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To reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the use of vehicles operating on electrification technology, such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) is rapidly increasing. A similar trend also exists in the field of heavy-duty vehicles, such as trucks and buses. When evaluating—via the certification test method—the fuel efficiency, electricity efficiency, and exhaust gas emission of heavy-duty vehicles that have many batteries, the powertrain, including the batteries, is modeled and investigated. However, such modeling is difficult because batteries deteriorate, and the ambient temperature fluctuates during vehicle operation. To resolve this issue, we developed a new evaluation method that enables real-time cooperative control of actual batteries and hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS).

Fuel consumption and exhaust gas emission regulations are being tightened around the world year by year. Electric vehicles are needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Especially, Plug-in hybrid heavy-duty vehicles (PHEVs) are expected to become widespread. PHEVs enable all-electric modes, as well as hybrid modes, using both engines and electric motors, but the control system significantly affects the characteristics of fuel consumption and gas emission. In this study, we used new testing machine (we call extended HILS) to analyze the fuel consumption and gas emission for different plug-in hybrid control systems and investigated the optimal control method for PHEVs.

The authors have explored the potential of fuel to control spray and its combustion processes in a diesel engine. Fuel has some potential for low emission and high thermal efficiency because its volatility and ignitability are one of the ultimate performing factors of the engines. In present study, the ignition process of mixed fuel spray was investigated in a constant volume combustion vessel and in a rapid compression and expansion machine, The ignition delay based on the diagram of rate of the heat release, the imaging of natural flame emissions and the numerical simulation were carried out to clarify the effect of the physical and chemical properties of mixed fuel on ignition characteristics.

Diesel sprays injected into a combustion chamber of a small sized high-speed CI engine impinge surely on a piston surface and a cylinder wall. As a consequence, their vaporization, mixture formation and combustion processes are affected by impingement phenomena. And the other important factors affecting on the processes is the injection pressure. Then, the distribution of the vapor concentration in a single diesel spray impinging on a flat and hot wall was experimented by the exciplex fluorescence method, as a simple case. The injection pressure was varied in the range from 55 MPa to 120 MPa. It is found that the distribution of the vapor concentration in this case is much leaner than that in the case of the low injection pressure of 17.8MPa.

CNG is one of the future fuel for a CI engine. Recently, the general tendency is the use of the high pressure injection system over 100 MPa in a CI engine for the near future severe regulation. Combustion phenomenon in a CI engine with such injection system is like a transient gas diffusion flame. The flow in a gas diffusion flame was investigated by the particle image velocimetry on its 2-D images, the relative soot concentration, the temperature and the relative CO2 concentration was detected in the experiments. And the model of transient gas diffusion flame was constructed by use of experimental data.

Three-dimensional large eddy simulation (LES) has been conducted for a diesel spray flame using KIVALES which is LES version of KIVA code. Modified TAB model, velocity interpolation model and rigid sphere model are used to improve the prediction of the fuel-mixture process in the diesel spray. Combustion is simulated using the Eddy-Dissipation model. CIP method was incorporated into the KIVALES in order to suppress the numerical instability on the combustible flow. The formation of soot and NO was simulated using Hiroyasu model and KIVA original model. Three different grid resolutions were used to examine the grid dependency. The result shows that the LES approach with 0.5 mm grid size is able to resolve the instantaneous spray with the intermittency in the spray periphery, the axi-symmetric shape and meandering flow after the end of injection as shown in the experimental results.

LES of non-evaporative diesel spray have been performed to investigate the effects of breakup models of Modified TAB, WAVE and KHRT model on computational results. KIVALES that is LES version of KIVA code was used for base code. In our KIVALES, CIP scheme was incorporated in order to suppress the numerical diffusion. Results showed that the breakup model is significantly affected on the calculated spray shape, because the droplet diameter determined by breakup models affects on the transmittance of the droplet momentum into the ambient gas, the evolution of the vortex structure in the gas phase and the droplet dispersion by the vortex structure.

The premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) combustion in a compression ignition (Cl) engine is one of countermeasures against the very much severe regulation for exhaust gas of engine out. The authors have been proposed to use the fuel mixed with high volatility component and low volatility component to actualize PCCI combustion. This kind of fuel injected forms a fine and lean spray by the flash boiling phenomena which depends on the pressure and the temperature. The role of the former fuel is to decrease in the generation of particulate matters (PM) and that of the latter one is to break out the ignition. Thus, it is very much significant to find the distribution of vapor concentration of both fuels in a spray. This paper describes both distributions in a single diesel spray by use of the technique of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) in a constant volume chamber with high temperature at high pressure as the fundamental research.

The Flame structure and combustion characteristics for two waste-cooking oils were investigated in detail. One fuel is the waste-cooking oil methyl esters. This fuel is actually applied to the garbage collection vehicle with DI diesel engine (B100) and the city bus (B20; 80% gas oil is mixed into B100 in volume) as an alternative fuel of gas oil in Kyoto City. Another one is the fuel with ozone treatment by removing impurities from raw waste-cooking oils. Here, in order to improve the fuel properties, kerosene is mixed 70% volume in this fuel. This mixed fuel (i-BDF) is applied into several tracks and buses in Wakayama City. In the experiments, the used fuels were gas oil, i-BDF, B100 and B20. Spray characteristics and basic combustion properties were measured inside a rapid compression and an expansion machine (RCEM).

The maximum liquid-phase penetration and vaporization behavior was investigated by using simultaneous measurement for mie-scattered light images and shadowgraph ones. The objective of this study was to analyze effect of variant parameters (injection pressure, ambient gas condition and fuel temperature) and fuel properties on vaporization behavior, and to investigate liquid phase penetration for the single- and multi-component fuels. The experiments were conducted in a constant-volume vessel with optical access. Fuel was injected into the vessel with electronically controlled common rail injector.

It is significant for understanding the phenomena in a stratified charge engine and an SI engine with direct injection system to carry out the fundamental research. The experiments were conducted in a constant volume chamber with atmospheric condition. The pre-mixed charge composed of ethylene and air was charged with various equivalence ratio, the second charge with the same composition was injected into the chamber, thereafter, the combustion started by a spark plug. The phenomena were analyzed by use of the experimental results of shadowgraph, [OH] natural emission, pressure history and NOx and UHC in the exhaust gas.

This paper provides new insights on the mechanism of the smokeless diesel combustion with oxygenated fuels, based on a combination of soot kinetic modeling and optical diagnostics. The chemical effects of fuel compositions, including aromatics - paraffins blend, neat oxygenated fuels and oxygenate additives, on sooting equivalence ratio ‘ϕ’ - temperature ‘T’ dependence were numerically examined using a detailed soot kinetic model. To better understand the physical factors affecting soot formation in oxygenated fuel sprays, the effects of injection pressure and ambient gas temperature on the flame lift-off length and relative soot concentration in oxygenated fuel jets were experimentally investigated. The computational results show that the leaner mixture side of soot formation peninsula on the ϕ - T map, rather than the lower temperature one, should be utilized to suppress the formation of PAHs and ultra-fine particles together with the large reduction in particulate mass.

It is unavoidable that a DI diesel engine exhausts a blue and white smoke at starting, especially in the cold atmosphere. In the experiments presented here, a small DI diesel engine started under the conditions of coolant and suction air whose minimum temperatures were 255 K and 268 K, respectively. The flame was photographed by high-speed photography, the temperature of flame and the soot concentration were measured by two-color method, and CO2 concentration was detected by luminous method. The engine cannot be started over several cycles when the coolant temperature is 255 K and suction air temperature is 268 K. As the temperature of coolant and suction air are decreasing, the maxima of the cylinder pressure, the flame temperature, the soot concentration and CO2 concentration are decreasing. Luminous small dots or small lumps of flame become scattered in the piston cavity.

There is a concept that the increase in the temperature of charge in a combustion chamber and the shield of heat transferred through a chamber wall can facilitate the oxidation of soot and reduce the discharge of soot from the engine. In the experiments presented here in, an IDI diesel engine was used to inspect the concept. The engine was installed a bigger sized cylindrical swirl chamber which was equipped with two flat quarts windows, in order to observe the combustion phenomena and to apply the optical measurement. The experiments were carried out using two types of divided chambers, that is, the swirl chamber made of ceramics and that made of steel, to examine the the effects mentioned above.

In this study, a rapid compression and expansion machine(RCEM) with a pancake combustion chamber was designed to investigate fundamentally on the knocking phenomena in spark ignition(S.I) engines. This RCEM is intended to simulate combustion in an actual engine. The homogeneous pre-mixture of n-pentane and air was charged into a quiescent atmosphere of the chamber. Then, the combustion field become simpler in this machine than it in a real S.I. engine. Also, the combustion phenomena, that is a cylinder pressure history, the behavior of flame propagation and so on, with high reproducibility are realized in this machine. The phenomena caught in this experiment were so-called low speed knocking. And, this knocking characteristics such as a knock intensity and a knock mass fraction were revealed by the cylinder pressure analysis varying the charge pressure and the equivalence ratio of the mixture, a compression ratio and an ignition timing.

This paper presents an atomization mechanism of a spray injected into the low-pressure field, as the subject of injection system in a suction manifold of gasoline engine. Pure liquid fuel, which is n-Pentane or n-Hexane is injected into quiescent gaseous atmosphere at room-temperature and low- pressure through pintle type electronic control injector. Fuel sprays are observed by taking photographs for variation of the back pressure and the changes in spray characteristics with the back pressure below atmospheric pressure are examined in detail. In particular, in the case of the back pressure below the saturated vapor pressure of fuel, the atomization mechanism is discussed from a viewpoint of flash boiling phenomena, those are bubble growth rate and so on.

Next-generation vehicles which include the Electric Vehicles, the Hybrid Electric Vehicles and the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles are researched and expected to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emission in the future. In order to reduce the emissions of the heavy-duty diesel plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), it is necessary to provide the high exhaust-gas temperature and to keep the exhaust-gas aftertreatment system effective. The engine starting condition of the PHEV is cold, and the engine start and stop is repeated. And, the engine load of the PHEV is assisted by the electric motor. Therefore, the exhaust-gas aftertreatment system of the PHEV is not able to get the enough high exhaust-gas temperature. And, the warm-up of the exhaust-gas aftertreatment system for the PHEV is spent the long time. So, it is worried about a bad effect on the emission characteristics of the PHEV.

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is applied to non-evaporative and evaporative diesel spray simulations. KIVALES, which is LES version of KIVA code, is used as the LES computational code. Modified TAB model is used as breakup model, and interpolated donor cell differencing scheme is employed to calculate convective terms. To validity LES simulation, LES results using KIVALES are compared with experimental results and simulated results with conventional RANS approach using KIVA3V res.2. The results show that the LES simulation of non-evaporative spray depends on the grid size in comparison with RANS simulation, and good agreement is obtained between experimental results and the LES results with fine grid (720,000 cells). Furthermore, asymmetric non-evaporative spray which has intermittency at the outer edge of sprays is simulated, since instantaneous turbulent flow field can be predicted directly in LES case.

At interurban transportation, improvement of fuel economy of hybrid electric heavy-duty diesel vehicles, which assist drive-axle by using regeneration energy, is minimum, compared to heavy-duty diesel vehicles. One of the factors is that hybrid electric heavy-duty vehicles are not able to balance regeneration energy (input) and power energy (output) at high speed driving. One reason is not opportunity to operate of braking at high speed driving for the heavy-duty vehicle. In this research, we focus on the method used for the battery energy, and propose a new concept of hybrid electric system to efficiently utilize battery energy. That system consists of electrical booster for supercharging intake air into engine cylinder. We have confirmed the feasibility of the electric system of a new HEV concept by using the simulation I created.

Next-generation vehicles which include Electric Vehicles (EV) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) are researched and expected to reduce CO2 emissions in the future. Generally, the main factor to support high efficiency of EV and HEV is the idle stop, motor assistance and regenerative braking. The vehicle mechanism of HEV is complex, compared with conventional internal combustion engine vehicle. Certification test method of gas emissions and fuel consumption is used driving mode, which is currently reflecting the typical driving conditions in the market. And driving mode of certification test is established focusing on the reproducibility of driving by conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. It is necessary to consider that the driving mode for the vehicle used regenerative energy is reflected correctly. And high accuracy certification test method for next generation HEVs is necessary in order to evaluate exhaust gas and fuel economy.