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More stringent regulations have been enforced over the past few years on diesel exhaust emissions. White smoke emission, a characteristic of diesel engines during cold starting, needs to be controlled in order to meet these regulations. This study investigates the sources and constituents of white smoke. The effects of fuel properties, design and operating parameters on the formation and emissions of white smoke are discussed. A new technique is developed to measure the real time gaseous hydrocarbons (HC) as well as the solid and liquid particulates. Experiments were conducted on a single cylinder direct injection diesel engine in a cold room. The gaseous HC emissions are measured using a high frequency response flame ionization detector. The liquid and solid particulates are collected on a paper filter placed upstream of the sampling line of the FID and their masses are determined.

TWC exposure to extreme temperature could result in irreversible damage or thermal failure. Thus, a strategy embedded in the engine control unit (ECU) called catalyst overheating protection (COP) will be activated to prevent TWC overheating. When COP is activated, the command air-fuel ratio will be enriched to cool the catalyst monolith down. Fuel enrichment has been proven a main prerequisite for ammonia formation in hot TWCs as a by-product of NOx reduction. Hence, COP events could theoretically be a source of post-catalyst ammonia from petrol vehicles, but this theory is yet to be confirmed in published literature. This paper validated this hypothesis using a self-programmed chassis-level test. The speed of the test vehicle was set to constant while the TWC temperature was raised stepwise until a COP event was activated.

Propagation-based and phase-enhanced x-ray imaging was developed as a unique metrology technique to visualize the internal structure of high-pressure fuel injection nozzles. We have visualized the microstructures inside 200-μm fuel injection nozzles in a 3-mm-thick steel housing using this novel technique. Furthermore, this new x-ray-based metrology technique has been used to directly study the highly transient needle motion in the nozzles in situ and in real-time, which is virtually impossible by any other means. The needle motion has been shown to have the most direct effect on the fuel jet structure and spray formation immediately outside of the nozzle. In addition, the spray cone-angle has been perfectly correlated with the numerically simulated fuel flow inside the nozzle due to the transient nature of the needle during the injection.

An experimental study was carried out to characterize the exhaust flow structure inside the closed-coupled catalytic converter, which is installed on a firing four-cylinder 12-valve passenger car gasoline engine. Simultaneous velocity and pressure measurements were taken using cycle-resolved Laser Doppler anemometer (LDA) technique and pressure transducer. A small fraction of titanium (IV) iso-propoxide was dissolved in gasoline to generate titanium dioxide during combustion as seeding particles for the LDA measurements. It was found that the velocity is highly fluctuating due to the pulsating nature of the engine exhaust flow, which strongly depends on the engine operating conditions and the measuring locations. The pressure oscillation is correlated with the transient exhaust flow characteristics. The main exhaust flow event from each cylinder can only be observed at the certain region in front of the monolith brick.

An experimental study was performed, using cycle-resolved laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) technique, to characterize the exhaust flow structure inside a catalytic converter retro-fitted to a firing four-cylinder gasoline engine over different operating conditions. A small fraction of titanium (IV) isopropoxide was dissolved in gasoline to generate titanium dioxide during combustion as seeding particles for LDV measurements. It was found that in the front plane of the catalytic monolith, the velocity is highly fluctuating due to the pulsating nature of the engine exhaust flow, which strongly depends on the engine operating conditions. Under unloaded condition, four pairs of major peaks are clearly observed in the time history of the velocity, which correspond to the main exhaust events of each individual cylinder.

The instantaneous frictional torque (IFT) of the engine and the piston-ring assembly frictional force (PRAFF) were determined during cranking and starting of a direct injection single cylinder diesel engine. The measurements included the cylinder gas pressure, the instantaneous torque of the electric starter, the angular velocity of the crankshaft and the axial force on the connecting rod. The engine and piston friction were determined every crank angle degree for all the cycles from the time the starter was engaged to the time the engine reached the idling speed. The data was analyzed and a comparison was made between the friction in successive cycles.

In this paper, a new method for the driving of the hydraulic free piston engine (HFPE) is proposed. Hydraulic differential drive achieves the compression stroke automatically rather than special recovery system, which has a great influence on the engine dynamic performance. The purpose of this paper is to solve the key operation and control problems for HFPE to commix fuel with air. HFPE adopts two-stroke loop-scavenging and semi-direct injection. The semi-direct injection nozzle is located in the liner wall inside the main intake port, with the axes oriented towards the piston at the Bottom Dead Center (BDC). Different scavenging pressures and injection angles result in different impacts on the mixture of fuel and air in the cylinder. This study analyzes the changes of the combustion heat release rate by simulation.

The requirement of meeting the emission standards for low emission vehicles (LEV) and ultra low emission vehicles (ULEV) has resulted in a more stringent examination of all elements of the automotive internal combustion engine that contribute to emission formation. The fuel system, as one of the key elements, is the subject of renewed and expanded research in an effort to understand and optimize the important parameters. Only through such enhanced understanding of the basic processes of fuel injection, metering, atomization, targeting, pulse-to-pulse variability and induction of fuel under cold, normal and elevated temperature conditions can the very low emissions of today's vehicles be further reduced to ULEV values.

Cerebral blood vessels are an integral part of the brain and may play a role in the response of the brain to impact. The purpose of this study was to quantify the effects of surrogate vessels on the deformation patterns of a physical model of the brain under various impact conditions. Silicone gel and tubing were used as surrogates for brain tissue and blood vessels, respectively. Two aluminum cylinders representing a coronal section of the brain were constructed. One cylinder was filled with silicone gel only, and the other was filled with silicone gel and silicone tubing arranged in the radial direction in the peripheral region. An array of markers was embedded in the gel in both cylinders to facilitate strain calculation via high-speed video analysis. Both cylinders were simultaneously subjected to a combination of linear and angular acceleration using a two-segment pendulum.

Droplets impacting onto the heated surface is a typical phenomenon either in CI engines or in GDI SI engines, which is regarded significant for their air-fuel mixing. Meanwhile, alcohols including ethanol and butanol, has been widely studied as internal combustion engine alternative fuels due to their excellent properties. In this paper, under different component ratio conditions, the ethanol-butanol droplet impacting onto the heated aluminum surface has been studied experimentally. The falling height of the droplets were set at 5cm. A high-speed camera, set at 512×512pixels, 5000 fps and 20 μs of exposure time, was used to visualize the droplet behavior impinging onto the hot aluminum surface. The impact regimes of the binary droplet were identified. The result showed that the Leidenfrost temperature of droplets was affected by the ratio of ethanol to butanol. The higher the content of butanol in the droplet, the higher the Leidenfrost temperature.

An experimental study was carried out to characterize the spray atomization process of automotive port fuel injectors retrofitted to a novel pressure modulation piezoelectric driver, which generates a pressure perturbation inside the fuel line. Unlike many other piezoelectric atomizers, this unit does not drive the nozzle directly. It has a small size and can be installed easily between regular port injector and fuel lines. There is no extra control difficulty with this system since the fuel injection rate and injection timing are controlled by the original fuel-metering valve. The global spray structures were characterized using the planar laser Mie scattering (PLMS) technique and the spray atomization processes were quantified using phase Doppler anemometry (PDA) technique.

Natural gas has been considered to be one of the most promising alternative fuels due to its lower NOx and soot emissions, less carbon footprint as well as attractive price. Furthermore, higher octane number makes it suitable for high compression ratio application compared with other gaseous fuels. For better economical and lower emissions, a turbocharged, four strokes, direct injection, high pressure common rail diesel engine has been converted into a diesel/natural gas dual-fuel engine. For dual-fuel engine operation, natural gas as the main fuel is sequentially injected into intake manifold, and a very small amount of diesel is directly injected into cylinder as the ignition source. In this paper, a dual-fuel electronic control unit (ECU) based on the PowerPC 32-bit microprocessor was developed. It cooperates with the original diesel ECU to control the fuel injection of the diesel/natural gas dual-fuel engine.

Urea SCR technology is the most promising technique to reduce NOx emissions from heavy duty diesel engines. 32.5wt% aqueous urea solution is widely used as ammonia storage species for the urea SCR process. The thermolysis and hydrolysis of urea produces reducing agent ammonia and reduces NOx emissions to nitrogen and water. However, the application of urea SCR technology has many challenges at low temperature conditions, such as deposits formation in the exhaust pipe, lack deNOx performance at low temperature and freezing below -12°C. For preventing deposits formation, aqueous urea solution is hardly injected into exhaust gas stream at temperature below 200°C. The aqueous urea solution used as reducing agent precursor is the main obstacle for achieving high deNOx performances at low temperature conditions. This paper presents a solid SCR technology for control NOx emissions from heavy duty diesel engines.

This paper describes the application of Human Simulation Intelligent Control(HSIC) method to improve the idle speed performance of heavy-duty diesel engines on the basis of diesel engine electronic control system. The HSIC is a kind of intelligent control method which can be used without knowing the system's model and it can on line choose control models and it is also easy to be used under the condition of diesel engine electronic control system. In our system, we used electronic control system to control fuel quantity by double loop control of pump rack position and engine speed. From the experimental results, The engine minimum idle speed has been reduced from 800 rpm at first to 500 rpm, and the speed fluctuation have been reduced by 50 percent. From the system's design and test, the simplicity and efficiency of the HSIC control method were demonstrated.

Biodiesel offers a potentially viable alternative fuel source for diesel automotive applications. However, biodiesel may present problems at colder temperatures due to the crystallization of fatty acid methyl esters and precipitation of other components, such as unreacted triglycerides and sterol glycosides in biodiesel. At lower temperatures, the fuel gels until it solidifies in the fuel lines, clogging the fuel filter, and shutting down the engine. A laboratory-based continuous loop fuel system was utilized to determine the flow properties at low temperatures of biodiesel in B100, B20, and B10 blends for soybean and choice white grease (pig fat) biodiesel fuel. The continuous loop fuel delivery system was designed to be similar to those that can be found in engines and vehicles currently in use, and provided a mechanical pump or an electric pump as a means to simulate systems found in the different types of vehicles.

Radial flow Variable Nozzle Turbine (VNT) enables better matching between the turbocharger and engine. At partial loading or low-end engine operating points, the nozzle vane opening of the VNT is decreased to achieve higher turbine efficiency and transient response, which is a benefit for engine fuel consumption and emission. However, under certain small nozzle opening conditions (such as nozzle brake and low-end operating points), strong shock waves and strong nozzle clearance flow are generated. Consequently, strong rotor-stator interaction between turbine nozzle and impeller is the key factor of the impeller high cycle fatigue and failure. In present paper, flow visualization experiment is carried out on a linear turbine nozzle. The turbine nozzle is designed to have single-sided clearance, and the Schlieren visualization method is used to describe the formation and development process of clearance flow and shock wave under different clearance and expansion ratio configurations.

The pressure fluctuation characteristics of a constant pressure fuel system has great influence on its fuel injection characteristics. It is, therefore important to understand the impacts of these fluctuations in order to better study and optimize the fuel injection characteristics. In this study, the pressure fluctuation characteristics of the high pressure common rail system have been investigated experimentally. The transient pressure at different positions in the high pressure common rail system have been measured. The phase of pressure fluctuation during the injection process has been analyzed and the corresponding fluctuating characteristic parameters have been characterized for each phase. The changes in pressure wave propagation velocity, fuel injection pressure drop amplitude, wave amplitude, period and decay time are obtained by studying the fluctuation characteristic parameters caused by fuel pressure and temperature change.

The electric compound turbocharger(ECT) which integrates a high speed motor into a turbocharger rotor shaft can be used transiently to accelerate the turbocharger more quickly in response to an acceleration requirement. It can utilize the exhaust gas energy fully to improve the engine fuel efficiency and benefit for engine with lower emissions. The key technique of ECT is to solve the reliability problems when an electrical motor is integrated into a turbocharger shaft between the turbine and compressor wheels will increase the burden for the bearing support and affect the turbocharger shaft rotation characteristics. In order to know the dynamics behavior of higher load bearing system is explored for reliability, this paper focus on the nonlinear rotor dynamics characteristics of ECT rotor bearing system.

Hydrodynamic torque converter parameter integrated optimization design system is established based on tri-dimensional flow field theory. Design segments such as optimization initial values searching by meanline theory, cascade solid modeling, structure mesh of flow passage, CFD(computational fluid dynamics), DOE(design of experiment), RSM(response surface model)and optimization algorithm are integrated in this system and therefore a three dimensional optimization design method for hydrodynamic torque converter is presented and realized. An optimization design instance is accomplished by workstation computer cluster, and its result shows that speed and accuracy of design are improved and design system based on 3D flow field theory is accurate and effective.

In order to improve the tractive ability, steering capability and directional stability, etc. of automated mechanical transmission (AMT) vehicles running on the wet and slippery road, the anti-slip regulation (ASR) technologies for AMT vehicles are developed. The significance of ASR for AMT vehicles is introduced; a road friction recognition method based on the deceleration of driving wheels is investigated; a fuzzy anti-slip control system based on adjustment of engine torque is developed and the corresponding experimental verification is conducted. The experimental results denote that the proposed method is effective to eliminate the excessive slip when the AMT vehicle travels on the low friction road.