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The mechanical behavior of polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film plays an important role in windshield crashworthiness and pedestrian protection and should be depth study. In this article, the uniaxial tension tests of PVB film at various strain rates (0.001 s-1, 0.01 s-1, 0.1 s-1, 1 s-1) and temperatures (-10°C, 0°C, 10°C, 23°C, 40°C, 55°C, 70°C) are conducted to investigate its mechanical behavior. Then, temperature and strain rate dependent viscoelastic characteristics of PVB are systematically studied. The results show that PVB is a kind of temperature and strain rate sensitive thermal viscoelastic material. Temperature increase and strain rate decrease have the same influence on mechanical properties of PVB. Besides, the mechanical characteristics of PVB change non-linearly with temperature and strain rate. Finally, two thermal viscoelastic constitutive model (ZWT model and DSGZ model) are suggested to describe the tension behavior of PVB film at various strain rates and temperatures.

Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) combustion utilizes a port injection of high-volatile fuel to form a homogeneous charge and a direct injection of high ignitable fuel near the Top Dead Center (TDC) to trigger combustion. Compared to Conventional Diesel Combustion (CDC) with high injection pressures, HCII has the potential to achieve diesel-like thermal efficiency with significant reductions in NOx and PM emissions with relatively low-pressure injections, which would benefit the engine cost saving remarkably. In the first part of current investigation, experiments were conducted at medium load with single diesel injection strategy. HCII exhibited great potential of using low injection pressures to achieve low soot emissions. But the engine load for HCII was limited by high heat release rate. Thus, in the second and third part, experiments were performed at high and low load with double diesel injection strategy.

The combustion characteristics and soot emissions of three types of fuels were studied in a high pressure and temperature vessel. In order to achieve better volatility, proper cetane number and high oxygen content, the newly designed WDEP fuel was proposed and investigated. It is composed of wide distillation fuel (WD), PODE3-6 mixture (PODEn) and ethanol. For comparison, the test on WD and the mixture of PODEn-ethanol (EP) are also conducted. OH* chemiluminescence during the combustion was measured and instantaneous PLII was also applied to reveal the soot distribution. Abel transformation was adopted to calculate the total soot of axisymmetric flame. The results show that WDEP has similar ignition delays and flame lift-off lengths to those of WD at 870-920 K. But the initial ignition locations of WDEP flame in different cycles were more concentrated, particularly under the condition of low oxygen atmosphere.

In this paper, the differences between multi-hole and single-hole spray contour under the same conditions were compared by using high-speed photography. The difference between the contour area of multi-hole and that of single-hole spray was used as a parameter to describe the degree of spray collapse. Three dimensionless parameters (i.e. degree of superheat, degree of undercooling, and nozzle pressure ratio) were applied to characterize inside-nozzle thermodynamic, outside-nozzle thermodynamic and kinetic factors, respectively. In addition, the relationship between the three dimensionless parameters and the spray collapse was analyzed. A semi-empirical equation was proposed for evaluation of the degree of collapse based on dimensionless parameters of flash and non-flash boiling sprays respectively.

Combustion visualizations were carried out in a constant volume vessel to study the partially premixed combustion of a gasoline-like fuel using high speed imaging. The test fuel (G80H20) is composed by volume 80% commercial gasoline and 20% n-heptane. The effects of ambient gas composition, ambient temperature and injection pressure on G80H20 combustion characteristics were analyzed. Meanwhile, a comparison of the EGR effect on combustion process between G80H20 and diesel was made. Four ambient gas conditions that represent the in-cylinder gas compositions of a heavy-duty diesel engine with EGR ratios of 0%, 20%, 40% and 60% were used to simulate EGR conditions. Variables also include two ambient temperature (910K and 870K) and two injection pressure (20 MPa and 50 MPa) conditions.

Dieseline combustion as a concept combines the advantages of gasoline and diesel by offline or online blending the two fuels. Dieseline has become an attractive new compression ignition combustion concept in recent years and furthermore an approach to a full-boiling-range fuel. High speed imaging with near-parallel backlit light was used to investigate the spray characteristics of dieseline and pure fuels with a common rail diesel injection system in a constant volume vessel. The results were acquired at different blend ratios, and at different temperatures and back pressures at an injection pressure of 100MPa. The penetrations and the evaporation states were compared with those of gasoline and diesel. The spray profile was analyzed in both area and shape with statistical methods. The effect of gasoline percentage on the evaporation in the fuel spray was evaluated.

Super-knock has been a significant obstacle for the development of highly turbocharged (downsized) gasoline engines with spark ignition, due to the catastrophic damage super-knock can cause to the engine. According to previous research by the authors, one combustion process leading to super-knock may be described as hot-spot induced pre-ignition followed by deflagration which can induce detonation from another hot spot followed by high pressure oscillation. The sources of the hot spots which lead to pre-ignition (including oil films, deposits, gas-dynamics, etc.) may occur sporadically, which leads to super-knock occurring randomly at practical engine operating conditions. In this study, a spark plasma was used to induce preignition and the correlation between super-knock combustion and the thermodynamic state of the reactant mixture was investigated in a four-cylinder production gasoline engine.

Although energy harvesting systems are extensively used in different fields, studies on the application of energy harvesters embedded in tires for vehicle control are rare and mostly focus on solving power supply problems of tire pressure sensors. Sensors are traditionally powered by an embedded battery, which must be replaced periodically because of its limited energy storage. Heightened interest in vehicle safety is expected to drive increased design and manufacture of in-tire sensors, which in turn, translates to rising demand for power generation in tires. These challenges emphasize the need to investigate the substitution of batteries and in-tire energy harvesting systems. Current in-tire energy harvesting methods involve piezoelectric, electromagnetic, and electrostatic power generation, whose energy sources include tire vibrations, deformations, and rotations. Piezoelectric harvesters are generally compact but operate for short durations.

Generally, noise will occur during steering with the hydraulic power steering system (hereinafter HPS). The noise producing in the rotary valve takes up a big proportion of the total one. To study the noise in the control valve, 2-D meshes of the flow field between the sleeve and the rotor were set up and a general CFD code-Fluent was used to analyze the flow inside the valve. The areas where the noise may be occurred were shown and some suggestions to silence the noise were given.

Electromagnetic Valve Actuation (EVA) is considered to be a potential substitute of conventional valvetrains for automotive engines. However, valve quiet-seating (soft-landing) is difficult to be achieved. The EVA system and hence its’ mathematic model is nonlinear. Therefore, when linear control is used for EVA, firstly, the model has to be linearized at an equilibrium point through Taylor expansion. Consequently, the linearized model and control are valid only for a small range around the equilibrium point. This paper presents a control strategy for the whole transition of EVA, which combines exact linearization with Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). Firstly, the nonlinear EVA model is transformed to be linear in a new coordinate by using exact linearization, so the nonlinear model is not involved. Then the exact-linearized model is used for the EVA control with LQR.

Due to the high cost of torque sensors, a calculation model of transient torque is required for real-time coordinating control purpose, especially in hybrid electric powertrains. This paper presents a feedforward calculation method based on mean value model of turbocharged non-EGR diesel engines. A fitting variable called fuel coefficient is defined in an affine relation between brake torque and fuel mass. The fitting of fuel coefficient is simplified to depend only on three variables (engine speed, boost pressure, injected fuel mass). And a two-layer feedforward neural network is utilized to fit the experimental data. The model is validated by load response test and ETC (European Transient Cycle) transient test. The RMSE (root mean square error) of the brake torque is less than 3%.

Atomization of fuel sprays is a key factor in controlling the combustion quality in the direct-injection engines. In this present work, the effect of saturation ratio (Rs) on the near nozzle spray patterns of ethanol was investigated using an ultra-high speed imaging technique. The Rs range covered both flash-boiling and non-flash boiling regions. Ethanol was injected from a single-hole injector into an optically accessible constant volume chamber at a fixed injection pressure of 40 MPa with different fuel temperatures and back pressures. High-speed imaging was performed using an ultrahigh speed camera (1 million fps) coupled with a long-distance microscope. Under non-flash boiling conditions, the effect of Rs on fuel development was small but observable. Clear fuel collision can be observed at Rs=1.5 and 1.0. Under the flash boiling conditions, near-nozzle spray patterns were significant different from the non-flash boiling ones.

A conceptual approach to help understand and simulate droplet induced pre-ignition is presented. The complex phenomenon of oil-fuel droplet induced pre-ignition has been decomposed to its elementary processes. This approach helps identify the key fluid properties and engine parameters that affect the pre-ignition phenomenon, and could be used to control LSPI. Based on the conceptual model, a 3D CFD engine simulation has been developed which is able to realistically model all of the elementary processes involved in droplet induced pre-ignition. The simulation was successfully able to predict droplet induced pre-ignition at conditions where the phenomenon has been experimentally observed. The simulation has been able to help explain the observation of pre-ignition advancement relative to injection timing as experimentally observed in a previous study [6].

The spray characteristics is the key to achieve the clean combustion in diesel engines and the in-cylinder conditions are one of the factors affecting the spray process. In this work, the diesel spray characteristics were studied over a range of injection pressures and ambient pressures in a constant volume chamber and a single-hole common rail diesel injector was used. The present work is to decouple the effects of ambient pressure and ambient density on near-field spray processes by using different ambient gas (N2, and CO2). The spray processes were captured by a Photron SA X2 camera with speed of 300,000 fps and resolution of 256 by 80 pixels. The spray processes were analyzed in terms of penetration length and spray tip velocity. Difference in penetration length and tip velocity were found at the same ambient density and/or ambient pressure when different ambient gases were used.

During the engaging process of sleeve and teeth ring in mechanical transmissions, their rotational speed and position differences cause multiple engaging ways and trajectories, and casual impacts between them will delay the engaging process and cause a long power off time for a gear shift. In order to reveal the engaging mechanism of the sleeve and the teeth ring, it is essential to build a high-fidelity model to cover all of their engaging ways and capture their speed changes for an impact. In this work, our contribution is that their impact process is modeled as a precise, continuous and nonlinear damping model, and then a hybrid automaton model is built to connect the system dynamics in different mechanical coupling relationships.

This research focuses on the potential of Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) combustion meeting the Euro V emission standard on a heavy-duty multi-cylinder engine using a simple after-treatment system. However, in our previous studies, it was found that the gasoline ratio was limited in HCII by the over-high compression ratio (CR). In this paper, the effects of reducing CR on the performances of HCII at medium and high loads were explored by experimental methods. It was found that by reducing CR from 18:1 to 16:1 the peak in-cylinder pressure and the peak pressure rise rate were effectively reduced and the gasoline ratio range could be obviously extended. Thus, the combustion and emission characteristics of HCII at medium and high loads were noticeably improved. Soot emissions can be significantly reduced because of the increase of premixed combustion ratio. The reduction could be over 50% especially at high load and high speed conditions.

A new dynamic tire model for estimating the longitudinal/lateral road-tire friction force was derived in this paper. The model was based on the previous Dugoff tire model, in consideration of its drawback that it does not reflect the actual change trend that the tire friction force decreases with the increment of wheel slip ratio when it enters into the nonlinear region. The Dugoff model was modified by fitting a series of tire force data and compared with the commonly used Magic Formula model. This new dynamic friction model is able to capture accurately the transient behavior of the friction force observed during pure longitudinal wheel slip, lateral sideslip and combined slip situation. Simulation has been done under different situations, while the results validate the accuracy of the new tire friction model in predicting tire/road friction force during transient vehicle motion.

In this research, propane flash boiling sprays discharged from a five-hole gasoline direct injector were studied in a constant volume vessel. The fuel temperature (Tfuel) ranged from 30 °C to 90 °C, and the ambient pressure (Pamb) varied from 0.05 bar to 11.0 bar. Different flash boiling spray behavior compared to that under sub-atmospheric conditions was found at high Pamb. Specifically, at the sub-atmospheric pressures, the individual flashing jets merged into one single jet due to the strong spray collapse. In contrast, at Pamb above 3.0 bar and Tfuel above 50 °C, the spray collapse was mitigated and the flashing jets were separated from each other. Further analyses revealed that the mitigation of spray collapse at high Pamb was ascribed to the suppression of jet expansion. In addition, it was found that the spray structure was much different at similar Rp, indicating that Rp lacked the generality in describing the structure of flash boiling sprays.

At first, the dynamic electromagnetic characteristics of a pulsed solenoid valve is analyzed by experiments. The fast valve response is obtained by material modifications. Then, the intelligent solenoid driving method is discussed. The new techniques of the “active” PWM and the “d2i/dt2” detection are developed for feedback control of the solenoid holding current and the valve closure timing. Finally, the control and diagnosis method for the valve closure duration is investigated. A sensing mechanism utilizing momentary camshaft speed fluctuations of fuel injection pump is presented, which provides the basis for feedback control and diagnosis of the valve closure duration and diesel fuel injection process.

High speed on-off valves (HSVs) are widely used in advanced hydraulic braking actuators, including regenerative braking systems and active safety systems, which take crucial part in improving the energy efficiency and safety performance of vehicles. As a component involving multiple physical fields, the HSV is affected by the interaction of the fields-fluid, electromagnetic, and mechanical. Since the opening of the HSV is small and the flow speed is high, cavitation and vortex are inevitably brought out so that increase the valve’s noise and instability. However, it is costly and complex to observe the flow status by visual fluid experiments. Hence, in this article a visual multi-physics system simulation model of the HSV is explored, in which the flow field model of the HSV built by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) is co-simulated with the model of hydraulic actuator established by AMESim.