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Combustion visualizations were carried out in a constant volume vessel to study the partially premixed combustion of a gasoline-like fuel using high speed imaging. The test fuel (G80H20) is composed by volume 80% commercial gasoline and 20% n-heptane. The effects of ambient gas composition, ambient temperature and injection pressure on G80H20 combustion characteristics were analyzed. Meanwhile, a comparison of the EGR effect on combustion process between G80H20 and diesel was made. Four ambient gas conditions that represent the in-cylinder gas compositions of a heavy-duty diesel engine with EGR ratios of 0%, 20%, 40% and 60% were used to simulate EGR conditions. Variables also include two ambient temperature (910K and 870K) and two injection pressure (20 MPa and 50 MPa) conditions.

Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines have developed rapidly in recent years driven by fuel efficiency and consumption requirements, but face challenges such as injector deposits and particulate emissions compared to Port Fuel Injection (PFI) engines. While the mechanisms of GDI injector deposits formation and that of particulate emissions have been respectively revealed well, the impact of GDI injector deposits and their relation to particulate emissions have not yet been understood very well through systematic approach to investigate vehicle emissions together with injector spray analysis. In this paper, an experimental study was conducted on a GDI vehicle produced by a Chinese Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and an optical spray test bench to determine the impact of injector deposits on spray and particulate emissions.

The large amount of controllable fuel injection parameters of Diesel engine equipped with high pressure common-rail fuel injection system makes the control of combustion more flexible, and also makes the workload of calibration and optimization much heavier. For higher efficiency, model-based approaches are presented and researched. This contribution presents a new method for modeling which is constituted by Neural Network and Adaptive Network-based Fussy Inference System (ANFIS). The experiment is carried out on a 6-cylinder common rail diesel engine. The analysis and experiment show that effective modeling can be achieved using this method.

A plateau self-adapted turbocharging system based on variable geometry turbocharger (VGT) technology is proposed to solve the problem of diesel engine operating at plateau. The control strategy of the plateau self-adapted turbocharging system is studied using a GT-Power engine model. The control strategy is based on the optimization of the VGT nozzle vane position at various engine operating conditions and various altitudes. Simulation results show that by optimizing the matching and controlling the VGT, the performance of the engine matched with VGT can be improved significantly compared with the one matched with FGT (fixed geometry turbocharger) at various altitudes. Surge and overspeed phenomena of the turbocharger can also be avoided.

Atomization of fuel sprays is a key factor in controlling the combustion quality in the direct-injection engines. In this present work, the effect of saturation ratio (Rs) on the near nozzle spray patterns of ethanol was investigated using an ultra-high speed imaging technique. The Rs range covered both flash-boiling and non-flash boiling regions. Ethanol was injected from a single-hole injector into an optically accessible constant volume chamber at a fixed injection pressure of 40 MPa with different fuel temperatures and back pressures. High-speed imaging was performed using an ultrahigh speed camera (1 million fps) coupled with a long-distance microscope. Under non-flash boiling conditions, the effect of Rs on fuel development was small but observable. Clear fuel collision can be observed at Rs=1.5 and 1.0. Under the flash boiling conditions, near-nozzle spray patterns were significant different from the non-flash boiling ones.

Advanced exhaust after-treatment technology is required for heavy-duty diesel vehicles to achieve stringent Euro VI emission standards. Diesel particulate filter (DPF) is the most efficient system that is used to trap the particulate matter (PM), and particulate number (PN) emissions form diesel engines. The after-treatment system used in this study is catalyzed DPF (CDPF) downstream of diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) with secondary fuel injection. Additional fuel is injected upstream of DOC to enhance exothermal heat which is needed to raise the CDPF temperature during the active regeneration process. The objective of this research is to numerically investigate soot loading and active regeneration of a CDPF on a heavy-duty diesel engine. In order to improve the active regeneration performance of CDPF, several factors are investigated in the study such as the effect of catalytic in filter wall, soot distribution form along filter wall, and soot loads.

Turbulent jet ignition (TJI) combustion using pre-chamber ignition can accelerate the combustion speed in the cylinder and has garnered growing interest in recent years. However, it is complicated for the optimization of the pre-chamber structure and combustion system. This study investigated the effects of the pre-chamber structure and the intake ports on the combustion characteristics of a gasoline engine through CFD simulation. Spark ignition (SI) combustion simulation was also conducted for comparison. The results showed that the design of the pre-chamber that causes the jet flame colliding with walls severely worsen the combustion, increasing the knocking intendency, and decrease the thermal efficiency. Compared with SI combustion mode, the TJI combustion mode has the higher heat transfer loss and lower unburned loss. The well-optimized pre-chamber can accelerate the flame propagation with knock suppression.

The accuracy of road input identifiaction for autonomous vehicles (AVs) system, especially in state-based AVs control for improving road handling and ride comfort, is a challenging task for the intelligent transport system. Due to the high fatality rate caused by inaccurate state-based control algorithm, how to precisely and effectively acquire road rough information and chose the reasonable road-based control algorithm become a hot topic in both academia and industry. Uncertainty is unavoidable for AVs system, e.g., varying center of gravity (C.G.) of sprung mass, controllable suspension damping force or variable spring stiffness. To tackle the above mentioned, this paper develops a novel observer approach, which combines unscented Kalman filter (UKF) and Minimum Model Error (MME) theory, to optimize the estimation accuracy of the road rough for AVs system. A full-car nonlinear model and road profile model are first established.

A conventional vehicle with gasoline engine was tested on a chassis dynamometer over the new European drive-cycle (NEDC). The distributions of the engine speed and power, the throttle positions during the drive cycle are analyzed. Engine idling, acceleration and deceleration take an important proportion in the drive cycle. If engine idling is instead by engine stop, the fuel consumption will be improved by 2.27%. In an Integrated Starter Generator (ISG) system, with the assist of the starter/generator, transient operation of the engine will decrease, which reduces fuel consumption by 6%. Fuel economy will be also improved by braking regeneration and restricting operating points to an optimized region, the details are not discussed in this paper. To reduce fuel consumption further, the region where engine usually runs in urban traffic, should be paid more attention to while engine calibration.

Polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers (PODEn) are promising alternative fuel candidates for diesel engines because they present advantages in soot reduction. This study uses a PODEn mixture (contains PODE3-6) from mass production to provide oxygen component in blend fuels. The spray combustion of PODEn-diesel bend fuels in a constant volume vessel was studied using high speed imaging, PLII-LEM and OH* chemiluminescence. Fuels of several blend ratios are compared with pure diesel. Flame luminance data show a near linear decrease tendency with the blend ratio increasing. The OH* images reveal that the ignition positions of all the cases have small differences, which indicates that using a low PODEn blend ratio of no more than 30% does not need significant adjustment in engine combustion control strategies. It is found that 30% PODEn blended with diesel (P30) can effectively reduce the total soot by approximately 68% in comparison with pure diesel.

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) guided design optimization was conducted for the piston bowl geometry for a heavy-duty diesel engine. The optimization goal was to minimize engine-out NOx emissions without sacrificing engine peak power and thermal efficiency. The CFD model was validated with experiments and the combustion system optimization was conducted under three selected operating conditions representing low speed, maximum torque, and rated power. A hundred piston bowl shapes were generated, of which 32 shapes with 3 spray angles for each shape were numerically analyzed and one optimized design of piston bowl geometry with spray angle was selected. On average, the optimized combustion system decreased nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 17% and soot emissions by 41% without compromising maximum engine power and fuel economy.

Ammonia shows promise as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines (ICEs) in reducing CO2 emissions due to its carbon-free nature and well-established infrastructure. However, certain drawbacks, such as the high ignition energy, the narrow flammability range, and the extremely low laminar flame speed, limit its widespread application. The dual fuel (DF) mode is an appealing approach to enhance ammonia combustion. The combustion characteristics of ammonia-diesel dual fuel mode and ammonia-PODE3 dual fuel mode were experimentally studied using a full-view optical engine and the high-speed photography method. The ammonia energy ratio (ERa) was varied from 40% to 60%, and the main injection energy ratio (ERInj1) and the main injection time (SOI1) were also varied in ammonia-PODE3 mode.

Ammonia (NH3), a zero-carbon fuel, has great potential for internal combustion engine development. However, its high ignition energy, low laminar burning velocity, narrow range of flammability limits, and high latent heat of vaporization are not conducive for engine application. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of utilizing ammonia in a heavy-duty diesel engine, specifically through low-pressure direct injection (LP-DI) of hydrogen to ignite ammonia combustion. Due to the lack of a well-corresponding mechanism for the operating conditions of ammonia-hydrogen engines, this study serves only as a trend-oriented prediction. The paper compares the engine's combustion and emission performance by optimizing four critical parameters: excess air ratio, hydrogen energy ratio, ignition timing, and hydrogen injection timing. The results reveal that excessively high hydrogen energy ratios lead to an advanced combustion phase, reducing indicated thermal efficiency.

Diesel particulate filter (DPF) is necessary for diesel engines to meet the increasingly stringent emission regulations. Many studies have demonstrated that the lubricant derived ash has a significant effect on DPF pressure drop and engine fuel economy, and this effect becomes more and more severe with the increasing of operating hours of the DPF because the ash accumulated in the DPF cannot be removed by regeneration. It is reported that most of the DPFs operated with more ash than soot in the filter for more than three quarters of the time during its lifetime [1]. In order to mitigate this problem, the original engine manufacturers (OEM) tend to use an oversized DPF for the engine. However, it will increase the costs of the DPF and reduce the compactness of the engine aftertreatment system.

The use of deposit control additives in European market gasoline is well documented for maintaining high levels of engine cleanliness and subsequent sustained fuel and emissions performance. Co-ordinating European Council (CEC) industry fuels tests have played a crucial role in helping to drive market relevant, effective and low-cost deposit control additives into European market fuels. Until now, there hasn’t been a Gasoline Direct Injection engine test available to fuel marketers in any market globally. However, a new CEC engine test is currently being developed to address that gap. Based on an in-house VW injector coking test, it shows promise for becoming a useful tool with which to develop and measure the performance of deposit control additives. A key requirement of industry tests should be to replicate issues seen in consumer vehicles, thereby providing a platform for relevant solutions.

Multibody human models are widely used to investigate responses of human during an automotive crash. This study aimed to validate a commercially available multibody human body model against response corridors from volunteer tests conducted by Naval BioDynamics Laboratory (NBDL). The neck model consisted of seven vertebral bodies, and two adjacent bodies were connected by three orthogonal linear springs and dampers and three orthogonal rotational springs and dampers. The stiffness and damping characteristics were scaled up or down to improve the biofidelity of the neck model against NBDL volunteer test data because those characteristics were encrypted due to confidentiality. First, sensitivity analysis was performed to find influential scaling factors among the entire set using a design of experiment.

The desired yaw rate is a vital target parameter for vehicle stability control, which is currently determined as a steady-state yaw rate by the linear single-track vehicle model. Tire nonlinearity deteriorates the effect of vehicle stability control at larger lateral acceleration. This paper proposes a new calculation method of the steady-state yaw rate considering the tire nonlinearity based on the brush tire model. To validate and verify the proposed method, step steering tests of the target vehicle under different lateral accelerations are carried out on a real proving ground. The results show that when the lateral acceleration is relatively small, the difference between the calculation results of the proposed method and the traditional one is not apparent, and both methods can provide a good estimation for the steady-state yaw rate; however, when the lateral acceleration is relatively large, the difference becomes apparent.

Early injection timing is an effective measure of pre-mixture formation for diesel low-temperature combustion. Three algebraic subgrid models (Smagorinsky model, dynamic Smagorinsky model and WALE model) and one-equation kinetic energy turbulent model using modified TAB breakup model (MTAB model) have been implemented into KIVA3V code to make a detailed large eddy simulation of the atomization and evaporation processes of early injection timing in a constant volume chamber and a Ford high-speed direct-injection diesel engine. The results show that the predictive vapor mass fraction and liquid penetration using LES is in good agreement with the experiment results. In combustion chamber, the sub-grid turbulent kinetic energy and viscosity using LES are less than with the RANS models, and following the increasing time, the sub-grid turbulent kinetic energy and viscosity also increase and are concentrated on the spray area.

A mathematical model of vehicle fuel cell system thermal management has been developed to investigate the effects of various design and operating conditions on the thermal management and to understand the underlying mechanism. The fuel cell stack structure is represented by a lumped thermal mass model, which has the heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics of the fuel cell stack structure. The whole thermal management system is discretized into many volumes, where each flowspit is represented by a single volume, and every pipe is divided into one or more volumes. These volumes are connected by boundaries. The model is solved numerically to analyze thermal management system performance. The effects of coolant flow rates and air flow rates on the system thermal performance, the stack thermal capacity on the transient thermal performance have been investigated in detail.

Highly autonomous vehicles have drawn the interests of many researchers in recent years. For highly autonomous vehicles, a high-definition (HD) map is crucial since it provides accurate information for autonomous driving. However, due to the possible fast-changing environment, the performance of HD maps will deteriorate over time if timely updates are not ensured. Therefore, this paper studies the updating of lightweight HD maps in closed areas. Firstly, a novel two-layer map model called a lightweight HD map is introduced to support autonomous driving in a flexible and efficient way. Secondly, typical updating of scenarios in closed areas with non-paved roads is abstracted into operations including area border expansion, road addition, and road deletion. Meanwhile, a map updating framework is proposed to address the issue of map updating in closed areas. Finally, an experiment is conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed map updating approach.