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The generalization of exhaust aftertreatment systems along with the growing awareness about climate change is leading to an increasing importance of the efficiency over other criteria during the design of reciprocating engines. Using experimental and theoretical tools to perform detailed global energy balance (GEB) of the engine is a key issue for assessing the potential of different strategies to reduce consumption. With the objective of improving the analysis of GEB, this paper describes a tool that allows calculating the detailed internal repartition of the fuel energy in DI Diesel engines. Starting from the instantaneous in-cylinder pressure, the tool is able to describe the different energy paths thanks to specific submodels for all the relevant subsystems.

These days many research efforts on internal combustion engines are centred on optimising turbocharger matching and performance on the engine. In the last years a number of studies have pointed out the strong effect on turbocharger behaviour of heat transfer phenomena. The main difficulty for taking into account these phenomena comes from the little information provided by turbocharger manufacturers. In this background, Original Engine Manufacturers (OEM) need general engineering tools able to provide reasonably precise results in predicting the mentioned heat transfer phenomena. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to provide a procedure, applicable to small automotive turbochargers, able to predict the heat transfer characteristics that can be used in a lumped 1D turbocharger heat transfer model. This model must be suitable to work coupled to whole-engine simulation codes (such as GT-Power or Ricardo WAVE) for being used in global engine models by the OEM.

Intake noise has become one the main concerns in the design of highly-supercharged downsized engines, which are expected to play a significant role in the upcoming years. Apart from the low frequencies associated with engine breathing, in these engines other frequency bands are also relevant which are related to the turbocharger operation, and which may radiate from the high-pressure side from the compressor outlet to the charge air cooler. Medium frequencies may be controlled with the use of different typologies of resonators, but these are not so effective for relatively high frequencies. In this paper, the potential of the use of multi-layer porous materials to control those high frequencies is explored. The material sheets are located in the side chamber of an otherwise conventional resonator, thus providing a compact, lightweight and convenient arrangement.

Growing awareness about CO2 emissions and their environmental implications are leading to an increase in the importance of thermal efficiency as criteria to design internal combustion engines (ICE). Heat transfer to the combustion chamber walls contributes to a decrease in the indicated efficiency. A strategy explored in this study to mitigate this efficiency loss is to promote low swirl conditions in the combustion chamber by using low swirl ratios. A decrease in swirl ratio leads to a reduction in heat transfer, but unfortunately, it can also lead to worsening of combustion development and a decrease in the gross indicated efficiency. Moreover, pumping work plays also an important role due to the effect of reduced intake restriction to generate the swirl motion. Current research evaluates the effect of a dedicated injection strategy to enhance combustion process when low swirl is used.

This work presents a study to characterize and quantify the mechanical losses in small automotive turbocharging systems. An experimental methodology to obtain the losses in the power transmission between the turbine and the compressor is presented. The experimental methodology is used during a measurement campaign of three different automotive turbochargers for petrol and diesel engines with displacements ranging from 1.2 l to 2.0 l and the results are presented. With this experimental data, a fast computational model is fitted and used to predict the behaviour of mechanical losses during stationary and pulsating flow conditions, showing good agreement with the experimental results. During pulsating flow conditions, the delay between compressor and turbine makes the mechanical efficiency fluctuate. These fluctuations are shown to be critical in order to predict the turbocharger behaviour.

Nowadays turbocharging the internal combustion engine has become a key point in both the reduction of pollutant emissions and the improvement of engine performance. The matching between turbocharger and engine is difficult; some of the reasons are the highly unsteady flow and the variety of diabatic and off-design conditions the turbocharger works with. In present paper the importance of the heat transfer phenomena inside small automotive turbochargers will be analyzed. These phenomena will be studied from the point of view of internal heat transfer between turbine and compressor and with a one-dimensional approach. A series of tests in a gas stand, with steady and pulsating hot flow in the turbine side, will be modeled to show the good agreement in turbocharger enthalpies prediction. The goodness of the model will be also shown predicting turbine and compressor outlet temperatures.

In this paper, a methodology for the design process of engine cooling systems is presented, which is based on the interaction among three programs: a code developed for radiator sizing and rating, a 3D commercial code used for the air circuit modeling, and a 1D commercial code used for the modeling and simulation of the complete engine cooling system. The aim of the developed methodology, in addition to ensure the system thermal balance, is the improvement of the design process of the cooling system itself, while shortening the development times, in non-automotive applications. An application to the design of a locomotive engine cooling system is presented. The system designed has been assembled and tested, showing the validity of the methodology, as well as the compliance of the designed system with the initially specified thermo-hydraulic constraints and requirements.

Traditionally, combustion noise in Diesel engines has been quantified by means of a global noise level determined in many cases through the estimation of the attenuation curve of the block using the traditional discrete Fourier transform technique. In this work, the wavelet transform is used to establish a more reliable correlation between in-cylinder pressure (sources) and noise (effect) during the combustion of a new generation 2 liter DI Diesel engine. Then, in a qualitative sense, the contribution of each source intrinsic to the combustion process is determined for four engine operating conditions and two injection laws. The results have shown high variations in both the in-cylinder pressure and noise power harmonics along the time, which indicates the non-stationary character of this process.

Regulated emissions and fuel consumption are the main constraints affecting internal combustion engine (ICE) design. Over the years, many techniques have been used with the aim of meeting these limitations. In particular, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) has proved to be an invaluable solution to reduce NOx emissions in Diesel engines, becoming a widely used technique in production engines. However, its application has a direct effect on fuel consumption due to both the changes in the in-cylinder processes, affecting indicated efficiency, and also on the air management. An analysis, based on the engine Global Energy Balance, is presented to thoroughly assess the behavior of a HSDI Diesel engine under variable EGR conditions at different operating points. The tests have been carried out keeping constant the conditions at the IVC and the combustion centering.

Acoustics of automotive intake and exhaust systems have been modelled very successfully for many years using 1D gas dynamic simulations. These use pseudo 3D models to allow complex components to be constructed from simple building blocks. In recent years, tools have appeared that automate the construction of network models from 3D geometries of intake and exhaust components. Using these tools, concurrent noise and performance predictions are a core part of most engine development programmes. However, there is still much interest in the more traditional field of linear acoustics: analysing the acoustic behaviour of isolated components or predicting radiated noise using a linear source. Existing approaches break the intake and exhaust system down into a set of components, each with known acoustic properties. They are then connected together to create a network that replicates the donor non-linear model.

To face the current challenges of the automotive industry, there is a need for computational models capable to simulate the engine behavior under low-temperature and low-pressure conditions. Internal combustion engines are complex and have interconnected systems where many processes take place and influence each other. Thus, a global approach to engine simulation is suitable to study the entire engine performance. The circuits that distribute the hydraulic fluids -liquid fuels, coolants and lubricants- are critical subsystems of the engine. This work presents a 0D model which was developed and set up to make possible the simulation of hydraulic circuits in a global engine model. The model is capable of simulating flow and pressure distributions as well as heat transfer processes in a circuit.

The use of computer calculation tools in order to reduce the cost of the development of optimized exhaust systems has turned out to be a generalized industrial practice. Therefore, considerable efforts are devoted to the development of suitable calculation tools, which are representative of the real phenomena taking place in the exhaust systems. In the present paper, the results of the application of a hybrid linear/nonlinear calculation method to the prediction of the exhaust noise radiated by I.C. engines are presented. First, a brief description of the method is given. Then, comparison is shown between the results of the calculation and experimental measurements, both for in-duct pressure and for noise radiated. The agreement obtained indicates that this method may be used as a design tool in the frame of the new methodologies presently arising in exhaust system development.

Concentric perforated duct mufflers are broadly used when designing automotive front mufflers because of their acceptable acoustic performance and their low backpressure. In the frame of the design methodologies presently used, suitable theoretical models are needed in order to estimate this performance without the need to build prototypes and perform experimental tests. A lot of work has been performed in this sense; nevertheless, there remains a reasonable doubt that the results obtained with purely linear models are representative of the muffler behaviour under actual engine conditions. In the present paper, a two dimensional finite element model is used in order to compute the transmission loss of several concentric perforated duct mufflers, and the results are compared with experimental measurements performed with a modified version of the impulse method that allows for the use of high amplitude pressure pulses as excitation.

In modeling an Internal Combustion Engine, the combustion sub-model plays a critical role in the overall simulation of the engine as it provides the Mass Fraction Burned (MFB). Analytically, the Heat Release Rate (HRR) can be obtained using the Wiebe function, which is nothing more than a mathematical formulation of the MFB. The mentioned function depends on the following four parameters: efficiency parameter, shape factor, crankshaft angle, and duration of the combustion. In this way, the Wiebe function can be adjusted to experimentally measured values of the mass fraction burned at various operating points using a least-squares regression, and thus obtaining specific values for the unknown parameters. Nevertheless, the main drawback of this approach is the requirement of testing the engine at a given engine load/speed condition. Furthermore, the main objective of this study is to propose a predictive model of the Wiebe parameters for any operating point of the tested SI engine.

Altitude simulators for internal combustion engines are broadly used in order to simulate different atmospheric pressure and temperatures on a test bench. One of the main problems of these devices is their outlet temperature and in order to control it, at least one heat exchanger is needed. A methodology to define, select and analyses the best heat exchanger that fulfill the requirements is presented. The methodology combines CFD and 0D models with experimental test. The combination of these tools allows to adjust both the 0D and the CFD models. The adjusted 0D model will be used to perform parametric analysis that will help to select the best geometrical combinations considering heat transfer and pressure losses while the CFD model will help to find possible local deficiencies on the designed Heat Exchanger and, therefore, try to improve it.

Exhaust noise emission is the result of the propagation of pressure perturbations along the exhaust line, whose primary source is the instantaneous mass flow rate across the exhaust valves. In this paper, a model for the estimation of this magnitude is presented, which has two main objectives: the first one is to provide a representation of the engine as an exhaust noise source as independent as possible on the exhaust system; the second one to allow for the estimation of the exhaust mass flow in such cases where the full set of data required by a conventional gas-dynamic simulation is not available. The model presented uses a reduced set of geometrical and operation data, which can be either representative for a given engine family, or even target values for an engine still not fully defined.

Rising concern towards environment and decarbonization has increased the demand of EVs. However, one of the major challenges for these vehicles is to achieve the same driving ranges as that of ICEs. This can be attained by increasing the power of cells without altering their sizes; conversely, this has important effects on the cell thermal behaviour. The focus of this paper is to analyse the impact of changing the characterizing materials thicknesses of collectors and electrodes of a cylindrical cell on its thermal response and to determine an optimal configuration. The CFD software considered to conduct this research uses the equivalent circuit model (ECM) to represent a cell and requires material physical properties to calculate the thermal response. In the calculations presented, resistance, capacitance, and Open Circuit Voltage (OCV) needed for the ECM are obtained from experimental measurements.

This article proposes a novel methodology for the definition of an optimized immersion cooling fluid for lithium-ion battery applications aimed to minimize maximum temperature and temperature gradient during most critical battery operations. The battery electric behavior is predicted by a first order equivalent circuit model, whose parameters are experimentally determined. Thermal behavior is described by a nodal network, assigning to each node thermal characteristics. Hence, the electro-thermal model of a battery is coupled with a thermal management model of an immersion cooling circuit developed in MATLAB/Simulink. A first characterization of the physical properties of an optimal dielectric liquid is obtained by means of a design of experiment. The optimal values of density, thermal conductivity, kinematic viscosity, and specific heat are defined to minimize the maximum temperature and temperature gradient during a complete discharge of the battery at 2.5C.