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The well-to-wheel greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy use of selected alternative vehicles are compared to those of a conventional gasoline vehicle. The vehicle technologies investigated are internal combustion engine, hybrid and fuel cell technology. The fuels are assumed to be produced from either crude oil or natural gas. Wherever possible real data has been used. The study shows that hybrid vehicles emit a similar amount of greenhouse gas as fuel cell vehicles. The diesel hybrid uses the least primary energy. The least greenhouse gas emissions are produced by natural gas and hydrogen hybrid and fuel cell vehicles.

A simplified combustion and emission formation model for diesel engines has been developed in a project where the long term objective is to predict emissions during transient operation. The intended application implies that the final model must be both computationally inexpensive and comprehensive so that it can be used for optimization of engine control variables when coupled to full-engine simulation software. As starting point, the proposed model uses diesel spray correlations established in combustion vessels regarding spray penetration, dispersion, gas entrainment, ignition and flame lift-off. It has been found that with minor adaption, these correlations are valid also for combustion in an engine. By assuming a fully mixing controlled combustion after ignition and by use of simplified emission models, the correlations have been found useful for predicting trends in engine-out emission with low computational cost.

Octane appetite of modern engines has changed as engine designs have evolved to meet performance, emissions, fuel economy and other demands. The octane appetite of seven modern vehicles was studied in accordance with the octane index equation OI=RON-KS, where K is an operating condition specific constant and S is the fuel sensitivity (RONMON). Engines with a displacement of 2.0L and below and different combinations of boosting, fuel injection, and compression ratios were tested using a decorrelated RONMON matrix of eight fuels. Power and acceleration performance were used to determine the K values for corresponding operating points. Previous studies have shown that vehicles manufactured up to 20 years ago mostly exhibited negative K values and the fuels with higher RON and higher sensitivity tended to perform better.

EGR has been proven to reduce NOx emissions from diesel engines significantly and is nowadays widely used in production engines. To reach future emission legislation standards, alternative EGR-routings that deliver higher EGR-rates get into the focus of researchers. As the steady-state emissions are reduced more and more, the emission peaks in transient parts of driving cycles gain importance. Therefore it is interesting to analyze the transient behavior of different EGR-routings. In this work, a 1-D simulation is performed in GT-Power for a 1.9 liter passenger car diesel engine equipped with cooled short-route EGR and a variable geometry turbine. For calibration of the simulation, load transients are measured including the measurement of transient EGR-rates using a fast CO2-analyzer and cylinder pressure to obtain heat-release data.

A study has been undertaken with a single-cylinder engine, based on the Mitsubishi GDi combustion system, that has the option of either port injection or direct injection. Tests have been undertaken with pure fuel components (methane, iso-octane, toluene and methanol), and a representative gasoline that has also been tested with the addition of 10% methanol and 10% ethanol. The volumetric efficiency depends both on the fuel and its time and place of injection. For stoichiometric operation with unleaded gasoline, changing from port injection to direct injection led to a 9% increase in volumetric efficiency, which was improved by a further 3% when 10% methanol was blended with the gasoline. The improvements in volumetric efficiency will be used to quantify the extent of charge cooling by fuel evaporation, and these will be compared with predictions assuming the maximum possible level of fuel evaporation.

An investigation was conducted to elucidate, how the latest turbocharged, direct injection Volkswagen diesel engine generation with cylinder pressure based closed loop control, to be launched in the US in 2008, reacts to fuel variability. A de-correlated fuels matrix was designed to bracket the range of US market fuel properties, which allowed a clear correlation of individual fuel properties with engine response. The test program consisting of steady state operating points showed that cylinder pressure based closed loop control successfully levels out the influence of fuel ignition quality, showing the effectiveness of this new technology for markets with a wide range of fuel qualities. However, it also showed that within the cetane range tested (39 to 55), despite the constant combustion mid-point, cetane number still has an influence on particulate and gaseous emissions. Volatility and energy density also influence the engine's behavior, but less strongly.

In this investigation the influence on knock from the residual gas in the cylinder is investigated. Gas was sampled from inside the cylinder prior to ignition, the Residual Gas Fraction, RGF, was determined and the Knock Intensity, KI, was measured. By altering the exhaust backpressure the RGF was changed. By measuring the knock intensity for different RGF the influence on knock from residual gas was investigated. It is shown that with increased residual gas fraction the knock propensity of the engine is increased, and subsequently, decreased RGF gives lower knock intensity. This is showed by the fact that, with maintained knock intensity at 30 kPa, the ignition timing can be advanced as much as 5 Crank Angle Degrees, CAD, if the RGF is reduced with 15%.

In order for premixed methane diesel dual fuel engines to meet current and future legislation, the emissions of unburned hydrocarbons must be reduced while high efficiency and high methane utilization is maintained. This paper presents an experimental investigation into the effects of in cylinder air motion, swirl and tumble, on the emissions, heat transfer and combustion characteristics of dual fuel combustion at different air excess ratios. Measurements have been carried out on a single cylinder engine equipped with a fully variable valve train, Lotus AVT. By applying different valve lift profiles for the intake valves, the swirl was varied between 0.5 and 6.5 at BDC and the tumble between 0.5 and 4 at BDC. A commercial 1D engine simulation tool was used to calculate swirl number and tumble for the different valve profiles. Input data for the simulation software was generated using a steady-state flow rig with honeycomb torque measurements.

Emissions of unburned methane are the Achilles heel of premixed gas engines whether they are spark ignited or diesel pilot ignited. If the engine is operated lean, lower temperatures prevail in the combustion chamber and several of the mechanisms behind the hydrocarbon emissions are aggravated. This paper presents an experimental investigation of the contribution from combustion chamber crevices and quenching to the total hydrocarbon emissions from a diesel-methane dual fuel engine at different operating conditions and air excess ratios. It is shown that the sensitivity to a change in topland crevice volume is greater at lean conditions than at stoichiometry. More than 70% of hydrocarbon emissions at air excess ratios relevant to operation of lean burn engines can be attributed to crevices.

A problem for the diesel engine that remains since its invention is injection nozzle hole fouling. More advanced injection systems and more complex fuels, now also including bio-components, have made the problem more intricate. Zinc and biodiesel have often been accused of being a big part of the problem, but is this really the case? In this study, nozzle fouling experiments were performed on a single cylinder engine. The experiments were divided in three parts, the first part studied the influence of zinc neodecanoate concentration on nozzle hole fouling, the second part studied the effect of neodecanoates of zinc, sodium, calcium, copper, and iron on fuel flow loss and in the last part it was examined how RME concentration in zinc neodecanoate contaminated petroleum diesel affected nozzle hole fouling propensity. After completed experiments, the nozzles were cut open and the deposits were analyzed in SEM and with EDX.

Turbocharger performance maps, which are used in engine simulations, are usually measured on a gas-stand where the temperatures distributions on the turbocharger walls are entirely different from that under real engine operation. This should be taken into account in the simulation of a turbocharged engine. Dissimilar wall temperatures of turbochargers give different air temperature after the compressor and different exhaust gas temperature after the turbine at a same load point. The efficiencies are consequently affected. This can lead to deviations between the simulated and measured outlet temperatures of the turbocharger turbine and compressor. This deviation is larger during a transient load step because the temperatures of turbocharger walls change slowly due to the thermal inertia. Therefore, it is important to predict the temperatures of turbocharger walls and the outlet temperatures of the turbocharger working fluids in a turbocharged engine simulation.

After-oxidation in Heavy Duty (HD) diesel combustion is of paramount importance for emissions out from the engine. During diffusion diesel combustion, lots of particulate matter (PM) is created. Most of the PM are combusted during the after-oxidation part of the combustion. Still some of the PM is not, especially during an engine transient at low lambda. To enhance the PM oxidation in the late engine cycle, swirl together with high injection pressure can be implemented to increase in-cylinder turbulence at different stages in the cycle. Historically swirl is known to reduce soot particulates. It has also been shown, that with today's high injection pressures, can be combined with swirl to reduce PM at an, for example, engine transient. The mechanism why the PM engine out is reduced also at high injection pressures is however not so well understood.

In-cylinder flow pattern has been examined experimentally in a heavy duty optical diesel engine and simulated with CFD code during the combustion and the post-oxidation phase. Mean swirling velocity field and its evolution were extracted from optical tests with combustion image velocimetry (CIV). It is known that the post-oxidation period has great impact on the soot emissions. Lately it has been shown in swirling combustion systems with high injection pressures, that the remaining swirling vortex in the post-oxidation phase deviates strongly from solid body rotation. Solid body rotation can only be assumed to be the case before fuel injection. In the studied cases the tangential velocity is higher in the centre of the piston bowl compared to the outer region of the bowl. The used CIV method is closely related to the PIV technique, but makes it possible to extract flow pattern during combustion at full load in an optical diesel engine.

Surge is a phenomenon that limits the operational range of the compressor at low mass flow rates. The objective of this research is to study effective operational range for a ported shroud compressor. The size of the compressor is typical for a turbocharger used on diesel engines. To be able to extend the operational range, the surge characteristics have to be assessed. This is done by performing measurement of the flow at the inlet to the compressor wheel and pressure fluctuations at the inlet and outlet of the compressor housing. Detailed numerical computations of the flow in the entire compressor section under similar operating conditions have also been carried out. The experimental work includes Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) measurements of the instantaneous and mean velocity field at the inlet. At surge, low frequency pulsations are detected that seem to result from back flow already observed in stall.

During braking, both the rotor and the pads are worn in disc brakes. This wear process generates particles which may become airborne. In passenger car field tests it is difficult to distinguish these particles from others in the surrounding environment. It may therefore be preferable to use laboratory test stands and/or simulation models to study the amount of airborne wear particles generated. This paper discusses the possibility of predicting the number distribution of airborne wear particles generated from the pad to rotor contact in disc brakes by using general purpose finite element software. A simulation methodology is proposed where the particle coefficient is established by testing at material level. This coefficient is then used in numerical wear simulation at component level. The simulated number distribution is compared to experimental measurements at component level.

Regulations on emissions from diesel and gasoline fuelled engines are becoming more stringent in all parts of the world. Hence there is a great deal of interest in developing advanced combustion systems that offer the efficiency of a diesel engine, but with low PM and NOx. One promising approach is that of Partially-Premixed Compression Ignition (PPCI) or Low Temperature Combustion (LTC). Using this approach, PM can be reduced in compression ignition engines by promoting the mixing of fuel and air prior to combustion. This paper describes the application of an advanced combustion simulator for fuels, combustion and emissions to analyze the key processes which occur in PPCI combustion mode. A detailed chemical kinetic model with advanced PM population balance sub-model is employed in a PPCI engine context to examine the impact of ignition resistance on combustion, mixing, ignition and emissions.

The objective of the research presented in this paper, is to examine the potential to suppress knock and to reduce the exhaust gas temperature by using either lean mixtures or mixtures diluted with cooled EGR, at high load conditions, in a turbo charged spark ignited engine. Engine tests were carried out with lean mixtures, rich mixtures and mixtures diluted by cooled EGR at various degrees of dilution and at various inlet temperatures. The effects on the combustion process was evaluated at constant brake mean effective pressure for various levels of dilution at two different engine speeds. Full load performance was compared with the standard fuel enriched case. Both lean homogeneous operation and cooled EGR are possible replacements of fuel enrichment. Cooled EGR allows the use of a three-way catalytic converter at all operating conditions, resulting in substantially lower tailpipe emissions of CO and HC compared to rich operation.

In this paper, the performance of a radial turbine working under pulsatile flow conditions is computed with two different modeling approaches, time resolved 1-dimensional (1-D) and 3-dimensional (3-D) CFD. The 1-D modeling approach is based on measured turbine maps which are used to compute the mass flow rate and work output from the turbine for a given expansion ratio and temperature at the inlet. The map is measured under non-pulsatile flow conditions, and in the 1-D method the turbine is treated as being a quasi-stationary flow device. In the 3-D CFD approach, a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulence approach is used. The objective of LES is to explicitly compute the large scales of the turbulence while modeling the effects of the unresolved scales. Three different cases are considered, where the simplest case only consist of the turbine and the most complex case consist of an exhaust manifold and the turbine.

A parameterization for combustion chamber cylinder pressures is tuned to measurements on an inline 6 cylinder Diesel engine at different operating conditions. Both measured and modeled signals are filtered in the frequency domain and according to the so called Lucas attenuation. Two different estimates of engine radiated noise are obtained and compared in this fashion. The influence of physically meaningful parameters on the frequency contents of the final noise level is analyzed, as well as the contribution of the pressure trace of the motored engine. The scattering of data in the pressure signal is calculated as a function of the crank angle allowing for statistical considerations.

The blending of oxygenated compounds with gasoline is projected to increase because oxygenate fuels can be produced renewably, and because their high octane rating allows them to be used in substitution of the aromatic fraction in gasoline. Blending oxygenates with gasoline changes the fuels' properties and can have a profound affect on the distillation curve, both of which are known to affect engine-out emissions. In this work, the effect of blending methanol and ethanol with gasoline on unburned hydrocarbon and particulate emissions is experimentally determined in a spray guided direct injection engine. Particulate number concentration and size distribution were measured using a Cambustion DMS500. These data are presented for different air fuel ratios, loads, ignition timings and injection timings. In addition, the ASTM D86 distillation curve was modeled using the binary activity coefficients method for the fuel blends used in the experiments.