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Ammonia/urea-SCR is a mature technology, applied worldwide for the control of NOx emissions in combustion exhausts from thermal power plants, cogeneration units, incinerators and stationary diesel engines and more recently also from mobile sources. However a greater DeNOx activity at low temperatures is desired in order to meet more and more restrictive legislations. In this paper we report transient and steady state data collected over commercial Fe-ZSM-5 and V₂O₅-WO₃/TiO₂ catalysts showing high NOx reduction efficiencies in the 200 - 350°C T-range when NO and ammonia react with nitrates, e.g., in the form of an aqueous solution of ammonium nitrate. Under such conditions a new reaction occurs, the so-called "Enhanced SCR" reaction, 2 NH₃ + 2 NO + NH₄NO₃ → 3 N₂ + 5 H₂O.

The target of the investigation is the particular influence of a fuel injection system and its components as a noise source in automotive engines. The applied methodology is demonstrated on an automotive Inline 4-cylinder Diesel engine using a common rail system. This methodology is targeted as an extension of a typical standard acoustic simulation approach for combustion engines. Such approaches basically use multi-body dynamic simulation with interacting FEM based flexible structures, where the main excitation crank train, timing drive, valve train system and piston secondary motion are considered. Within the extended approach the noise excitation of the hydraulic and mechanical parts of the entire fuel system is calculated and subsequently considered within the multi-body dynamic simulation for acoustic evaluation of structural vibrations.

Although the application of cylinder pressure sensors to gain insight into the combustion process is not a novel topic itself, the recent availability of inexpensive in-cylinder pressure sensors has again prompted an upcoming interest for the utilization of the cylinder pressure signal within engine control and monitoring. Besides the use of the in-cylinder pressure signal for combustion analysis and control the information can also be used to determine related quantities in the exhaust or intake manifold. Within this work two different methods to estimate the pressure inside the exhaust manifold are proposed and compared. In contrary to first principle based approaches, which may require time extensive parameterization, alternative data driven approaches were pursued. In the first method a Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to extract the cylinder pressure information and combined with a polynomial model approach.

In this work a multilevel CFD analysis have been applied for the design of an intake air-box with improved characteristics of noise reduction and fluid dynamic response. The approaches developed and applied for the optimization process range from the 1D to fully 3D CFD simulation, exploring hybrid approaches based on the integration of a 1D model with quasi-3D and 3D tools. In particular, the quasi-3D strategy is exploited to investigate several configurations, tailoring the best trade-off between noise abatement at frequencies below 1000 Hz and optimization of engine performances. Once the best configuration has been defined, the 1D-3D approach has been adopted to confirm the prediction carried out by means of the simplified approach, studying also the impact of the new configuration on the engine performances.

To promote advanced combustion strategies complying with stringent emission regulations of CI engines, computational models have to accurately predict the injector inner flow and cavitation development in the nozzle. This paper describes a coupled 1D/2D/3D modeling technique for the simulation of fuel flow and nozzle cavitation in diesel injection systems. The new technique comprises 1D fuel flow, 2D multi-body dynamics and 3D modeling of nozzle inner flow using a multi-fluid method. The 1D/2D model of the common rail injector is created with AVL software Boost-Hydsim. The computational mesh including the nozzle sac with spray holes is generated with AVL meshing tool Fame. 3D multi-phase calculations are performed with AVL software FIRE. The co-simulation procedure is controlled by Boost-Hydsim. Initially Hydsim performs a standalone 1D simulation until the needle lift reaches a prescribed tolerance (typically 2 to 5 μm).

Swirling flows are very dominant in applied technical problems, especially in IC engines, and their prediction requires rather sophisticated modeling. An adaptive low-pass filtering procedure for the modeled turbulent length and time scales is derived and applied to Menter' original k - ω SST turbulence model. The modeled length and time scales are compared to what can potentially be resolved by the computational grid and time step. If the modeled scales are larger than the resolvable scales, the resolvable scales will replace the modeled scales in the formulation of the eddy viscosity; therefore, the filtering technique helps the turbulence model to adapt in accordance with the mesh resolution and the scales to capture.

Beside hard facts as performance, emissions and fuel consumption especially the brand specific attributes such as styling and sound are very emotional, unique selling prepositions. To develop these emotional characters, within the given boundary conditions of the future pass-by regulation, it is necessary to define them at the very beginning of the project and to follow a consequent development process. The following paper shows examples of motorcycle NVH development work on noise cleaning and sound engineering using a hybrid development process combining front loading, simulation and testing. One of the discussed solutions is the investigation of a piston pin offset in combination with a crankshaft offset for the reduction of friction. The optimization of piston slap noise as a result of the piston secondary motion was performed by simulation. As another example a simulation based development was performed for the exhaust system layout.

This paper presents a newly developed quasi-dimensional multi-zone dual fuel combustion model, which has been integrated within the commercial engine system simulation framework. Model is based on the modified Multi-Zone Combustion Model and Fractal Combustion Model. Modified Multi-Zone Combustion Model handles the part of the combustion process that is governed by the mixing-controlled combustion, while the modified Fractal Combustion Model handles the part that is governed by the flame propagation through the combustion chamber. The developed quasi-dimensional dual fuel combustion model features phenomenological description of spray processes, i.e. liquid spray break-up, fresh charge entrainment, droplet heat-up and evaporation process. In order to capture the chemical effects on the ignition delay, special ignition delay table has been made.

Nowadays, detailed kinetics is necessary for a proper estimation of both flame structure and pollutant formation in compression ignition engines. However, large mechanisms and the need to include turbulence/chemistry interaction introduce significant computational overheads. For this reason, tabulated kinetics is employed as a possible solution to reduce the CPU time even if table discretization is generally limited by memory occupation. In this work the authors applied tabulated homogeneous reactors (HR) in combination with different turbulent-chemistry interaction approaches to model non-premixed turbulent combustion. The proposed methodologies represent good compromises between accuracy, required memory and computational time. The experimental validation was carried out by considering both constant-volume vessel and Diesel engine experiments.

In the last decades numerical simulations have become reliable tools for the design and the optimization of silencers for internal combustion engines. Different approaches, ranging from simple 1D models to detailed 3D models, are nowadays commonly applied in the engine development process, with the aim to predict the acoustic behavior of intake and exhaust systems. However, the acoustic analysis is usually performed under the hypothesis of infinite stiffness of the silencer walls. This assumption, which can be regarded as reasonable for most of the applications, can lose validity if low wall thickness are considered. This consideration is even more significant if the recent trends in the automotive industry are taken into account: in fact, the increasing attention to the weight of the vehicle has lead to a general reduction of the thickness of the metal sheets, due also to the adoption of high-strength steels, making the vibration of the components a non negligible issue.

In this work an integration between a 1D code (Gasdyn) with a CFD code (OpenFOAM®) has been applied to improve the performance of a Moto3TM engine. The four-stroke, single cylinder S.I. engine was modeled, in order to predict the wave motion in the intake and exhaust systems and study how it affects the cylinder gas exchange process. The engine considered was characterized by having an air induction system with integrated filter cartridge, air-box and intake runner, resulting in a complex air-path form the intake mouth to the intake valves, which presents critical aspects when a 1D modeling is addressed. This paper presents a combined and integrated simulation, in which the intake systems was modeled as a 3D geometry whereas the exhaust system, which presented a simpler geometry, was modeled by means of a 1D approach.

The modeling of fuel sprays under well-characterized conditions relevant for heavy-duty Diesel engine applications, allows for detailed analyses of individual phenomena aimed at improving emission formation and fuel consumption. However, the complexity of a reacting fuel spray under heavy-duty conditions currently prohibits direct simulation. Using a systematic approach, we extrapolate available spray models to the desired conditions without inclusion of chemical reactions. For validation, experimental techniques are utilized to characterize inert sprays of n-dodecane in a high-pressure, high-temperature (900 K) constant volume vessel with full optical access. The liquid fuel spray is studied using high-speed diffused back-illumination for conditions with different densities (22.8 and 40 kg/m3) and injection pressures (150, 80 and 160 MPa), using a 0.205-mm orifice diameter nozzle.

Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems are nowadays widely applied for the reduction of NOx emitted from Diesel engines. The typical process is based on the injection of aqueous urea in the exhaust gases before the SCR catalyst, which determines the production of the ammonia needed for the catalytic reduction of NOx. However, this technology is affected by two main limitations: a) the evaporation of the urea water solution (UWS) requires a sufficiently high temperature of the exhaust gases and b) the formation of solid deposits during the UWS evaporation is a frequent phenomenon which compromise the correct operation of the system. In this context, to overcome these issues, a technology based on the injection of gaseous ammonia has been recently proposed: in this case, ammonia is stored at the solid state in a cartridge containing a Strontium Chloride salt and it is desorbed by means of electrical heating.

To achieve future fleet CO2 emission targets, all powertrain types, including those with internal combustion engines, need to achieve higher efficiency. Next to others the reduction of friction is one contributor to increase powertrain efficiency. The piston bore interface (PBI) accounts for up to 50 % of the total engine friction losses [1]. Optimizations in this area combined with the use of low viscosity oil, which can reduce the friction of further engine sub-systems, will therefore have a high positive impact. To assess the friction of the PBI whilst considering cross effects of other relevant parameters for mechanical function (e.g. blow-by & wear) and emissions (e.g. oil consumption) AVL has established a holistic development method based around the AVL FRISC (FRIction Single Cylinder) engine with a floating liner measurement concept.

A computational, three-dimensional approach to investigate the behavior of diesel soot particles in the micro-channels of wall-flow Diesel Particulate Filters is presented. The KIVA3V CFD code, already extended to solve the 2D conservation equations for porous media materials [1], has been enhanced to solve in 2-D and 3-D the governing equations for reacting and compressible flows through porous media in non axes-symmetric geometries. With respect to previous work [1], a different mathematical approach has been followed in the implementation of the numerical solver for porous media, in order to achieve a faster convergency as source terms were added to the governing equations. The Darcy pressure drop has been included in the Navier-Stokes equations and the energy equation has been extended to account for the thermal exchange between the gas flow and the porous wall.

In order to increase the efficiency of automotive turbochargers at low speed without compromising the performance at maximum boost conditions, variable geometry compressor (VGC) systems, based on either variable inlet guide vanes or variable geometry diffusers, have been recently considered as a future design option for automotive turbochargers. This work presents a modeling, analysis and optimization study for a Diesel engine equipped with a variable geometry compressor that help understand the potentials of such technology and develop control algorithms for the VGC systems,. A cycle-averaged engine system model, validated on experimental data, is used to predict the most important variables characterizing the intake and exhaust systems (i.e., mass flow rates, pressures, temperatures) and engine performance (i.e., torque, BMEP, volumetric efficiency), in steady-state and transient conditions.

NOx and PM are the critical emissions to meet the legislation limits for diesel engines. Often a value for these emissions is needed online for on-board diagnostics, engine control, exhaust aftertreatment control, model-based controller design or model-in-the-loop simulations. Besides the obvious method of measuring these emissions, a sensible alternative is to estimate them with virtual sensors. A lot of literature can be found presenting different modeling approaches for NOx emissions. Some are very close to the physics and the chemical reactions taking place inside the combustion chamber, others are only given by adapting general functions to measurement data. Hence, generally speaking, there is not a certain method which is seen as the solution for modeling emissions. Finding the best model approach is not straightforward and depends on the model application, the available measurement channels and the available data set for calibration.

The implementation and the combination of advanced boundary conditions and subgrid scale models for Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in the multi-dimensional open-source CFD code OpenFOAM® are presented. The goal is to perform reliable cold flow LES simulations in complex geometries, such as in the cylinders of internal combustion engines. The implementation of a boundary condition for synthetic turbulence generation upstream of the valve port and of the compressible formulation of the Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-viscosity sgs model (WALE) is described. The WALE model is based on the square of the velocity gradient tensor and it accounts for the effects of both the strain and the rotation rate of the smallest resolved turbulent fluctuations and it recovers the proper y₃ near-wall scaling for the eddy viscosity without requiring dynamic procedure; hence, it is supposed to be a very reliable model for ICE simulation.

This study deals with the experimental investigation of the mechanical properties of a lithium-ion pouch cell and its modelling in an explicit finite element simulation code. One can distinguish between ‘macroscopic’ and ‘microscopic’ modelling approaches. In the ‘macroscopic’ approach, one material model approximates the behaviour of multiple inner cell layers. In the ‘microscopic’ approach, which is used in the present study, all layers and their interactions are modelled separately. The cell under study is a pouch-type lithium-ion cell with a liquid electrolyte. With its cell chemistry, design, size and capacity it is usable for automotive applications and can be assembled into traction batteries. One cell sample was fully discharged and disassembled, and its components (anode, cathode, separator and pouch) were examined and measured by electron microscopy. Components were also tensile tested.

The continuously decreasing emission limits lead to a growing importance of exhaust aftertreatment in Diesel engines. Hence, methods for achieving a rapid catalyst light-off after engine cold start and for maintaining the catalyst temperature during low load operation will become more and more necessary. The present work evaluates several valve timing strategies concerning their ability for doing so. For this purpose, simulations as well as experimental investigations were conducted. A special focus of simulation was on pointing out the relevance of exhaust temperature, mass flow and enthalpy for these thermomanagement tasks. An increase of exhaust temperature is beneficial for both catalyst heat-up and maintaining catalyst temperature. In case of the exhaust mass flow, high values are advantageous only in case of a catalyst heat-up process, while maintaining catalyst temperature is supported by a low mass flow.