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In two research programs, Volvo has investigated high performance turbocharged versions based on the new 3-litre inline six-cylinder naturally aspirated engine. Power and torque targets were 180 kW and 385 Nm respectively, with a wide usable torque range. The MEP-(Methanol Environment Performance)-project was linked to alternative fuel studies and focused on methanol (M85) and Flexible Fuel Vehicle-(FFV)-development. With alternative fuels, it is important to investigate not only the emissions and fuel efficiency, but also the performance potential, in particular when used in turbocharged engines. The MEP-engine could be reduced to 2.5 litre displacement, due to the good specific performance with M85 fuel. Higher charge pressures could be used compared to gasoline. An M85 turbocharged high performance engine must be designed for higher peak combustion pressures.

A system for stratifying recycled exhaust gas (EGR) to substantially increase dilution tolerance has been applied to a port injected four-valve gasoline engine. This system, known as Combustion Control through Vortex Stratification (CCVS), has shown greatly improved fuel consumption at a stoichiometric air/fuel ratio. Both burnrate (10-90% burn angle) and HC emissions are almost completely insensitive to EGR up to best economy EGR rate. Cycle to cycle combustion variation is also excellent with a coefficient of variation of IMEP of less than 2% at best economy EGR rate. This paper describes a research programme aimed at gaining a better understanding of the in-cylinder processes in this combustion system.

During 1990, the Volvo Car Corporation will Introduce a new In-line six-cylinder engine featuring three litre displacement, twin overhead camshafts and 24 valves, designated the B6304F. The engine has been designed and adapted for Volvo's top-of-the-line model 960, and it has been developed to meet the market's high demands on comfort, performance, reliability, economy and environmental friendliness. The engine has been designed and manufactured with the help of advanced CAE technology. The engine structure consists of five basic aluminium parts. This construction contributes to the low engine weight of 182 kg including auxiliary units, oil and wiring. The engine's gas flow has been optimized with the help of data simulation and laser measurement technology so as to ensure efficient utilization of energy. Fuel injection and ignition timing are regulated and controlled by an advanced electronic control system, the Bosch Motronic 1.8.

In 1981 Volvo launched the 2.1L turbocharged engine for the 240 model. Since then, the market interest for turbocharged engines has increased rapidly and along with this the demand for more efficient engines. The use of intercooler and micro-computer controlled fuel- and ignition systems in passenger car applications made it possible to develop a second generation of turbocharged engines with the capability to meet these demands. This paper describes the 2.3L turbocharged engine and its development for the US-version of the 1984 760 model.

A naturally aspirated in-line six-cylinder 2.9-litre Volvo engine is operated in Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) mode, using camshafts with low lift and short duration generating negative valve overlap. This implementation requires only minor modifications of the standard SI engine and allows SI operation outside the operating range of HCCI. Standard port fuel injection is used and pistons and cylinder head are unchanged from the automotive application. A heat exchanger is utilized to heat or cool the intake air, not as a means of combustion control but in order to simulate realistic variations in ambient temperature. The combustion is monitored in real time using cylinder pressure sensors. HCCI through negative valve overlap is recognized as one of the possible implementation strategies of HCCI closest to production. However, for a practical application the intake temperature will vary both geographically and from time to time.

Look ahead information can be used to improve the powertrain’s fuel consumption while efficiently controlling exhaust emissions. A passenger car propelled by a Euro 6d capable diesel engine is studied. In the conventional approach, the diesel powertrain subsystem control is rule based. It uses no information of future load requests but is operated with the objective of low engine out exhaust emission species until the Exhaust After-Treatment System (EATS) light off has occurred, even if fuel economy is compromised greatly. Upon EATS light off, the engine is operated more fuel efficiently since the EATS system is able to treat emissions effectively. This paper presents a supervisory control structure with the intended purpose to operate the complete powertrain using a minimum of fuel while improving the robustness of exhaust emissions.

Recently Volvo Car Corporation introduced the new PremAir® catalyst system from Engelhard Corporation on their S80 luxury sedan and the new V70 estate wagon. In this paper, performance results of this catalyst system after long-term mileage accumulation will be presented. Urban taxi vehicles were used to test the catalyst over 110,000 miles. The rate of deactivation in long-term catalyst performance was found to be dependent on the radiator design, and was least for the radiator design with the highest total geometric surface area. Subsequently, a new catalyst version was developed in order to minimize the deactivation rate. This new catalyst has been evaluated under similar taxi driving conditions over 80,000 miles, and has shown improved durability performance.

This paper reports how numerical simulation can be used as a tool to guide vehicle design with respect to brake cooling demands. Detailed simulations of different brake cooling concepts are compared with experimental results. The paper consists of two parts. The first part places the emphasis on how to model the flow inside and around the brake disc. The boundary layer and the pumping effect is investigated for a ventilated single rotor. The numerical results will be compared to experimental results. In the second part, an engineering approach is applied in order to rank different technical solutions on a Volvo S80 vehicle in terms of brake cooling and aerodynamic drag. The results from the free brake disc simulations indicate that the tangential velocity can be predicted with high accuracy, e.g. standard k-ε model with prism near wall cells typically within 4% of measured data.

Cycle resolved fuel droplet dynamics measurements in the inlet port of an S.I. engine were performed under firing conditions in order to study real dynamic effects in the fuel flow to the engine. A Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) was used to detect the droplet size and velocity. The optical access was through a glass window in the bottom of the intake channel. The PDPA was synchronised with the engine combustion cycle in order to study the results in the engine frequency domain. The measurements were performed over the cross section of the channel. Different injection timing and engine running conditions were investigated, using standard unleaded gasoline. The results show that, during the camshaft's overlap period, there exists a “push-back” droplets effect, due to the pressure difference between the inlet manifold and the cylinder, that transports droplets far back in the inlet manifold.

There are a number of numerical and experimental studies of the aerodynamic performance of wheels that have been published. They show that wheels and wheel-housing flows are responsible for a substantial part of the total aerodynamic drag on passenger vehicles. Previous investigations have also shown that aerodynamic resistance moment acting on rotating wheels, sometimes referred to as ventilation resistance or ventilation torque is a significant contributor to the total aerodynamic resistance of the vehicle; therefore it should not be neglected when designing the wheel-housing area. This work presents a numerical study of the wheel ventilation resistance moment and factors that affect it, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). It is demonstrated how pressure and shear forces acting on different rotating parts of the wheel affect the ventilation torque. It is also shown how a simple change of rim design can lead to a significant decrease in power consumption of the vehicle.

This study focus on the aerodynamic influence of the engine bay packaging, with special emphasis on the density of packaging and its effect on cooling and exterior flow. For the study, numerical and experimental methods where combined to exploit the advantages of each method. The geometry used for the study was a model of Volvo S60 sedan type passenger car, carrying a detailed representation of the cooling package, engine bay and underbody area. In the study it was found that there is an influence on the exterior aerodynamics of the vehicle with respect to the packaging of the engine bay. Furthermore, it is shown that by evacuating a large amount of the cooling air through the wheel houses a reduction in drag can be achieved.

The object with this paper is to give performance data for an ISG (Integrated Starter/Generator) which is mounted around the flywheel. With regard to weight, the ISG concept shall be competitive compared to a system with conventional components. The comparison will be based on a 48 V DC-system, and performed for a vehicle which is heavily equipped with electrical loads. The paper focuses on the electrical machine in the ISG (which is of induction type). The convertor is only covered in brief. For design of the start system, a computer program for simulation of a start sequence is used. Models implemented in the program will be discussed. A simplified equation for the load torque during cranking will be explained. For design of the generator system, two different drive cycles will be discussed. One is more related to the traditional load-balance situation during city driving, and the other related to the new load-balance obtained with the characteristic of an induction machine.

In the quest for a highly efficient, low emission and affordable source of passenger car propulsion system, meeting future demands for sustainable mobility, the concept of homogeneous lean combustion (HLC) in a spark ignited (SI) multi-cylinder engine has been investigated. An attempt has been made to utilize the concept of HLC in a downsized multi-cylinder production engine producing up to 22 bar BMEP in load. The focus was to cover as much as possible of the real driving operational region, to improve fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions. A standard Volvo two litre four-cylinder gasoline direct injected engine operating on commercial 95 RON gasoline fuel was equipped with an advanced two stage turbo charger system, consisting of a variable nozzle turbine turbo high-pressure stage and a wastegate turbo low-pressure stage. The turbo system was specifically designed to meet the high demands on air mass flow when running lean on higher load and speeds.

Automotive wind tunnel testing is a key element in the development of the aerodynamics of road vehicles. Continuous advancements are made in order to decrease the differences between actual on-road conditions and wind tunnel test properties and the importance of ground simulation with relative motion of the ground and rotating wheels has been the topic of several studies. This work presents a study on the effect of active ground simulation, using moving ground and rotating wheels, on the aerodynamic coefficients on a passenger car in yawed conditions. Most of the published studies on the effects of ground simulation cover only zero yaw conditions and only a few earlier investigations covering ground simulation during yaw were found in the existing literature and all considered simplified models. To further investigate this, a study on a full size sedan type vehicle of production status was performed in the Volvo Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel.

Under a global impulse for less man-made emissions, the automotive manufacturers search for innovative methods to reduce the fuel consumption and hence the CO2-emissions. Aerodynamics has great potential to aid the emission reduction since aerodynamic drag is an important parameter in the overall driving resistance force. As vehicles are considered bluff bodies, the main drag source is pressure drag, caused by the difference between front and rear pressure. Therefore increasing the base pressure is a key parameter to reduce the aerodynamic drag. From previous research on small-scale and full-scale vehicles, rear-end extensions are known to have a positive effect on the base pressure, enhancing pressure recovery and reducing the wake area. This paper investigates the effect of several parameters of these extensions on the forces, on the surface pressures of an SUV in the Volvo Cars Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel and compares them with numerical results.

Heat transfer losses are one of the largest loss contributions in a modern internal combustion engine. The aim of this study is to evaluate the contribution of the piston bowl type and swirl ratio to heat losses and performance. A commercial CFD tool is used to carry out simulations of four different piston bowl geometries, at three engine loads with two different swirl ratios at each load point. One of the geometries is used as a reference point, where CFD results are validated with engine test data. All other bowl geometries are scaled to the same compression ratio and make use of the same fuel injection, with a variation in the spray target between cases. The results show that the baseline case, which is of a conventional diesel bowl shape, provides the best emission performance, while a more open, tapered, lip-less combustion bowl is the most thermodynamically efficient.

A system for stratifying recycled exhaust gas (EGR) to substantially increase dilution tolerance has been applied to a multi-cylinder port injected four-valve gasoline engine. This system, dubbed Combustion Control through Vortex Stratification (CCVS), has shown greatly improved fuel consumption at stoichiometric conditions whilst retaining ULEV compatible engine-out NOx and HC emission levels. A production feasible variable air motion system has also been assessed which enables stratification at part load with no loss of performance or refinement at full load.

This paper reports an investigation of the association between flame kernel movement and cyclic variability and assesses the relative importance of this phenomenon, with all other parameters that show a cyclic variability held constant. The flame is assumed to be subjected to a “random walk” by the fluctuating velocity component of the flow field as long as it is of the order of or smaller than the integral scale. However, the mean velocity also imposes prefered convection directions on the flame kernel motion. Two-point LDA (Laser Doppler Anemometry) measurements of mean velocity, turbulence intensity and integral length scale are used as input data to the simulations. A quasi-dimensional computer code with a moving flame center position is used to simulate the influence of these two components on the performance of an S I engine with a tumble-based combustion system.

The foremost aim of the work presented in this paper is to improve fuel economy and decrease CO2 emissions by reducing the aerodynamic drag of passenger vehicles. In vehicle development, computer aided engineering (CAE) methods have become a development driver tool rather than a design assessment tool. Exploring and developing the capabilities of current CAE tools is therefore of great importance. An efficient method for vehicle shape optimization has been developed using recent years' advancements in neural networks and evolutionary optimization. The proposed method requires the definition of design variables as the only manual work. The optimization is performed on a solver approximation instead of the real solver, which considerably reduces computation time. A database is generated from simulations of sampled configurations within the pre-defined design space. The database is used to train an artificial neural network which acts as an approximation to the simulations.

In the early stages of an aerodynamic development programme of a road vehicle it is common to use wind tunnel scale models. The obvious reasons for using scale models are that they are less costly to build and model scale wind tunnels are relatively inexpensive to operate. It is therefore desirable for model scale testing to be utilized even more than it is today. This however, requires that the scale models are highly detailed and that the results correlate with those of the full size vehicle. This paper presents a correlation study that was carried out in the Chalmers and Volvo Car Aerodynamic Wind Tunnels. The aim of the study was to investigate how successfully a correlation of the cooling air flow between a detailed scale model and a real full size vehicle could be achieved. Results show limited correlation on absolute global aerodynamic loads, but relative good correlation in drag and lift increments.