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The drive to reduce particle emissions from heavy-duty diesel engines has reached the stage where the contribution from the lubricant can have a major impact on the total amount of particulate matter (PM). This paper proposes a model to predict the survival rate (unburnt oil divided by oil consumption) of the hydrocarbons from the lubricant consumed in the cylinder. The input data are oil consumption and cylinder temperature versus crank angle. The proposed model was tuned to correlate well with data from a six-cylinder heavy-duty diesel engine that meets the Euro 5 legislation without exhaust gas aftertreatment. The measured (and modelled) oil survival shows a strong correlation with engine power. The maximum oil survival rate measured (19%) was at motoring conditions at high speed. For this engine, loads above 100 kW yielded an oil survival rate of nearly zero.

In the last couple of decades, countries have enacted new laws concerning environmental pollution caused by heavy-duty commercial and passenger vehicles. This is done mainly in an effort to reduce smog and health impacts caused by the different pollutions. One of the legislated pollutions, among a wide range of regulated pollutions, is nitrogen oxides (commonly abbreviated as NOx). The SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) was introduced in the automotive industry to reduce NOx emissions leaving the vehicle. The basic idea is to inject a urea solution (AdBlue™) in the exhaust gas before the gas enters the catalyst. The optimal working temperature for the catalyst is somewhere in the range of 300 to 400 °C. For the reactions to occur without a catalyst, the gas temperature has to be at least 800 °C. These temperatures only occur in the engine cylinder itself, during and after the combustion.

Diffusive combustion of direct injected ethanol is investigated in a heavy-duty single cylinder engine for a broad range of operating conditions. Ethanol has a high potential as fossil fuel alternative, as it provides a better carbon footprint and has more sustainable production pathways. The introduction of ethanol as fuel for heavy-duty compression-ignition engines can contribute to decarbonize the transport sector within a short time frame. Given the resistance to autoignition of ethanol, the engine is equipped with two injectors mounted in the same combustion chamber, allowing the simultaneous and independent actuation of the main injection of pure ethanol and a pilot injection of diesel as an ignition source. The influence of the dual-fuel injection strategy on ethanol ignition, combustion characteristics, engine performance and NOx emissions is evaluated by varying the start of injection of both fuels and the ethanol-diesel ratio.

Renewable fuels have an important role to create sustainable energy systems. In this paper the focus is on biodiesel, which is produced from vegetable oils or animal fats. Today biodiesel is mostly used as a drop-in fuel, mixed into conventional diesel fuels to reduce their environmental impact. Low quality drop-in fuel can lead to deposits throughout the fuel systems of heavy duty vehicles. In a previous study fuel filters from the field were collected and analyzed with the objective to determine the main components responsible for fuel filter plugging. The identified compounds were constituents of soft particles. In the current study, the focus was on metal carboxylates since these have been found to be one of the components of the soft particles and associated with other engine malfunctions as well. Hence the measurement of metal carboxylates in the fuel is important for future studies regarding the fuel’s effect on engines.

Biofuel can enable a sustainable transport solution and lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to standard fuels. This study focuses on biodiesel, implemented in the easiest way as drop in fuel. When mixing biodiesel into diesel one can run into problems with solubility causing contaminants precipitating out as insolubilities. These insolubilities, also called soft particles, can cause problems such as internal injector deposits and nozzle fouling. One way to overcome the problem of soft particles is by filtration. It is thus of great interest to be able to quantify fuel filters’ ability to intercept soft particles. The aim of this study is to test different fuel filters for heavy-duty engines and their ability to filter out synthetic soft particles. A custom-built fuel filter rig is presented, together with some of its general design requirements. For evaluation of the efficiency of the filters, fuel samples were taken before and after the filters.

Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC) is a combustion concept which aims to provide combustion with low smoke and NOx with high thermal efficiency. Extending the ignition delay to enhance the premixing, avoiding spray-driven combustion and controlling the combustion temperature at an optimum level through use of suitable lambda and EGR levels have been recognized as key factors to achieve such a combustion. Fuels with high ignitability resistance have been proven to be a useful to extend the ignition delay. In this work pure ethanol has been used as a PPC fuel. The objective of this research was initially to investigate the required operating conditions for PPC with ethanol. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was performed to understand how the required parameters for ethanol PPC such as lambda, EGR rate, injection pressure and inlet temperature influence the combustion in terms of controllability, stability, emissions (i.e.

In the automotive industry, the piezo-based in-cylinder pressure sensor is getting commercialized and used in production vehicles. For example, the pressure sensor offers the opportunity to design algorithms for estimation of engine emissions, such as soot and NO , during a combustion cycle. In this paper a zero-dimensional NO model for a diesel engine is implemented that will be used in real time. The model is based on the thermal NO formation and the Zeldovich mechanism using two non-geometrical zones: burned and unburned zone. The influence of EGR on combustion temperature was modeled using a well-known thermodynamic identity where specific heat at constant pressure is included. Specific heat will vary with temperature and the gas composition. The model was implemented in LabVIEW using tools specific for an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array).

Biodiesel is chemically unstable and sensitive to oxidation. Aging of biodiesel results in the formation of degradation products, such as short chain fatty acids (SCFA) and water. These products may cause corrosion of metals in fuel systems. When performing corrosion tests, biodiesel continuously degrades during the test, resulting in an uncontrolled test system. In order to obtain a stable corrosion testing system, a test fuel was developed using a saturated FAME (methyl myristate), which was doped with RME degradation products at levels typically seen in field tests. The test fuel was compared to RME with regards to structure, SCFA and water content before and after aging tests. In addition, an accelerated corrosion study of copper was performed in both the test fuel and in RME. The copper specimens were analyzed before and after test using light optical microscope and weight measurements. The Cu content in the test fuel and RME was also analyzed.

A diesel engine developed for an international market must be able to run on different fuels considering the diesel fuel qualities and the increasing selection of biofuels in the world. This leads to the question of how different fuels perform relative to a standard diesel fuel when not changing the hardware settings. In this study five fuels (Japanese diesel, MK3, EN590 with 10% RME, EN590 with 30% RME and pure RME) have been compared to a reference diesel fuel (Swedish MK1) when run on three different speeds and three different loads at each speed. The experiments are run on a Scania 13l Euro5 engine with standard settings for Swedish MK1 diesel. In general the differences were not large between the fuels. NO x usually increased compared to MK1 and then soot decreased as would be expected. The combustion efficiency increased with increased RME contents of the fuel but the indicated efficiency was not influenced by RME except for at higher loads.

For diesel engines the major exhaust problem is particulate matter and NOx emissions. To reduce NOx, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is often used. The behavior of the EGR-level will therefore influence the emissions and it is therefore valuable to keep track of the EGR-level. Especially during transients it is difficult to predict how the EGR-level varies. In this paper the CO2-level in the intake is modeled on a 1-cylinder diesel engine to predict the in cylinder behavior during transients. The model is based on simple thermodynamics together with the ideal gas law. Using this, the model is validated by experimental data during transients and the correlation between model and experiment is shown to be strong. Furthermore, the total tank volume is decreased to achieve a faster mixing with the intention of simulating the behavior of the CO2-level in a full-size engine which has a higher gas flow.

Increasingly stringent emission legislation as well as increased demand on fuel efficiency calls for further research and development in the diesel engine field. Spray formation, evaporation and ignition delay are important factors that influence the combustion and emission formation processes in a diesel engine. Increased understanding of the mixture formation process is valuable in the development of low emission, high efficiency diesel engines. In this paper spray formation and ignition under real engine conditions have been studied in an optical engine capable of running close to full load for a real HD diesel engine. Powerful external lights were used to provide the required light intensity for high speed camera images in the combustion chamber prior to ignition. A specially developed software was used for spray edge detection and tracking. The software provides crank angle resolved spray penetration data.

Improving turbocharger performance to increase engine efficiency has the potential to help meet current and upcoming exhaust legislation. One limiting factor is compressor surge, an air flow instability phenomenon capable of causing severe vibration and noise. To avoid surge, the turbocharger is operated with a safety margin (surge margin) which, as well as avoiding surge in steady state operation, unfortunately also lowers engine performance. This paper investigates the possibility of detecting compressor surge with a conventional engine knock sensor. It further recommends a surge detection algorithm based on their signals during transient engine operation. Three knock sensors were mounted on the turbocharger and placed along the axes of three dimensions of movement. The engine was operated in load steps starting from steady state. The steady state points of operation covered the vital parts of the engine speed and load range.

On-engine surge detection could help in reducing the safety margin towards surge, thus allowing higher boost pressures and ultimately low-end torque. In this paper, experimental data from a truck turbocharger compressor mounted on the engine is investigated. A short period of compressor surge is provoked through a sudden, large drop in engine load. The compressor housing is equipped with knock accelerometers. Different signal treatments are evaluated for their suitability with respect to on-engine surge detection: the signal root mean square, the power spectral density in the surge frequency band, the recently proposed Hurst exponent, and a closely related concept optimized to detect changes in the underlying scaling behavior of the signal. For validation purposes, a judgement by the test cell operator by visual observation of the air filter vibrations and audible noises, as well as inlet temperature increase, are also used to diagnose surge.

This paper presents a simulation environment and methodology for noise and vibration analyses of a driven rear axle in a bus application, with particular focus on medium to high frequency range (400 Hz to 3 kHz). The workflow demonstrates structure borne noise and sound radiation analyses. The fully flexible Multi-Body Dynamics (MBD) model - serving to cover the actual mechanical excitation mechanisms and the structural domain - includes geometrical contacts of hypoid gear in the central gear and planetary gear integrated at hubs, considering non-linear meshing stiffness. Contribution of aforementioned gear stages, as well as the propeller shaft universal joint at the pinion axle, on overall axle noise levels is investigated by means of sensitivity analysis. Based on the surface velocities computed at the vibrating axle-housing structure the Wave Based Technique (WBT) is employed to solve the airborne noise problem and predict the radiated sound.

Due to demanding legislation on exhaust emissions for internal combustion engines and increasing fuel prices, automotive manufacturers have focused their efforts on optimizing turbocharging systems. Turbocharger system control optimization is difficult: Unsteady flow conditions combined with not very accurate compressor maps make the real time turbocharger rotational speed one of the most important quantities in the optimization process. This work presents a methodology designed to obtain the turbocharger rotational speed via vibration analysis. Standard knock sensors have been employed in order to achieve a robust and accurate, yet still a low-cost solution capable of being mounted on-board. Results show that the developed method gives an estimation of the turbocharger rotational speed, with errors and accuracy acceptable for the proposed application. The method has been evaluated on a heavy duty diesel engine.

The emission control in heavy-duty vehicles today is based on predefined injection strategies and after-treatment systems such as SCR (selective catalytic reduction) and DPF (diesel particulate filter). State-of-the-art engine control is presently based on cycle-to-cycle resolution. The introduction of the crank angle resolved pressure measurement, from a piezo-based pressure sensor, enables the possibility to control the fuel injection based on combustion feedback while the combustion is occurring. In this paper a study is presented on the possibility to control NOx (nitrogen oxides) formation with a crank angle resolved NOx estimator as feedback. The estimator and the injection control are implemented on an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) to manage the inherent time constraints. The FPGA is integrated with the rest of the engine control system for injection control and measurement.

Modern spark-ignited (SI) engines offer excellent emission reduction when operated with a stoichiometric mixture and a three-way catalytic converter. A challenge with stoichiometric compared to diluted operation is the knock propensity due to the high reactivity of the mixture. This limits the compression ratio, thus reducing engine efficiency and increasing exhaust temperature. The current work evaluated a model of conditions at inlet valve closing (IVC) and top dead center (TDC) for steady state operation. The IVC temperature model is achieved by a cycle-to-cycle resolved residual gas fraction estimator. Due to the potential charge cooling effect from methanol, a method was proposed to determine the fraction of fuel sourced from a wall film. Determining the level of charge cooling is important as it heavily impacts the IVC and TDC temperatures.

Stoichiometric operation of a Port Fueled Injection (PFI) Spark-Ignited (SI) engine with a three-way catalytic converter offers excellent CO2 reduction when run on renewable fuel. The main drawbacks with stoichiometric operation are the increased knock propensity, high exhaust temperature and reduced efficiency. Knock is typically mitigated with a reactive knock controller, with retarded ignition timing whenever knock is detected and the timing then slowly advanced until knock is detected again. This will cause some cycles to operate with non-ideal ignition timing. The current work evaluates the possibility to predict knock using the measured and modelled temperatures at Inlet Valve Closing (IVC) and Top Dead Center (TDC). Feedback effects are studied beyond steady state operation by using induced ignition timing disturbances.

After-oxidation in Heavy Duty (HD) diesel combustion is of paramount importance for emissions out from the engine. During diffusion diesel combustion, lots of particulate matter (PM) is created. Most of the PM are combusted during the after-oxidation part of the combustion. Still some of the PM is not, especially during an engine transient at low lambda. To enhance the PM oxidation in the late engine cycle, swirl together with high injection pressure can be implemented to increase in-cylinder turbulence at different stages in the cycle. Historically swirl is known to reduce soot particulates. It has also been shown, that with today's high injection pressures, can be combined with swirl to reduce PM at an, for example, engine transient. The mechanism why the PM engine out is reduced also at high injection pressures is however not so well understood.

In-cylinder flow pattern has been examined experimentally in a heavy duty optical diesel engine and simulated with CFD code during the combustion and the post-oxidation phase. Mean swirling velocity field and its evolution were extracted from optical tests with combustion image velocimetry (CIV). It is known that the post-oxidation period has great impact on the soot emissions. Lately it has been shown in swirling combustion systems with high injection pressures, that the remaining swirling vortex in the post-oxidation phase deviates strongly from solid body rotation. Solid body rotation can only be assumed to be the case before fuel injection. In the studied cases the tangential velocity is higher in the centre of the piston bowl compared to the outer region of the bowl. The used CIV method is closely related to the PIV technique, but makes it possible to extract flow pattern during combustion at full load in an optical diesel engine.