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Fatigue behavior of aluminum alloys under multiaxial loading was investigated with both cast aluminum A356-T6 and wrought alloy 6063-T6. The dominant multiaxial fatigue crack preferentially nucleates from flaws like porosity and oxide films located near the free surface of the material. In the absence of the flaws, the cracking/debonding of the second phase particles dominates the crack initiation and propagation. The number of cracked/debonded particles increases with the number of cycles, but the damage rate depends on loading paths. Among various loading paths studied, the circle loading path shows the shortest fatigue life due to the development of complex dislocation substructures and severe stress concentration near grain/cell boundaries and second phase particles.

A passive thermal management system (TMS) using composite phase change material (PCM) for large-capacity, rectangular lithium-ion batteries is designed. A battery module consisting of six Li-ion cells connected in series was investigated as a basic unit. The passive TMS for the module has three configurations according to the contact area between cells and the composite PCM, i.e., surrounding, front-contacted and side-contacted schemes. Firstly, heat generation rate of the battery cell was calculated using the Bernardi equation based on experimentally measured heat source terms (i.e. the internal resistance and the entropy coefficient). Physical and thermal properties such as density, phase change temperature, latent heat and thermal conductivity of the composite PCM were also obtained by experimental methods. Thereafter, thermal response of the battery modules with the three TMS configurations was simulated using 3D finite element analysis (FEA) modeling in ANSYS Fluent.

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.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), which convert the chemical energy into electrical energy directly through electrochemical reactions, are widely considered as one of the best power sources for new energy vehicles (NEV). Some of the major advantages of a PEMFC include high power density, high energy conversion efficiency, minimum pollution, low noise, fast startup and low operating temperature. The Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) is one of the core components of fuel cells, which composes catalyst layers (CL) coated proton exchange membrane (PEM) and gas diffusion layers (GDL). The performance of MEA is closely related to mass transportation and the rate of electrochemical reaction. The MEA plays a key role not only in the performance of the PEMFCs, but also for the reducing the cost of the fuel cells, as well as accelerating the commercial applications. Commercialized large-size MEA directly plays a major role in determining fuel cell stack and vehicle performance.

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) uses hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, the whole energy conversion process almost has no negative impact on the environment. The PEM fuel cell stack with the advantages of low-operating temperature, high current density and fast start-up ability is considered to be the next generation of new electric vehicle power. However, due to the limited current output, it is difficult for a single cell to meet the practical application requirements. The actual fuel cell stack is formed by many single cells assembled together. The assembly process is often related to load transfer, material transfer, energy exchange, multi-phase flow, electrochemical reaction and other factors. The performance of MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly), sealing gaskets and other components will change during the assembly process, which makes the fuel cell stack assembly process more complex.

Controlled Auto-Ignition (CAI) combustion can effectively improve the thermal efficiency of conventional spark ignition (SI) gasoline engines, due to shortened combustion processes caused by multi-point auto-ignition. However, its commercial application is limited by the difficulties in controlling ignition timing and violent heat release process at high loads. Stratified flame ignited (SFI) hybrid combustion, a concept in which rich mixture around spark plug is consumed by flame propagation after spark ignition and the unburned lean mixture closing to cylinder wall auto-ignites in the increasing in-cylinder temperature during flame propagation, was proposed to overcome these challenges.

Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combined with high compression ratio is an effective way to improve engines’ thermal efficiency. However, the severe thermodynamic conditions at high load may induce knocking combustion thus damage the engine body. In this study, advanced compression ignition knocking characteristics were parametrically investigated through RCM experiments and simulation analysis. First, the knocking characteristics were optically investigated. The experimental results show that there even exists detonation when the knock occurs thus the combustion chamber is damaged. Considering both safety and costs, the effects of different initial conditions were numerically investigated and the results show that knocking characteristics is more related to initial pressure other than initial temperature. The initial pressure has a great influence on peak pressure and knock intensity while the initial temperature on knock onset.

In this paper, a low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI) diagnostic strategy is designed based on the ion current signal. Novel diagnostic and re-injection strategies are proposed to suppress super-knock induced by pre-ignition within the detected combustion cycle. A parallel controller system that integrates a regular engine control unit (ECU) and CompactRIO (cRIO) from National Instruments (NI) is employed. Based on this system, the diagnostic and suppression strategy can be implemented without any adaptions to the regular ECU. Experiments are conducted on a 1.5-liter four-cylinder, turbocharged, direct-injected gasoline engine. The experimental results show two kinds of pre-ignition, one occurs spontaneously, and the other is induced by carbon deposits. Carbon deposits on the spark plug can strongly interfere with the ion current signal. By applying the ion current signal, approximately 14.3% of spontaneous and 90% of carbon induced pre-ignition cycles can be detected.

Combustion closed-loop control is now being studied intensively for engineering applications to improve fuel economy. Currently, combustion closed-loop feedback control is usually based on the cylinder pressure signal, which is the most direct and exact signal that reflects engine working process. Although there were some relatively cheap types of in-cylinder pressure sensors, cylinder pressure sensors have not been widely applied because of their high price now. Moreover, the combustion analysis based on cylinder pressure imposes high requirements on the information acquisition capability of the current ECU, such as high acquisition and analog-digital conversion frequency and so on. For developing a low price and feasible technology, a new engine information feedback method based on model calculation and crank angular velocity measurement was proposed. A simplified combustion model was operated in ECU for the real-time calculation of cylinder pressure and combustion parameters.

Engine knock is an abnormal phenomenon, which places barriers for modern Spark-Ignition (SI) engines to achieve higher thermal efficiency and better performance. In order to trigger more controllable knock events for study while keeping the knock intensity at restricted range, various spark strategies (e.g. spark timing, spark number, spark location) are applied to investigate on their influences on knock combustion characteristics and pressure oscillations. The experiment is implemented on a modified single cylinder Compression-Ignition (CI) engine operated at SI mode with port fuel injection (PFI). A specialized liner with 4 side spark plugs and 4 pressure sensors is used to generate various flame propagation processes, which leads to different auto-ignition onsets and knock development. Based on multiple channels of pressure signals, a band-pass filter is applied to obtain the pressure oscillations with respect to different spark strategies.

Lean-burn combustion is an effective method for increasing the thermal efficiency of gasoline engines fueled with stoichiometric fuel-air mixture, but leads to an unacceptable level of high cyclic variability before reaching ultra-low nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions emitted from conventional gasoline engines. Multi-point micro-flame ignited (MFI) hybrid combustion was proposed to overcome this problem, and can be can be grouped into double-peak type, ramp type and trapezoid type with very low frequency of appearance. This research investigates the micro-flame ignition stages of double-peak type and ramp type MFI combustion captured by high speed photography. The results show that large flame is formed by the fast propagation of multi-point flame occurring in the central zone of the cylinder in the double-peak type. However, the multiple flame sites occur around the cylinder, and then gradually propagate and form a large flame accelerated by the independent small flame in the ramp type.

The noise and vibration of electric vacuum pump (EVP) become a major problem for electric vehicles when the vehicle is stationary. This paper aims at the EVP’s abnormal noise of an electric vehicle when stationary. Driver’s right ear (DRE) noise was tested and spectrogram analysis was carried out to identify the noise sources. In order to attenuate this kind of abnormal noise, a new EVP rubber mount with a segmented structure was introduced, which optimized the transfer path of vibration. Then dynamic stiffness and fatigue life of the EVP mount with different rubber hardness were calculated through finite element analysis (FEA) approach. Bench tests of fatigue life and DRE noise were performed to validate the FEA results. Test data of the sample mount shows that sound pressure level of DRE was dramatically attenuated and thus passengers’ ride comfort was enhanced.

In order to understand the spray impinging the lubricant oil on the piston or cylinder wall in GDI engine, the Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) method was used to observe the phenomenon of the fuel droplets impact oil film and distinguish the fuel and oil during the impingement. The experimental results show that the hydrodynamic characteristics of impingement affected by the oil viscosity, droplets’ Weber number, oil film thickness. Crown formed after impingement. The morphology after impingement was categorized into: rings, stable crown, splash and prompt splash. Low oil film dynamic viscosity, high Weber number or thin oil film can facilitate splash. Splash droplets consist of fuel and oil, and the oil is the main component of splash droplets and crown. The empirical formula of critical We number (We) is fitted. High dimensionless oil film thickness or low oil film dynamic viscosity can increase the proportion of fuel in the crown.

Due to the advantages of low weight, low emissions and good fuel economy, downsized turbocharged gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines are widely-applied nowadays. However, Low-Speed Pre-Ignition (LSPI) phenomenon observed in these engines restricts their improvement of performance. Some researchers have shown that auto-ignition of lubricant in the combustion chamber has a great effect on the LSPI frequency. To study the auto-ignition characteristics of lubricant, an innovative single droplet auto-ignition test system for lubricant and its mixture is designed and developed, with better accuracy and effectiveness. The experiments are carried out by hanging lubricant droplets on the thermocouple node under active thermo-atmosphere provided by a small “Dibble burner”. The auto-ignition process of lubricant droplets is recorded by a high-speed camera.

Crashworthiness is one of the most important performances of vehicles, and the front rails are the main crash energy absorption parts during the frontal crashing process. In this paper, the front rail was simplified to a thin-walled beam with a cross section of single-hat which was made of steel and aluminum. And the two boards of it were connected by riveting without rivets. In order to optimize its crashworthiness, the thickness (t), radius (R) and the rivet spacing (d) were selected as three design variables, and its specific energy absorption was the objective while the average impact force was the constraint. Considering the error of manufacturing and measurements, the parameters σs and Et of the steel were selected as the uncertainty variables to improve the design reliability. The algorithm IP-GA and the approximate model-RBF (Radial Basis Function) were applied in this nonlinear uncertainty optimization.

A compiled method of the programmed load spectrum, which can simplify and accelerate the fatigue bench test of a car body, is proposed and its effectiveness is checked by the fatigue simulation. By using the multi-body dynamics model with a satisfactory accuracy, the virtual iteration is applied to cascade body loads from the wheel hubs. Based on the rain-flow counting method and statistics theory, the distributions of the body loads are analyzed, and then the programmed load spectrum is compiled and simplified. Through comparative study, the simulation results of random and programmed load spectrum are found to agree well with each other in terms of the damage distribution and fatigue life, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the presented method.

The work-hardening response of TRIP780 steel subjected to strain-path changes was investigated using two-stage tension experiments. Large specimens were prestrained and then sub-sized samples were subjected to tension along various directions. The influence of strain-path changes on flow stress and work hardening performance was discussed in detail. The specific plastic work was calculated to compare the kinematic hardening behaviour after strain-path changes. The results showed that transient hardening was observed for TRIP780 sheets subjected to orthogonal strain-path change. The strain-hardening exponent (n-value) was influenced by prestraining levels and the strain path. The n-value exhibited a greater decrease under an orthogonal strain-path change. Prestraining can delay the onset of high work hardenability of TRIP steels. It is meaningful for the safety design of vehicles.

The present work proposed to implement oxy-fuel combustion mode into a homogeneous charge compression ignition engine to reduce complexity in engine emissions after-treatment and lower carbon dioxide emission. The combination of oxy-fuel combustion mode with homogeneous charge compression ignition engine can be further optimized by the utilization of direct high temperature and pressure water injection to improve cycle performance. A retrofitted conventional diesel engine coupled with port fuel injection and direct water injection is utilized in this study. A self-designed oxygen and carbon dioxide mixture intake system with flexible oxygen fraction adjustment ability is implemented in the test bench to simulate the adoption of exhaust gas recirculation. Water injection system is directly installed in the combustion chamber with a modified high speed solenoid diesel injector.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is widely regarded as the most promising candidate for the next generation power source of automobile, after the pure battery electric vehicle. In this study, the gas and liquid two-phase flow in channels and porous electrodes inside PEMFC coupled with electrochemical reaction is simulated in detail, in which the anisotropic gas diffusion layer (GDL) is also considered. In the simulation, the inlet reactant gas molar concentration is calculated based on the real inlet pressure, which is more practical than specifying a constant value in previous simulation. Meanwhile, the effect of electro-osmotic drag on membrane water content distribution is treated to be a convection term in the conservation equation, instead of a source term as usually used.

The dual-fuel Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) combustion could achieve high efficiency and low emissions over a wide range of operating conditions. However, further high load extension is limited by the excessive pressure rise rate and soot emission. Polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers (PODE), a novel diesel alternative fuel, has the capability to achieve stoichiometric smoke-free RCCI combustion due to its high oxygen content and unique molecule structure. In this study, experimental investigations on high load extension of gasoline/PODE RCCI operation were conducted using late intake valve closing (LIVC) strategy and intake boosting in a single-cylinder, heavy-duty diesel engine. The experimental results show that the upper load can be effectively extended through boosting and LIVC with gasoline/PODE stoichiometric operation.