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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.

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.

In this paper a method of misfiring control in current cycle at engine start is presented. With this novel method, the high HC emissions of gasoline engine employed in traditional or hybrid electrical vehicles will be avoided. By the feedback of ion current signal, misfire phenomenon is identified within 30 degrees crank angle after spark plug ignited. Then, the ignition coil will be recharged and the plug sparked again to promote air fuel mixture oxidation and deplete the unburned hydrocarbon produces in exhaust gas. On the other hand, too late ignition will not always result in normal combustion, a kind of reaction similar with slow oxidation also occurs in such case.

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.

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.

Regulated gaseous and particulate matter (PM) emissions in the exhaust from a heavy duty diesel engine with biodiesel fuel were studied, and the emission characteristics of PM and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) emissions in PM were highlighted. In the experiment, pure diesel fuel and B10 (a blend of diesel and biodiesel fuels with the volume ratio of 9 to 1) fuel were chosen. The study shows that, compared to the pure diesel, the emissions of PM, soluble organic fractions (SOF) and PAHs from the heavy duty diesel engine decrease when the engine burns B10 fuel, and the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission slightly increases, while the unburned hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions also decline. Among the detected 12 kinds of PAHs, emission concentrations of 10 kinds of PAHs from the engine with B10 descend. Especially Benzo(a)pyrene equivalent toxicity (BEQ) analysis results show that the BEQ of B10 fuel decreases by 15.2% compared to pure diesel.

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.

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.

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.

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the wake flow behind a 1/12 scale notchback MIRA model at Re = UL/ν = 6.9×105 (where U is free-stream velocity, L the length of the model and ν viscosity). Focus is placed on the flow asymmetry over the backlight and decklid. Forty pressure taps are used to map the surface pressure distribution on the backlight and decklid, while the wake topology is investigated by means of 2D Particle Image Velocimetry. The analysis of the instantaneous pressure signals over the notch configuration clearly shows that the pressure presents a bi-stable behavior in the spanwise direction, characterized by the switches between two preferred values, which is not found in the vertical direction.

This paper presents several pressure estimation algorithms (PEAs) for a decoupled electro-hydraulic brake system (EHB), which is driven by an electric motor + reduction gear. Most of the pressure control solutions are based on standard pressure-based feedback control, requiring a pressure signal. Although the pressure sensor can produce the pressure feedback signal, it will increase cost and enlarge installation space. The rotation angle of electric motor is available by the built-in sensor, so the pressure can be estimated by using the rotation angle. Considering the typical nonlinearities (i.e. friction, pressure-position relationship) and uncertainties (i.e. disturbance caused by friction model), the estimation-oriented model is established. The LuGre model is selected to describe the friction, and the pressure-position relationship is fitted by a quadratic polynomial.

Ammonia is a new type of carbon-free fuel with low cost, clean and safe. The research and application of zero-carbon fuel internal combustion engines has become the mainstream of future development. However, there still exist problems should be solved in the application of ammonia fuel. Due to the lower flame laminar speed and higher ignition temperature, ammonia may have unstable combustion phenomena. In this work, the characteristics of ammonia combustion have been investigated, based on controllable thermal activated atmosphere burner. The ignition delay has been used to analyze the ammonia combustion characteristics. With the increase in co-flow temperature, the ignition delay of ammonia/air has an obvious decline. In order to investigate the emission characteristics of ammonia, CHEMKIN is used to validate the different chemical reaction mechanisms and analyse the ammonia emissions.