Search Results

A thermo-mechanical fatigue analysis was conducted based on a coupled Finite Element Analysis (FEA) - Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method on the crack failure of the exhaust manifold for an inline 4-cylinder turbo-charged diesel engine under the durability test. In the this analysis, the temperature-dependent material properties were obtained from measurements and the model was calibrated with comparison of the predicted exhaust manifold temperatures with the on-engine measurements under the same engine load condition. Temperature and stress/strain distributions in the exhaust manifold were predicted with the calibrated model. Analysis results showed that the cracks took place at locations with high plastic deformations, suggesting that the cause of the failure be thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF). Using the equivalent plastic strain (PEEQ) as the indicator for thermal mechanical fatigue, three exhaust manifold design revisions were carried out by CAE analysis.

Fuel economy has become an important consideration in forklift truck design, particularly in Europe. A simulation of the fuel consumption and performance of a forklift truck has been developed, validated and subsequently used to determine the energy consumed by individual powertrain components during drive cycles. The truck used in this study has a rated lifting capacity of 2500kg, and is powered by a 2.6 litre naturally aspirated diesel engine with a fuel pump containing a mechanical variable-speed governor. The drivetrain consisted of a torque convertor, hydraulic clutch and single speed transmission. AVL Cruise was used to simulate the vehicle powertrain, with coupled Mathworks Simulink models used to simulate the hydraulic and control systems and governor. The vehicle has been simulated on several performance and fuel consumption drive cycles with the main focus being the VDI 2198 fuel consumption drive cycle.

A new fuel injection strategy is proposed for DME engines. Under this strategy, a pre-injection up to 40% demand is conducted after intake valves closing. Due to high volatility of DME, a lean homogeneous mixture can be formed during the compression stroke. Near TDC, a pilot injection is conducted. Combined fuel mass for the pre-injection and pilot injection is under the lean combustion limit of DME. Thus, the mixture is enriched and combustion can take place only in the neighborhood of sprays of the pilot injection. The main injection is conducted after TDC. Because only about half of the demand needs to be injected and DME evaporates almost immediately, combustion duration for the main injection plus the unburnt fuel in the cylinder should not be long because a large portion of the fuel has been premixed with air. With a high EGR rate and proper timing for the main injection, low temperature combustion could be realized.

Design of cylinder heads involves complex constraints that must satisfy thermal, strength, performance, and manufacturing requirements which present a great challenge for successful development. During development of a new highly loaded cylinder head, CAE methods predicted unacceptable fatigue safety factors for the initial prototype design. Hydropulsator component testing was undertaken and the results were correlated with the analysis predictions using a statistical method to calculate failure probability. Shape optimization was undertaken to improve high cycle fatigue safety in vulnerable regions of the cylinder head water jacket for the subsequent design release. The optimization process provided more efficient design guidance than previously discovered through a traditional iterative approach. Follow-on investigations examined other shape optimization software for fatigue improvement in the cylinder head.

Physicochemical characteristics of the soot deposits in a fouled EGR cooler are studied in this paper. It is found that a three-layer model for the soot deposited in the EGR cooler may well describe the behavior of the depositing process: a dense base layer with micro pores (≺ 5 nm), a randomly packed intermediate layer with meso pores (5-50 nm) and a loose surface layer with macro pores (≻ 50 nm). The surface layer is thick and highly porous, formed by mechanical interlocking of the agglomerated primary soot particles or soot clusters. The soot particles in the surface layer may be removed by a high shear EGR flow. Condensates in the deposit, especially water, can have a significant influence on the structure of the deposit. Capillary forces on the wetted soot particles could be comparable to the contact forces holding the particles together. It is found that the hydroscopicity of the soot particles vary with their content of soluble organic fraction (SOF).

Utilization of direct injection systems is one of the most promising technologies for fuel economy improvement for SI engine powered passenger cars. Engine performance is essentially influenced by the characteristics of the injection equipment. This paper will present CFD analyses of a swirl type GDI injector carried out with the Multiphase Module of AVL's FIRE/SWIFT CFD code. The simulations considered three phases (liquid fuel, fuel vapor, air) and mesh movement. Thus the transient behavior of the injector can be observed. The flow phenomena known from measurement and shown by previous simulation work [2, 7, 10, 11] were reproduced. In particular the simulations shown in this paper could explain the cause for the outstanding atomization characteristics of the swirl type injector, which are caused by cavitation in the nozzle hole.

This report describes work recently performed by AVL and DaimlerChrysler, including both simulations and single-cylinder research engine development, to quantify the effects of fuel humidity on the performance of an internal combustion engine fueled by hydrogen. The combustion process was simulated from both a thermodynamic and a chemical kinetics standpoint. Both simulations suggested that substantial NOx reductions could be achieved. An engine was then operated on a laboratory fuel system designed to provide hydrogen at various levels of humidity, and the sensitivity of its performance (emissions and efficiency) to humidity and excess air ratio was determined. These tests verified that NOx emissions were reduced by fuel humidity. Finally, the engine and simulation results were compared. Although correlation was not perfect, the trends proved to be correct.

The current paper describes a methodology for combustion bowl assessment for diesel engines. The methodology is based on the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) following a Design of Experiments (DoE) procedure. In this work the 3D CFD simulation was performed by the commercial CFD code AVL-FIRE for different combustion bowls from intake valve closing (IVC) to exhaust valve opening (EVO). The initial conditions (at IVC) and boundary conditions were obtained from 1D simulation. Since the work was concentrated on the spray injection, mixing, combustion as well as bowl aerodynamics only a sector mesh was employed for the calculations. A DoE procedure was also used for this simulation work in order to minimize the number of simulation runs and at the same time maintaining the accuracy required assessing the influences of different bowl geometry, spray and intake air motion parameters.

On the basis of the newly-developed fractal combustion model, the engine-thermodynamic-cycle simulations were conducted with the 1D engine-cycle-simulation program AVL-BOOST for a passenger-car SI engine with a fully-variable valve train. Results of the simulations showed a good agreement with measurements for both full and part load at various engine speeds. On the basis of the thermodynamic model for the engine, the valve event optimization was carried out for both full and part load with a partial factorial DoE plan consisting of various valve event durations and timings. For each of the selected cases, an independent optimization for the ignition timing was performed to determine the minimum BSFC under a constraint on specified knock criteria. Satisfactory results for the valve event optimization were achieved.

This paper discusses the performance of the radial plunger pump used in the contemporary diesel common-rail fuel systems for rail-pressure supply. On the ground of the pump mechanism, the transient flow, drive torque, and efficiency of the pump are analyzed for various operation conditions. The analysis shows that the number of plungers and utilization of the pump capacity govern fluctuations in the pump discharge. The pump flow can be characterized by a discharge function which applies to both full- and part-capacity pump flows. At the full pump capacity, the discharge fluctuation is determined solely by the number of plungers: a pump with an odd number of plungers has more ripples and lower amplitudes in its discharge than a pump with an even number of plungers does. A pump operates at a part capacity has more fluctuations in the discharge than when at the full capacity.

Cavitation induced cylinder liner erosion can be a significant durability problem in high power density diesel engines. It is typically discovered in the field, thus causing costly redesigns. The application of a predictive simulation to analyze the liner cavitation process upfront could identify the problem early on and enable significant savings. Hence, this work investigates the ability of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) multiphase flow simulation tool to handle vibration induced cavitation. A flow of liquid through a U-shaped duct is analyzed, where a middle segment of the duct is set to vibrate in a manner resembling vibration of the cooling jacket walls in an internal combustion engine. Velocity, pressure and vapor concentration fields are tracked for two cases, distinguished by different frequencies of duct wall vibration.