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The investigation has been divided into two parts. In part one, numerical investigations of the effect of humid air with different levels of humidity on gaseous emissions of a non-premixed combustion have been investigated. This part of the investigation was a feasibility study, focused on how different levels of humidity in the intake air affects the exhaust NO emission. Part two of the investigation was verification of the numerical results with a naturally aspirated engine with natural gas as the fuel. Here, we also investigated the impact of humid air intake on engine’s particulate matter (PM) emission. For the numerical investigations, the non-premixed combustion in a single cylinder was simulated using the presumed probability density function combustion model. Simulations were performed for dry as well as humid intake air for 0%, 15%, and 30% relative humidity (RH).

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) has long been used in gasoline and light-duty diesel engines as a NOx reduction tool. Recently imposed emission regulations led several heavy-duty diesel engine manufacturers to adopt EGR as part of their strategy to reduce NOx. The effectiveness of this technology has been widely documented, with NOx reduction in the range of 40 to 50 percent having been recorded. An inevitable consequence of this strategy is an increase in particulate emission, especially if EGR was used in high engine load modes. Selective catalytic reduction (SCR), a method for NOx reduction, is widely used in stationary applications. There is growing interest and activity to apply it to mobile fleets equipped with heavy-duty diesel engines. Results of this work indicate that SCR has the potential to dramatically reduce NOx in diesel exhaust. Reductions greater than 70 percent were reported by several including the Institute's previous work (SAE Paper No. 1999-01-3564).

The diesel engine has long been the most energy efficient powerplant for transportation. Moreover, diesels emit extremely low levels of hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide that do not require post-combustion treatment to comply with current and projected standards. It is admittedly, however, difficult for diesel engines to simultaneously meet projected nitrogen oxides and particulate matter standards. Traditionally, measures aimed at reducing one of these two exhaust species have led to increasing the other. This physical characteristic, which is known as NOx/PM tradeoff, remains the subject of an intense research effort. Despite this challenge, there is significant evidence that heavy-duty highway engine manufacturers can achieve substantial emission reductions. Many development programs carried out over the last five years have yielded remarkable results in laboratory demonstrations.

In the automotive industry, injection molded components are often used due to their ability to create complex shapes and increase production volume. In order to strengthen these parts, milled or chopped fibers will often be mixed into the matrix to improve the performance of the polymer. However, the complexity of this material is also increased leading to more influence from processing parameters and material variability. Along with inclusion aspect ratio and volume fraction (VF), an important attribute of this material that affects the part stiffness and strength is fiber orientation due to the injection molding process. In this paper, a workflow is presented to predict the mechanical properties of an injection molded part using only injection molding simulation and constituent material properties to build microstructural finite element models (FEM).