-based propulsion systems, especially for light-duty diesel powertrain and aftertreatment enhancement. Though diesel powertrains feature excellent fuel-efficiency, robust and complete emissions controls covering any possible operational profiles and duty cycles has always been a challenge. Significant dependency on aftertreatment calibration and configuration has become a norm. With the onset of hybridization and downsizing, small steps of improvement in system stability have shown a promising avenue for enhancing fuel economy while continuously improving emissions robustness. In this paper, a study of current key technologies and associated emissions robustness will be discussed followed by engine and aftertreatment performance target derivations for LEV III compliant powertrains.