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With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. To seek for an optimized volumetric ratio for ABE-diesel blends, the previous work in our team has experimentally investigated and analyzed the combustion features of ABE-diesel blends with different volumetric ratio (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %) in a constant volume chamber. It was found that an increased amount of acetone would lead to a significant advancement of combustion phasing whereas butanol would compensate the advancing effect. Both spray dynamic and chemistry reaction dynamic are of great importance in explaining the unique combustion characteristic of ABE-diesel blend. In this study, a semi-detailed chemical mechanism is constructed and used to model ABE-diesel spray combustion in a constant volume chamber.

Performances of a centrifugal turbocharger compressor are investigated and validated in this paper. Based on the validation results, numerical optimizations are performed using ANN and CFD methods. Different impeller geometry with free parameters controlling stacking laws, end-wall, blade sectional camber curves and corresponding performances are used as input layer of ANN in the optimization, while adiabatic total-to-total efficiency and total pressure ratio are used as output layer of the optimization cycle. With this method, the performances of the compressor investigated in this paper are improved notably.

In this paper the hardware and software of a real-time dynamic test bench for simulating the total road forces of vehicles fitted with Automated Manual Transmissions (AMT) is described. First, the purpose and meaning of this research are discussed. And then, we select the hardware components of the test bench system according to the application requirements and complete the system design. Statement of the structure, working principle and function of the system is also included in this part. According to the experimental procedure of simulating total road load forces of vehicle under real-time conditions on the dynamic test bench, the software system is designed using Visual C++ 6.0, CAN bus communication protocol, RS-232, and network technology. Finally, some experimental tests for the system are carried out with the results that this design corresponds to the real-time dynamic requirements.

For the application of advanced clean combustion technologies, such as diesel HCCI/LTC, a compressor with high efficiency over a broad operation range is required to supply a high amount of EGR with minimum pumping loss. A compressor with high pitch of vaneless diffuser would substantially improve the flow range of the compressor, but it is at the cost of compressor efficiency, especially at low mass flow area where most of the city driving cycles resides. In present study, an ultra low solidity compressor vane diffuser was numerically investigated. It is well known that the flow leaving the impeller is highly distorted, unsteady and turbulent, especially at relative low mass flow rate and near the shroud side of the compressor. A conventional vaned diffuser with high stagger angle could help to improve the performance of the compressor at low end. However, adding diffuser vane to a compressor typically restricts the flow range at high end.

Self recirculation casing treatment has been showed to be an effective technique to extend the flow range of the compressor. However, the mechanism of its surge extension on turbocharger compressor is less understood. Investigation and comparison of internal flow filed will help to understand its impact on the compressor performance. In present study, experimentally validated CFD analysis was employed to study the mechanism of surge extension on the turbocharger compressor. Firstly a turbocharger compressor with replaceable inserts near the shroud of the impeller inlet was designed so that the overall performance of the compressor with and without self recirculation casing treatment could be tested and compared. Two different self recirculation casing treatments had been tested: one is conventional self recirculation casing treatment and the other one has deswirl vanes inside the casing treatment passage.

A single-cylinder Gasoline Direct Injection Engine (GDI) engine with a centrally mounted spray-guided injection system (150 bar fuel pressure) has been operated with stoichiometric and rich mixtures. The base fuel was 65% iso-octane and 35% toluene; hydrogen was aspirated into a plenum in the induction system, and its equivalence ratios were set to 0, 0.02, 0.05 and 0.1. Ignition timing sweeps were conducted for each operating point. Combustion was speeded up by adding hydrogen as expected. In consequence the MBT ignition advance was reduced, as were cycle-by-cycle variations in combustion. Adding hydrogen led to the expected reduction in IMEP as the engine was operated at a fixed manifold absolute pressure (MAP). An engine model has also been set up using WAVE. Particulate Matter (PM) emissions were measured with a Cambustion DMS500 particle sizer.

A dual fuel engine simulation model was formulated and the combustion process of a diesel/natural gas dual fuel engine was studied using an updated KIVA-3V Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code. The dual fuel engine ignition and combustion process is complicated since it includes diesel injection, atomization and ignition, superimposed with premixed natural gas combustion. However, understanding of the combustion process is critical for engine performance optimization. Starting from a previously validated Characteristic-Timescale diesel combustion model, a natural gas combustion model was implemented and added to simulate the ignition and combustion process in a dual fuel bus engine. Available engine test data were used for validation of both the diesel-only and the premixed spark-ignition operation regimes. A new formulation of the Characteristic-Timescale combustion model was then introduced to allow smooth transition between the combustion regimes.

This paper first discusses the principles of how to identify whether a time series has chaotic characteristics, and explores a method of finding out the embedding dimension of a time series. Then Grassberger-Procaccia (G-P) algorithm is adopted to calculate correlative dimension. After the validity of G-P algorithm is confirmed using several traditional strange attractors, it is applied to calculate the fractal dimension of some vibration signals of an automotive transmission. This article presents how to apply chaos and fractal theories to diagnose the wearing of ball bearings in automotive transmissions based on the analysis of the transmission acceleration vibration signals. The results show that the vibration signals of automotive transmissions have fractal nature. There are certain correlations between a bearing's condition and the fractal dimension of its vibration signal.

Along with the booming expansion of private car preservation, many Chinese cities are now struggling with hazy weather and ground-level ozone contamination. Although central government has stepped up efforts to purify skies above China, counter-strategies to curb ground-level ozone is comparatively weak. By using maximum incremental reactivity (MIR) method, this paper estimated the ozone forming potential for twenty-five Euro-3 to Euro-5 passenger cars burning conventional gasoline, methanol-gasoline, ethanol-gasoline, neat methanol and compressed natural gas (CNG). The results showed that, for all the fuel tested, VOC/NOx ratios and SR values decreased with the upgrading of emission standard. Except for Euro-3 M100 and Euro-4 M85, SR values for alternative fuel were to different degrees smaller than those for gasoline. When the emission standard was shifted from Euro-4 to Euro-5, OFP values estimated for gasoline vehicle decreased.

Dual-fuel combustion combining a premixed charge of compressed natural gas (CNG) and a pilot injection of diesel fuel offer the potential to reduce diesel fuel consumption and drastically reduce soot emissions. In this study, dual-fuel combustion using methane ignited with a pilot injection of No. 2 diesel fuel, was studied in a single cylinder diesel engine with optical access. Experiments were performed at a CNG substitution rate of 70% CNG (based on energy) over a wide range of equivalence ratios of the premixed charge, as well as different diesel injection strategies (single and double injection). A color high-speed camera was used in order to identify and distinguish between lean-premixed methane combustion and diffusion combustion in dual-fuel combustion. The effect of multiple diesel injections is also investigated optically as a means to enhance flame propagation towards the center of the combustion chamber.

The electronic unit pump system, which is widely applied to the heavy-duty diesel engine, belongs to the pulsating high-pressure fuel injection system, and the fuel pressure fluctuations have an essential influence on the spray and combustion in the internal combustion engine. Besides, pressure fluctuations are always aroused by the motion of actuators, such as the injector or other control valves, so it is also an advantage for fault diagnosis and feedback control to ascertain the relationship between the pressure fluctuation and the motion of the actuator. In this study, experiments and 1D-simulation were carried on to investigate the fuel pressure fluctuation characteristics and their correlations with the transient motion of the needle valve in the injector.

Methanol has been regarded as a potential transportation fuel due to its advanced combustion characteristics and flexible source. However, it is suffering from misfire and high HC emissions problems under cold start and low load conditions either on methanol SI engine or on methanol/diesel dual fuel engine. Hydrogen is a potential addition that can enhance the combustion of methanol due to its high flammability and combustion stability. In the current work, the effect of hydrogen fraction on the laminar flame characteristics of methanol- hydrogen-air mixture under varied equivalence ratio was investigated on a constant volume combustion chamber system coupled with a schlieren setup. Experiments were performed over a wide range of equivalence ratio of the premixed charge, varied from 0.8 to 1.4, as well as different hydrogen fraction, 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% (n/n). All tests were carried out at fixed temperature and pressure of 400K and 0.1MPa.

CNG-diesel dual fuel combustion mode has been regarded as a practical operation strategy because it not only can remain high thermal efficiency but also make full use of an alternative fuel, natural gas. However, it is suffering from misfire and high HC emissions under cold start and low load conditions. As known, hydrogen has high flammability. Thus, a certain proportion of hydrogen can be added in the natural gas (named HCNG) to improve combustion performance. In this work, the effect of hydrogen volume ratio on combustion characteristics was investigated on an optically accessible single-cylinder CNG-diesel engine using a Phantom v7.3 color camera. HCNG was compressed into the tank under different hydrogen volume ratios varied from 0% to 30%, while the energy substitution rate of` HCNG remained at 70%.

As known, the constant injection mass is a criterion for measuring the thermal efficiency of diesel engines. In this study, the effects of nozzle hole diameter on diesel free-spray characteristics were investigated in constant injection mass condition. The experiment was performed in a constant volume combustion chamber equipped with a high pressure common-rail injector that can change nozzles. Three single-hole axis nozzles with different hole diameters were used. High speed camera and Schlieren visualization set-up were used to capture the spray behaviors of liquid phase and vapor phase respectively. For liquid phase spray, the higher nozzle hole diameter, the higher were the liquid phase spray penetration rate and the saturated liquid phase spray penetration length. The saturated liquid phase spray penetration length wound not grow but oscillate around different mean values at the steady stage.

The control valve is the most important implementation part of a high pressure common rail system, and its flow characteristics have a great influence on the performance of an injector. In this paper, based on the structure and the working principle of an electromagnetic injector in a high pressure common rail system, a simulation model of the injector is established by AMESim software. Some key parameters of the control valve, including the volume of the control chamber, the diameter of the orifice Z (feeding orifice), the diameter of the orifice A (discharge orifice) and the hole diameter of the fuel diffusion hole are studied by using this model. The results show that these key structural parameters of the control valve have a great influence on the establishment of the control chamber pressure and the action of the needle valve.

Bio-butanol has been widely investigated as a promising alternative fuel. However, the main issues preventing the industrial-scale production of butanol is its relatively low production efficiency and high cost of production. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE), the intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, has attracted a lot of interest as an alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuels, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for individual component during fermentation. If ABE could be directly used for clean combustion, the separation costs would be eliminated which save an enormous amount of time and money in the production chain of bio-butanol.

Bio-butanol has been considered as a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engines due to its advantageous physicochemical properties. However, the further development of bio-butanol is inhibited by its high recovery cost and low production efficiency. Hence, the goal of this study is to evaluate two upstream products from different fermentation processes of bio-butanol, namely acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) and isopropanol-butanol-ethanol (IBE), as alternative fuels for diesel. The experimental comparison is conducted on a single-cylinder and common-rail diesel engine under various main injection timings (MIT) and equivalent engine load (EEL) conditions. The experimental results show that ABE and IBE significantly affect the combustion phasing. The start of combustion (SOC) is retarded when ABE and IBE are mixed with diesel. Furthermore, the ABE/IBE-diesel blends are more sensitive to the changes in MIT compared with that of pure diesel.

Soot emission, known as PM (particulate matter), is becoming a big issue for GDI engines as the emission regulations being increasingly stricter. It is found that ethanol, as an oxygenated bio-fuel, can reduce the soot emission when added to gasoline. In order to fully understand the effect of ethanol on soot reducing, the soot characteristics of ethanol/gasoline blends were studied on laminar diffusion flames. In this experiment, the blending ratio of ethanol/gasoline was set as E0/20/40/60/80. Considering the carbon content decreasing due to ethanol addition, carbon mass flow rate was remained constant. The two-dimensional distributions of soot volume fraction were measured quantitatively by using two-color laser induced incandescence technique. The results showed that ethanol is able to decrease the soot significantly, but the effect of ethanol on soot reduction is weakened with the increasing ethanol ratio.

Radial flow Variable Nozzle Turbine (VNT) enables better matching between the turbocharger and engine. At partial loading or low-end engine operating points, the nozzle vane opening of the VNT is decreased to achieve higher turbine efficiency and transient response, which is a benefit for engine fuel consumption and emission. However, under certain small nozzle opening conditions (such as nozzle brake and low-end operating points), strong shock waves and strong nozzle clearance flow are generated. Consequently, strong rotor-stator interaction between turbine nozzle and impeller is the key factor of the impeller high cycle fatigue and failure. In present paper, flow visualization experiment is carried out on a linear turbine nozzle. The turbine nozzle is designed to have single-sided clearance, and the Schlieren visualization method is used to describe the formation and development process of clearance flow and shock wave under different clearance and expansion ratio configurations.

Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier because it is characterized by a fast combustion velocity, a wide range of sources, and clean combustion products. A hydrogen internal combustion engine (H2ICE) with a turbocharger has been used to solve the contradiction of power density and control NOx. However, the selection of a H2ICE compressor with a turbocharger is very different from traditional engines because of gas fuel. Hydrogen as a gas fuel has the same volume as its cylinder and thus increases pressure and reduces the mass flow rate of air in cylinder for a port fuel injection-H2ICE (PFI-H2ICE). In this study, a general method involving a H2ICE with a turbocharger is proposed by considering the effect of hydrogen on cylinders. Using this method, we can calculate the turbocharged pressure ratio and mass flow rate of air based on the target power and general parameters. This method also provides a series of intake temperatures of air before calculation to improve accuracy.