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Using renewable fuels is a reliable approach for decarbonization of combustion engines. iso-Butanol and n-butanol are known as longer chain alcohols and have the potential of being used as gasoline substitute or a renewable fraction of gasoline. The combustion behavior of renewable fuels in modern combustion engines and advanced combustion concepts is not well understood yet. Low-temperature combustion (LTC) is a concept that is a basis for some of the low emissions-high efficiency combustion technologies. Fuel ɸ-sensitivity is known as a key factor to be considered for tailoring fuels for these engines. The Lund ɸ-sensitivity method is an empirical test method for evaluation of the ɸ-sensitivity of liquid fuels and evaluate fuel behavior in thermal. iso-Butanol and n-butanol are two alcohols which like other alcohol exhibit nonlinear behavior when blended with (surrogate) gasoline in terms of RON and MON.

For reduction of fuel consumption, a new device “Water Jacket Spacer” which improves temperature distribution of a cylinder block bore wall was developed. In the case of a conventional cylinder block, coolant flow concentrates at the bottom and middle region of the water jacket. While temperature of the upper bore wall is high (due to high-temperature combustion gas) the temperature of the lower bore wall is low, since its only function is to support the piston. When the developed spacer is inserted into a water jacket, the coolant flow concentrates at the upper part of the jacket. As a result, cooling ability to the upper bore wall was improved and temperature of lower bore wall was increased, thereby reducing fuel consumption.

Knock occurrence and fuel enrichment, which is required at high engine speed and load to limit the turbine inlet temperature, are the major obstacles to further increase performance and efficiency of down-sized turbocharged spark ignited engines. A technique that has the potential to overcome these restrictions is based on the injection of a precise amount of water within the mixture charge that can allow to achieve important benefits on knock mitigation, engine efficiency, gaseous and noise emissions. One of the main objectives of this investigation is to demonstrate that water injection (WI) could be a reliable solution to advance the spark timing and make the engine run at leaner mixture ratios with strong benefits on knock tendency and important improvement on fuel efficiency.

Few previous publications investigate the possibility of combining multiple waste heat sources in a combustion engine waste heat recovery system. A waste heat recovery system for a HD truck diesel engine is evaluated for utilizing multiple heat sources found in a conventional HD diesel engine. In this type of engine more than 50% of heat energy goes futile. The majority of the heat energy is lost through engine exhaust and cooling devices such as EGRC (Exhaust gas recirculation cooler), CAC (Charge air cooler) and engine cooling. In this paper, the potential of usable heat recuperation from these devices using thermodynamic analysis was studied, and also an effort is made to recuperate most of the available heat energy that would otherwise be lost. A well-known way of recuperating this heat energy is by employing a Rankine cycle circuit with these devices as heat sources (single loop or dual loop), and thus this study is focused on using a Rankine cycle for the heat recovery system.

The Direct Injection (DI) of gasoline in Spark Ignition (SI) engines is very attractive for fuel economy and performance improvements in spark ignition engines. Gasoline direct injection (GDI) offers the possibility of multi-mode operation, homogeneous and stratified charge, with benefits respect to conventional SI engines as higher compression ratio, zero pumping losses, control of the ignition process at very lean air-fuel mixture and good cold starting. The impingement of liquid fuel on the combustion chamber wall is generally one of the major drawbacks of GDI engines because its increasing of HC emissions and effects on the combustion process; in the wall guided engines an increasing attention is focusing on the fuel film deposits evolution and their role in the soot formation. Hence, the necessity of a detailed understanding of the spray-wall impingement process and its effects on the fuel distribution. The experimental results provide a fundamental data base for CFD predictions.

This paper presents a new application of a vehicle on-board battery charger utilizing high frequency Silicon Carbide (SiC) power devices. SiC is one of the most promising alternatives to Silicon (Si) for power semiconductor devices due to its superior material characteristics such as lower on-state resistance, higher junction temperature, and higher switching frequency. An on-board charger prototype is developed demonstrating these advantages and a peak system efficiency of 95% is measured while operating with a switching frequency of 250 kHz. A maximum output power of 6.06 kW results in a gravimetric power density of 3.8 W/kg and a volumetric power density of 5.0 kW/L, which are about 10 times the densities compared with the current Prius Plug-In Si charger. SiC technology is indispensable to eco-friendly PHV/EV development.

A prototype power control unit (PCU) was manufactured using silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors (diodes and transistors), which have low power loss when switching on and off. This PCU was installed in a hybrid vehicle (HV) and driven on a test course and chassis dynamometer. The test results confirmed a fuel efficiency improvement of about 5 percent.

This paper proposes a technology to reduce vehicle surge during towing that utilizes motors and shifting to help ensure comfort in a parallel HEV pickup truck. Hybridization is one way to reduce fuel consumption and help realize carbon neutrality. Parallel HEVs have advantages in the towing, hauling, and high-load operations often carried out by pickup trucks, compared to other HEV systems. Since the engine, motor, torque converter, and transmission are connected in series in a parallel HEV, vehicle surge may occur when the lockup clutch is engaged to enhance fuel efficiency, similar to conventional powertrains. Vehicle surge is a low-frequency vibration phenomenon. In general, the source is torque fluctuation caused by the engine and tires, with amplification provided by first-order torsional driveline resonance, power plant resonance, suspension resonance, and cabin resonance. This vibration is amplified more during towing.

The development of electric vehicles has been progressed, rapidly, to achieve Carbon neutrality by 2050. There have been increasing concerns about Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) performance due to increasing power for power trains of vehicles. Because same power train system expands to some vehicles, we have developed numerical simulations in order to predict the vehicle EMC performances. We modeled a vehicle which has inverter noises by numerical simulation to calculate electric fields based on GB/T18387. We simulated the common mode noise which flows through the shielding braid of the high voltage wire harnesses. As a result, it is confirmed a correlation between the electric fields calculated by numerical simulation and the measured one.

Trivalent chromate coating is replacing the conventional hexavalent chromate coating applied on zinc plating. Zinc plating uses one of three types of plating baths (zincate, cyanide and chloride) according to the characteristics required of subject parts. It has been recognized that trivalent chromate coating provides different corrosion resistance depending on the type of zinc plating bath used. Zinc plating with chromate coating were analyzed to clarify the cause of the corrosion resistance variation with the type of zinc plating bath. It has been revealed that the chromate coating thickness and the condition of top SiO2 layer vary with the type of zinc plating bath, resulting in corrosion resistance variation.

Mixture formation is fundamental for the development of the combustion process in internal combustion engines, for the energy release, the consumption, and the pollutant formation. Concerning the spark ignition engines, the direct injection technology is being considered as an effective mean to achieve the optimal air-to-fuel ratio distribution at each operating condition, either through charge stratification around the spark plug and stoichiometric mixture under the high power requirements. Due to the highest injection pressures, the impact of a spray on the piston or on the cylinder walls causes the formation of liquid film (wall-film) and secondary atomization of the droplets. The wall-film could have no negligible size, especially where the mixture formation is realized under a wall-guided mode. The present work aims to report the effects of the ambient pressure and wall temperature on the macroscopic parameters of the spray impact on a wall.

In order to reduce engine development timing and cost, a numerical calculation has been developed by Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Technical Center to evaluate valve train systems. The goal is to predict valve_bounce speed, valve displacement, hydraulic lash adjuster motion and strain in the rocker arm. The numerical procedure combines finite element model and multi-body dynamic analysis. Normally, strain calculation is a two-step process. In the first step, engineers obtain the excitation from the dynamic analysis. In the second step, engineers use the forcing function from dynamic analysis to calculate strain and stress. The new approach in this paper, using ADAMS, calculates dynamic load and recover strain simultaneously. As the flexibility of the moving part (for example rocker arm) is taken into account in the equations of motion, ADAMS will calculate the modal strain. Based on the modal strain, the strain or stress at any given node(s) can be recovered.

This paper describes the development and achievement of a target engine sound for a V6 SUV in consideration of the sound quality preferences of customers in the U.S. First, a simple definition for engine sound under acceleration was found using order arrangement, frequency balance, and linearity. These elements are the product of commonly used characteristics in conventional development and can be applied simply when setting component targets. The development focused on order arrangement as the most important of these elements, and sounds with and without integer orders were selected as target candidates. Next, subjective auditory evaluations were performed in the U.S. using digitally processed sounds and an evaluation panel comprising roughly 40 subjects. The target sound was determined after classifying the results of this evaluation using cluster analysis.

The common realization of the necessity to reduce the use of mineral sources is promoting the use of alternative fuels. Big efforts are being made to replace petroleum derivatives in the internal combustion engines (ICEs). For this purpose it is mandatory to evaluate the behavior of non-conventional fuels in the ICEs. The optical diagnostics have proven to be a powerful tool to analyze the processes that take place inside the engine. In particular, 2d imaging in the infrared range can reveal new details about the effect of the fuel properties since this technique is still not very common. In this work, a comparison between commercial diesel fuel and two non-conventional fuels has been made in an optically accessible diesel engine. The non-conventional fuels are: the first generation biofuel Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) and an experimental blend of diesel and a fuel with high glycerol content (HG).

In order to meet the stricter and stricter emission regulations, cleaner combustion concepts for Diesel engines are being progressively introduced. These new combustion approaches often requires closed loop control systems with real time information about combustion quality. The most important parameter for the evaluation of combustion quality in internal combustion engines is the in-cylinder pressure, but its direct measurement is very expensive and involves an intrusive approach to the cylinder. Previous researches demonstrated the direct relationship existing between in-cylinder pressure and engine block vibration signal and several authors tried to reconstruct the pressure cycle on the basis of information coming from accelerometers mounted on engine block. This paper proposes a method, based on the analysis of the engine vibration signal, for the diagnosis of combustion process in a Diesel engine.

The use of oxygenated and renewable fuels is nowadays a widespread means to reduce regulated pollutant emissions produced by internal combustion engines, as well as to reduce the greenhouse impact of transportation. Besides PM, NOx and HC emissions, also the size distribution of particles emitted at the engine exhaust represent meaningful information, considering its adverse effects on the environment and human health. In this work, the results of a comprehensive investigation on the combustion characteristics and the exhaust emissions of a GDI high performance engine, fuelled with pure bio-ethanol and European gasoline, are shown. The engine is a 4-cylinder, 4-stroke, 1750 cm₃ displacement, and turbocharged. The engine was operated at different speed/load conditions and two fuel injection strategies were investigated: homogeneous charge mode and stratified charge mode.

This paper presents an experimental study on a 2-stroke SI engine, used on small portable tools for gardening or agriculture, aimed to identify possible correlations between parameters related to ionization current and air/fuel mixture richness, considering different fuels and spark plug wear. This, to realize a simple system to control the engine parameters and adapt them to engine aging and fuel type changing. The engine was fed with commercial gasoline, low octane number gasoline, alkylate gasoline and a blend of 80% gasoline and 20% ethanol. In all tests carried out with varying engine speed and spark advance the ionization signal was characterized by a single peak, resulting in the impossibility of distinguishing chemical and thermal ionization. All data collected were analyzed looking for correlations between all the available data of CO emissions and several characteristic parameters obtained from the ionization signal.

In recent years, the automotive manufacturers have been working to reduce fuel consumption in order to cut down on CO2 emissions, promoting weight reduction as one of the fuel saving countermeasures. On the other hand, this trend of weight reduction is well known to reduce vehicle stability in response to disturbances. Thus, automotive aerodynamic development is required not only to reduce aerodynamic drag, which contributes directly to lower fuel consumption, but also to develop technology for controlling unstable vehicle behavior caused by natural wind. In order to control the unstable vehicle motion changed by external contour modification, it is necessary to understand unsteady aerodynamic forces that fluctuating natural wind in real-world environments exerts on vehicles. In the past, some studies have reported the characteristics of unsteady aerodynamic forces induced by natural winds, comparing to steady aerodynamic forces obtained from conventional wind tunnel tests.

In order to clarify future automobile technologies and fuel qualities to improve air quality, second phase of Japan Clean Air Program (JCAPII) had been conducted from 2002 to 2007. Predicting improvement in air quality that might be attained by introducing new emission control technologies and determining fuel qualities required for the technologies is one of the main issues of this program. Unregulated material WG of JCAPII had studied unregulated emissions from gasoline and diesel engines. Eight gaseous hydrocarbons (HC), four Aldehydes and three polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were evaluated as unregulated emissions. Specifically, emissions of the following components were measured: 1,3-Butadiene, Benzene, Toluene, Xylene, Ethylbenzene, 1,3,5-Trimethyl-benzene, n-Hexane, Styrene as gaseous HCs, Formaldehyde, Acetaldehyde, Acrolein, Benzaldehyde as Aldehydes, and Benzo(a)pyrene, Benzo(b)fluoranthene, Benzo(k)fluoranthene as PAHs.

We have developed a novel engine cycle simulation program (UniDES: universal diesel engine simulator) to reproduce the diesel combustion process over a wide range of engine operating parameters, such as the amount of injected fuel, the injection timing, and the EGR ratio. The approach described in this paper employs a zoning model, where the in-cylinder region is divided into up to five zones. We also applied a probability density function (PDF) concept to each zone to consider the effect of spatial non-homogeneities, such as local equivalence ratios and temperature, on the combustion characteristics. We linked this program to the commonly used commercial GT-Power® software (UniDES+GT). As a result, we were able to reproduce transient engine behavior very accurately.