Search Results

Gas distribution of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is mainly decided by flow field of bipolar plate. The improper design of distributing channel, nonuniform gas flow distribution and current density distribution among different straight channels are the leading factors that could tremendously undermine the performance and life expectancy of the cell. However, there is lack of research focusing on distributing channel in straight-parallel flow field. In this work, a three-dimensional numerical model of PEMFC cathode flow field is developed with CFD method to investigate the effects of configuration type and width of the distributing channel on pressure distribution in distributing channel and on reactant flow distribution, pressure drop and concentration distribution in multiple straight channel. Effects of electrochemical reaction and formation of water on the flow distribution are taken into consideration.

The present work proposed to implement oxy-fuel combustion mode into a homogeneous charge compression ignition engine to reduce complexity in engine emissions after-treatment and lower carbon dioxide emission. The combination of oxy-fuel combustion mode with homogeneous charge compression ignition engine can be further optimized by the utilization of direct high temperature and pressure water injection to improve cycle performance. A retrofitted conventional diesel engine coupled with port fuel injection and direct water injection is utilized in this study. A self-designed oxygen and carbon dioxide mixture intake system with flexible oxygen fraction adjustment ability is implemented in the test bench to simulate the adoption of exhaust gas recirculation. Water injection system is directly installed in the combustion chamber with a modified high speed solenoid diesel injector.

Based on the working model of a diesel engine, the influence of 2 Miller cycle strategies-Early Intake Valve Closure (EIVC) and Late Intake Valve Closure (LIVC) on the combustion and emissions of diesel engine was analyzed. Then the working condition of each Miller cycle strategies on the engine under the rated speed was optimized through the adjust of the valve timing, boost pressure and the injection timing. The research found that both delaying and advancing the closure timing of the intake valve can decrease the pressure and temperature during compression stroke, prolonging the ignition delay. However, due to the decrease of the working media inside the cylinder, the average in-cylinder temperature and soot emissions will increase, which can be alleviated by raising the boost pressure and the resulting compensation of the intake loss.

Recently, electro-hydraulic brake systems (EHB) has been developed to take place of the vacuum booster, having the advantage of faster pressure build-up and continuous pressure regulation. In contrast to the vacuum booster, the pressure estimation for EHB is worth to be studied due to its abundant resource (i.e. electric motor) and cost-effective benefit. This work improves an interconnected pressure estimation algorithm (IPEA) based on actuator characteristics by introducing the vehicle dynamics and validates it via vehicle tests. Considering the previous IPEA as the prior pressure estimation, the wheel speed feedback is used for modification via a proportional-integral (PI) observer. Superior to the IPEA based on actuator characteristics, the proposed PEA improves the accuracy by more than 20% under the mismatch of pressure-position relation.

With increasing pressure from environment problem for reduction in CO2 emissions and stricter fuel targets from road vehicles, new transmission technologies are gaining more attention in different main market. To get suitable road load data for transmission durability development is becoming increasingly important and can shorten the development time of new transmission. This paper presents the procedure and methods of road load data development for durability design of transmission product and optimization based on the real road data measurement, statistical characteristics evaluation and fatigue damage equivalency. Apply this road load data method procedure on 3 type of vehicle which represent conventional vehicle, BEV and HEV.

In order to investigate the impacts of recirculated exhaust gas temperature on gasoline engine combustion and emissions, an experimental study has been conducted on a turbocharged PFI gasoline engine. The engine was equipped with a high pressure cooled EGR system, in which different EGR temperatures were realized by using different EGR coolants. The engine ran at 2000 r/min and 3000 r/min, and the BMEP varied from 0.2MPa to 1.0MPa with the step of 0.2MPa. At each case, there were three conditions: 0% EGR, 10% LT-EGR, 10% HT-EGR. The results indicated that LT-EGR had a longer combustion duration compared with HT-EGR. When BMEP was 1.0 MPa, CA50 of HT-EGR advanced about 5oCA. However, CA50 of LT-EGR could still keep steady and in appropriate range, which guaranteed good combustion efficiency. Besides, LT-EGR had lower exhaust gas temperature, which could help to suppress knock. And its lower exhaust gas temperature could reduce heat loss. These contributed to fuel consumption reduction.

Biodiesel as a renewable energy is becoming increasingly attractive due to the growing scarcity of conventional fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the development of after-treatment technologies for the diesel engine brings new insight concerning emissions especially the particulate matter pollutants. In order to study the coupling effects of biodiesel blend and CCRT (Catalyzed Continuously Regeneration Trap) on the particulate matter emissions, the particulate matter emissions from an urban bus with and without CCRT burning BD0 and BD10 respectively was tested and analyzed using electrical low pressure impactor (ELPI). The operation conditions included steady state conditions and transient conditions. Results showed that the particulate number-size distribution of BD10 and BD0 both had two peaks in nuclei mode and accumulation mode at the conditions of idle, low speed and medium speed while at high speed condition the particulate number-size distribution only had one peak.

Due to much higher pressure and pressure rising rate, knocking is always of potential hazards causing damages in the engine and high NOX emissions. Therefore, the researchers have focused on knocking diagnosis and control for many years. However, there is still lack of fast response sensor detecting in-cycle knocking. Until now, the feedback control based on knocking sensor normally adjusts the injection and ignition parameters of the following cycles after knocking appears. Thus in-cycle knocking feedback control which requires a predictive combustion signal is still hard to see. Ion current signal is feasible for real-time in-cylinder combustion detection, and can be employed for misfiring and knocking detection. Based on incylinder pressure and ion current signals, the in-cycle knocking feedback control is investigated in this research. The 2nd-order differential of in-cylinder pressure, which means the response time of pressure rising rate dPR, is employed for knocking prediction.

In order to meet the ever more stringent demands on the CO2 emission reduction, downsized modern gasoline engine with highly boosted turbo charger meets new challenges such as super knock and pre-ignition, which will influence the engine combustion efficiency, smooth operation and even cause mechanical failure. A spark plug type ion current detection sensor was used in a 1.8L turbo charged gasoline engine. The ion-current wave signal differed greatly under different engine operating conditions such as without knock, with knock of different knock intensities. The frequency spectrum of ion-current was also studied, by the method of discrete Fourier transform (DFT). In knocking cycles, there were fluctuations of frequency 8-13 kHz both in the combustion pressure signal and in the ion current signal, proving the existence of knock information.

With regulatory standards for diesel engine emissions becoming stricter worldwide, integrated catalytic systems are becoming increasingly necessary. One of the better approaches is to use an after-treatment system consisting of a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC), a catalyzed diesel particulate filter (CDPF), and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR), but many factors can affect how well this system works. This study investigates the effects of DOC and CDPF catalyst composition on emissions characteristics for DOC + CDPF + SCR systems by collecting reactor and engine data. The reactor results show that the light-off temperatures (T50) of CO and C3H6 increase with the growth of Pt:Pd ratio while the T50 of NO degrades. An engine dynamometer test was conducted on a light-duty diesel engine equipped with DOC + CDPF + SCR. The results show light-off curves of CO and THC that are smoother than the reactor data.

The flow issues of the turbocharged intake system for a diesel engine are mainly introduced in this work and the effects of a multi-chamber perforated resonator which can efficiently attenuate broadband noise and has compact structure on the flow performances of the intake system is analyzed by contrast. Based on the acoustic grid resulting from pre-processing of 3D models for finite element analysis, a computational fluid dynamics flow simulation comparative analysis between the intake systems with and without a resonator including pressure and velocity distribution is conducted with the software Star-CCM+. The simulation results indicate that the air pressure drop of the intake system with a resonator is slightly higher than that of the intake system without a resonator but it is still relatively low compared with that of the entire intake system.

BBW (Brake-by-wire) can increase the vehicle safety performance due to high control accuracy and fast response speed. As one solution of BBW, the novel Integrated-electro-hydraulic brake system (I-EHB) is proposed, which consists of electro-hydraulic booster and hydraulic pressure control unit. The electro-hydraulic booster is activated by an electric motor that driving linear motion mechanism to directly produce the master cylinder pressure. With electro-hydraulic booster as an actuator, the hydraulic pressure control problem is a key issue. Most literatures deal with the pressure control issue based on the feedback pressure signal measured by pressure sensor. As far as the authors are aware, none of the proposed techniques takes into account the pressure sensor unequipped BBW. In this paper, there is no pressure feedback signal, but there is only position feedback signal measured by position sensor for control law design.

As the international community strengthens the control of carbon dioxide emissions, electric vehicles have gradually become a substitute for internal combustion engine vehicles. The battery pack is one of the most important components of electric vehicles. The strength and fatigue performance of the battery support plate not only affect the performance of the vehicle but also concern the safety of the driver. In the present study, the finite element model of a battery pack for fatigue analysis is completely established. The random vibration stress response analysis and acceleration power spectral density response analysis of the support plate for the battery pack are carried out, and the accuracy of the finite element model is verified by a random vibration test.

Ethanol reforming gas combined with EGR technology can not only improve thermal efficiency, but also reduce pollutant emission under lean combustion condition. In this investigation, GT-Power is used to carry out one-dimensional simulation model calculation and analysis to explore the combustion characteristics, economy performance of a direct injection gasoline engine when the excess air coefficient (λ) increases from 1 to 1.3 and the ethanol reforming gas mixing ratio increases from 0% to 30% at the working condition of 2000 r/min and 10 bar. Then the EGR system is introduced to deeply discuss the working characteristics of the direct injection gasoline engine when the EGR rate increases from 0% to 20%. The results show that the increase of λ leads to the decrease of in-cylinder pressure and the delay of the peak of cylinder pressure.

It has been revealed by researches that lubricant properties have a great effect on the low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI) frequency in downsizing turbocharged direct-injection engines which are developed for better fuel economy. Droplets of lubricant or lubricant-gasoline mixture are considered to be the potential pre-ignition sources. Those droplets fly into the combustion chamber and ignite the gasoline-air mixture. To study lubricant droplets fundamentally, a novel set of droplet auto-ignition system is designed based on a Dibble Burner for this experiment. Influences of metallic additive contents, viscosities, lubricant diluted with gasoline and waste lubricant on the ignition delay of droplets are investigated by testing 12 groups of lubricants or lubricant-gasoline mixture. The equivalent diameter of each droplet generated by micro-syringes is around 2.1 mm. The co-flow temperature varies from 1123 K to 1223 K, and the experiments are carried out at atmospheric pressure.

Due to the differences in traffic situations and traffic safety laws, standards for extraction of critical driving scenarios (CDSs) vary from different countries and areas around the world. To maintain the characteristic variables under the Chinese typical CDSs, this paper uses the three-layer detection method to extract and detect CDSs in the Natural Driving Data from China-FOT project which executing under the real traffic situation in China. The first layer of detection is mainly based on the feature distributions which deviate from normal driving situations. These distributions associated with speed and longitudinal acceleration/lateral acceleration/yaw rate also quantify the critical levels classification.

Compared with ordinary gasoline, using ethanol gasoline blends as fuel of Internal Combustion Engine is beneficial for the performance of power, economy and emission of engine. However, the fuel ethanol blended in ethanol gasoline blends currently is usually anhydrous ethanol, which requires dewatering implementer in production process, and the cost is high. Therefore, the production cost can be significantly reduced by replacement of anhydrous ethanol with hydrous ethanol while exerting the advantage of ethanol gasoline blends. In this study, computation fluid dynamics (CFD) software CONVERGE is employed to establish a simulation model of an actual gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine, and investigate the effect of burning hydrous ethanol gasoline blends and different injection strategy on combustion process and emission, and the validity of the model was validated by experiments.

Emissions of diesel engine have been received much more attention since the Volkswagen Emission Scandal. The Euro VI emission standard has already included cold start emissions in the legislative emission driving cycles which is one of the hardest part of emission control. High altitude performance is also considered in the latest regulations which will be stricter in the future. Heating the coolant is one of the most common method to improve the cold start performance. But researches focus on the emission of a diesel engine in different coolant temperature at high altitude which up to 4500m have not been seen. The present research investigated the effect of coolant temperature on performance and exhaust emissions (gaseous and particulate emissions) during the cold start of a diesel engine. A plateau simulation system controlled the inlet and exhaust pressure to create altitude environments from 0m to 4500m, and the coolant temperature was controlled from 20°C to 60°C.

Hydrogen safety is of great importance in proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems. Anode pressure control has become a focus point in recent years. The differential pressure between anode and cathode in PEMFC system needs to be carefully controlled under a suitable threshold. In practice, the anode pressure is usually controlled about 20–30kPa higher than the cathode pressure to minimize nitrogen crossover and improve cell stability. High differential pressure could lead to irreversible damage in proton exchange membrane. PID control was the dominant method to control the anode pressure in the past. However, the anode pressure’s fluctuation when hydrogen mass flow suddenly changes is a long-term challenge. As the requirements of control precision are increasingly high, the traditional PID control needs to be improved. Several new control algorithms are presented in recent researches, however, mostly are theoretical and experimental.

PN(Particle Number) emission limits are more stringent for gasoline vehicles in Chinese VI emission standards (6×1011 #/km). A EEPS engine exhaust particle size spectrometer was employed to characterize the effects of injection strategies on particulates emissions from a turbocharged gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine. The effects of operating parameters (injection pressure, second injection ratio and second injection end time) on particle diameter distribution and particle number density of emission was Investigated. The experimental result indicates that the quantity of particles decrease with the increase of injection pressure obviously, especially at high load including the 20% reduction of the particle number density. When the engine is at low load, the accumulation mode particle emissions are higher than the nucleation mode particle emissions compared with high load, which present opposite results. The second injection can restrain engine knock at low speed.