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Reactivity-controlled compression ignition (RCCI) has been shown to be capable of providing improved engine efficiencies coupled with the benefit of low emissions via in-cylinder fuel blending. Much of the previous body of work has studied the benefits of RCCI operation using high injection pressures (e.g., 500 bar or greater) with common rail injection (CRI) hardware. However, low-pressure fueling technology is capable of providing significant cost savings. Due to the broad market adoption of gasoline direct injection (GDI) fueling systems, a market-type prototype GDI injector was selected for this study. Single-cylinder light-duty engine experiments were undertaken to examine the performance and emissions characteristics of the RCCI combustion strategy with low-pressure GDI technology and compared against high injection pressure RCCI operation. Gasoline and diesel were used as the low-reactivity and high-reactivity fuels, respectively.

An experimental study of luminous combustion in a modern diesel engine was performed to investigate the effect of injection parameters on NOX and soot formation via flame temperature and soot KL factor measurements. The two-color technique was applied to 2-D soot luminosity images and area-averaged soot radiation signals to obtain spatially and temporally resolved flame temperature and soot KL factor. The imaging system used for this study was based on a wide-angle endoscope that was mounted in the cylinder head and allowed different views of the combustion chamber. The experiments were carried out on a single-cylinder 2.4 liter D.I. diesel engine equipped with an electronically controlled common-rail injection system. Operating conditions were 1600 rpm and 75% load. The two-color results confirm that retarding the injection timing causes lower flame temperatures and NOX emissions but increased soot formation, independent of injection strategy.

Clutches are commonly utilised in passenger type and off-road heavy-duty vehicles to disconnect the engine from the driveline and other parasitic loads. In off-road heavy-duty vehicles, along with fuel efficiency start-up functionality at extended ambient conditions, such as low temperature and intake absolute pressure are crucial. Off-road vehicle manufacturers can overcome the parasitic loads in these conditions by oversizing the engine. Caterpillar Inc. as the pioneer in off-road technology has developed a novel clutch design to allow for engine downsizing while vehicle’s performance is not affected. The tribological behaviour of the clutch will be crucial to start engagement promptly and reach the maximum clutch capacity in the shortest possible time and smoothest way in terms of dynamics. A multi-body dynamics model of the clutch system is developed in MSC ADAMS. The flywheel is introducing the same speed and torque as the engine (represents the engine input to the clutch).

This paper reports on a comprehensive, crank-angle transient, three dimensional, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the complete lubrication system of a multi-cylinder engine using the CFD software Simerics-Sys / PumpLinx. This work represents an advance in system-level modeling of the engine lubrication system over the current state of the art of one-dimensional models. The model was applied to a 16 cylinder, reciprocating internal combustion engine lubrication system. The computational domain includes the positive displacement gear pump, the pressure regulation valve, bearings, piston pins, piston cooling jets, the oil cooler, the oil filter etc… The motion of the regulation valve was predicted by strongly coupling a rigorous force balance on the valve to the flow.

This paper describes the transient spray characteristics of a high pressure, single fluid injector, intended for use in a direct-injection spark-ignited (DISI) engine. The injector was a single hole, pintle type injector and was electronically controlled. A variety of measurement diagnostics, including full-field imaging and line-of-sight diffraction based particle sizing were employed for spray characterization. Transient patternator measurements were also performed to obtain temporally resolved average mass flux distributions. Particle size and obscuration measurements were performed at three locations in the spray and at three injection pressures: 3.45 MPa (500 psi), 4.83 Mpa (700 psi), and 6.21 MPa (900 psi). Results of the spray imaging experiments indicated that the spray shapes varied with time after the start of injection and contained a leading mass, or slug along the center line of the spray.

Although soot-formation processes in diesel engines have been well characterized during the mixing-controlled burn, little is known about the distribution of soot throughout the combustion chamber after the end of appreciable heat release during the expansion and exhaust strokes. Hence, the laser-induced incandescence (LII) diagnostic was developed to visualize the distribution of soot within an optically accessible single-cylinder direct-injection diesel engine during this period. The developed LII diagnostic is semi-quantitative; i.e., if certain conditions (listed in the Appendix) are true, it accurately captures spatial and temporal trends in the in-cylinder soot field. The diagnostic features a vertically oriented and vertically propagating laser sheet that can be translated across the combustion chamber, where “vertical” refers to a direction parallel to the axis of the cylinder bore.

Software systems on electronically controlled diesel truck engines typically provide diagnostic features to enable the engine mechanic to identify and debug system problems. As future systems become more sophisticated, so will the diagnostic requirements. The advantages of serviceability and accuracy found in todays electronic systems must not be allowed to degrade due to this increased sophistication. One method of maintaining a high level of serviceability and accuracy is to place an even greater priority on diagnostics and servicing in the initial design phase of the product than is done today. In particular, three major goals of future diagnostic systems should be separation of component failures from system failures, prognostication of failures and analysis of engine performance. This paper will discuss a system to realize these goals by dividing the diagnostic task into the Electronic System Diagnostics, Engine System Diagnostics and the Diagnostic Interface.

Off-highway machine mounting system isolation, especially the cab mounting system, significantly affects the operator comfort by providing damping to the harsh inputs and isolating the structure-borne energy from traveling into the cab. Mounting system isolation performance is decided not only by the isolation component, but also the mounting bracket structure, and should be treated as a system. This paper gives a review of how the mounting system isolates structural energy and the effect of the bracket structure stiffness to the mounting system isolation performance.

There has been an ongoing interest in replacing mineral oil with more biodegradable and/or fire-resistant hydraulic fluids in many mobile equipment applications. Although many alternative fluids may be more biodegradable, or fire-resistant, or both than mineral oil, they often suffer from other limitations such as poorer wear, oxidative stability, and yellow metal corrosion which inhibit their performance in high-pressure hydraulic systems, particularly high pressure piston pump applications. From the fluid supplier's viewpoint, the development of a definitive test, or series of tests, that provides sufficient information to determine how a given fluid would perform with various hydraulic components would be of interest because it would minimize extensive testing. This is often too slow or prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, from OEM's (original equipment manufacturer's) point of view, it would be advantageous to develop a more effective, industry accepted fluid analysis screening.

In-cylinder temperature and velocity fields were quantified simultaneously in an optically accessible, small-bore diesel engine. A technique utilizing luminescence from Pr:YAG phosphor particles aerosolized into the intake air was used for temperature determination while particle image velocimetry (PIV) on the aforementioned phosphor particles was used to simultaneously measure the velocity field. The temperature and velocity fields were measured at different points throughout the compression stroke up to −30 CAD. Systematic interference due to emission from the piston window reduced the accuracy of the measurements at crank angles closer to TDC. Single-shot simultaneous measurements of the temperature and velocity fields were made using both unheated and heated intake temperatures. In both cases, cycle-to-cycle variations in the temperature and velocity fields were visible.

This paper presents a diagnostics methodology that has applications to internal combustion engines as well as other dynamic devices. Included is an overview of the theoretical foundation of the approach, discussions on its application to internal combustion engine diagnostics, and experimental engine data showing the application of this methodology. Also included are the recent developments addressing issues of the effect of motoring compression and expansion work on crankshaft speed fluctuations and the resulting torque estimation. The methodology consists of a hard-wired nonlinear to linear transformation of engine variables that allow all subsequent diagnostics and control calculations to use linear mathematics, which significantly simplifies the size and complexity of the engine control and diagnostics strategy and code.

Most of the history of systems engineering has been focused on processes for engineering a single complex system. However, most large enterprises design, manufacture, operate, sell, or support not one product but multiple product lines of related but varying systems. They seek to optimize time to market, costs of development and production, leverage of intellectual assets, best use of talented human resources, overall competitiveness, overall profitability and productivity. Optimizing globally across multiple product lines does not follow from treating each system family member as an independently engineered system or product. Traditional systems engineering principles can be generalized to apply to families. This article includes a multi-year case study of the actual use of a generic model-based systems engineering methodology for families, Systematica™, across the embedded electronic systems products of one of the world's largest manufacturers of heavy equipment.

The focus of this paper is to discuss the modeling and control of intake plenum pressure on the Powertrain Control Research Laboratory's (PCRL) Single-Cylinder Engine (SCE) transient test system using a patented device known as the Intake Air Simulator (IAS), which dynamically controls the intake plenum pressure, and, subsequently, the instantaneous airflow into the cylinder. The IAS exists as just one of many devices that the PCRL uses to control the dynamic boundary conditions of its SCE transient test system to make it “think” and operate as though it were part of a Multi-Cylinder Engine (MCE) test system. The model described in this paper will be used to design a second generation of this device that utilizes both continuously and discretely actuating valves working in parallel.

Engineering new technology and products challenges managers to balance design innovation and program risk. To do this, managers need methods to judge future results to avoid program and product disasters. Besides the traditional prediction tools of schedule, simulations and “iron tests”, process control standards (with measurements) can also be applied to the development programs to mitigate risks. This paper briefly discusses the theory and case history behind some new process control methods and standards currently in place at Caterpillar's Electrical & Electronics department. Process standards reviewed in this paper include process mapping, ISO9001, process controls, and process improvement models (e.g. SEI's CMMs.)

Powertrain simulation is becoming an increasingly valuable tool to evaluate new technologies proposed for future military vehicles. The powertrain of the M1A1 Abrams tank is currently being modeled in the Powertrain Control Research Laboratory (PCRL) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This powertrain model is to be integrated with other component models in an effort to produce a high fidelity simulation of the entire vehicle.

In this work we studied the effects of piston bowl design on combustion in a small-bore direct-injection diesel engine. Two bowl designs were compared: a conventional, omega-shaped bowl and a stepped-lip piston bowl. Experiments were carried out in the Sandia single-cylinder optical engine facility, with a medium-load, mild-boosted operating condition featuring a pilot+main injection strategy. CFD simulations were carried out with the FRESCO platform featuring full-geometric body-fitted mesh modeling of the engine and were validated against measured in-cylinder performance as well as soot natural luminosity images. Differences in combustion development were studied using the simulation results, and sensitivities to in-cylinder flow field (swirl ratio) and injection rate parameters were also analyzed.

This paper investigates flow and combustion in a full-cycle simulation of a four-stroke, three-valve HCCI engine by visualizing the flow with pathlines. Pathlines trace massless particles in a transient flow field. In addition to visualization, pathlines are used here to trace the history, or evolution, of flow fields and species. In this study evolution is followed from the intake port through combustion. Pathline analysis follows packets of intake charge in time and space from induction through combustion. The local scalar fields traversed by the individual packets in terms of velocity magnitude, turbulence, species concentration and temperatures are extracted from the simulation results. The results show how the intake event establishes local chemical and thermal environments in-cylinder and how the species respond (chemically react) to the local field.

A numerical study of air-fuel mixing in a direct-injection spark-ignition engine was carried out. In this paper, the numerical models are described and grid generation methods to represent a realistic port-valve-chamber geometry is discussed. To model a vaporizing hollow-cone spray resulting from an automotive pressure-swirl injector, a newly developed sheet spray atomization model was used to compute the processes of disintegration of the liquid sheet and breakup of the subsequent drops. Computations were performed of a particular 4-valve pent-roof engine configuration in which the intake process and an early fuel injection scheme were considered. After an analysis of the intake-generated flow structures in this engine configuration, the spray behavior and the spatial and temporal evolution of fuel liquid and vapor phases are characterized.

A two-dimensional transient Heat Conduction in Components code (HCC) was successfully set up and extensively used to calculate the temperature field existing in real engine combustion chambers. The Saul'yev method, an explicit, unconditionally stable finite difference method, was used in the code. Consideration of the gasket between the cylinder wall and head, and the air gap between the piston and liner were included in the code. The realistic piston bowl shape was modeled with a grid transformation and piston movement was considered. The HCC code was used to calculate the wall temperature of an Isuzu ceramic engine and a Caterpillar heavy-duty diesel engine. The code was combined with the KIVA-II code in an iterative loop, in which the KIVA-II code provided the instantaneous local heat flux on the combustion chamber surfaces, and the HCC code computed the time-averaged wall temperature distribution on the surfaces.

This study investigates the effect of air-injection during the late combustion period produced by an air-cell on emissions from a direct injected diesel engine. The engine considered is a Caterpillar 3401 test engine which was modeled with an air-cell included as part of the piston geometry. A version of the KIVA-II code with updated submodels for diesel combustion and emissions was modified to allow for geometries with walls interior to the domain. This modified version of KIVA-II was then used to model an air-cell equipped diesel engine for four different air-cell configurations. Of the four air-cell configurations simulated, one proved successful in reducing the predicted engine emissions by more than a factor of two while simultaneously reducing NOx by a slight amount, thus moving the engine off its particulate-NOx tradeoff curve defined by varying the fuel injection timing.