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TFC/IW, total fuel consumption divided by inertia weight is reported with other engineering variables for recent EPA data for industry passenger cars and truck. TFC/IW is used in comparisons between gasoline and diesel engines, 49 States and California, passenger cars and trucks. The California fuel economy penalty due to more stringent emissions standards is discussed. The relationship between TFC/IW and ton miles per gallon is shown. Special attention is focused on 4 cylinder gasoline powered vehicles in 49 States passenger car fleet. The use of TFC/IW to answer the question, ‘What Changed?’ when comparing the fuel economies of two fleets is described.

Estimation of soot deposited on a wall flow type DPF, is a vital information to ensure safe and efficient DPF management. Accuracy in determining mass of soot present inside the DPF ensures a correct regeneration management strategy in-terms of fuel efficiency and DPF safety considering soot overloading and too frequent regenerations. It also ensures an efficient detection of anomalies in the PM filtration mandated by the BSVI/EURO VI legislation as a part of On-board diagnostics. Classical approach of determining soot present inside DPF involves monitoring increase in pressure drop. Real time usage of such a model is limited by the inaccuracy of measuring pressure drop at low exhaust flows. Hence, contemporary engine controllers use pressure drop based models as a failsafe and estimate DPF soot loading by modelling soot release rate due to engine combustion and the rate at which it is oxidized.

A survey of the in-service fuel consumption of passenger vehicles and derivatives in the Australian fleet was carried out in 1984-85. Seven hundred and four owners across Australia took part in the survey. Vehicle owners reported by questionnaire the amount of fuel used during four tank fills of normal operation, the distance travelled, and other details of the operating circumstances. The survey shows a clear downward trend in the fuel consumption of the Australian passenger fleet. The data also provides comparisons of actual fuel consumption obtained on the road, with laboratory derived values for fuel consumption. Vehicles in a sub-set of 40 were fitted with fuel flow meters during the survey and tested to Australian Standard 2077 for fuel consumption. The questionnaire method is shown to be a valid and accurate technique for determining in-service fuel consumption.

The current research was aimed at determining the most effective way to use alternative renewable feedstock to power a diesel engine. Mimusops elengi, a new and novel biofuel was recognized for this current study, which is widely available in the south of India. The investigation was conducted on B20 volume basis (20% Mimusops elengi methyl ester blended with 80% diesel). Furthermore, it was recognized that when the performance characteristics were traded off, the emission magnitude has slightly higher. To address the diesel engine pollution, an oxygenated nano additive like titanium oxide was dissipated only with the fuel blend at distinct mass fractions of 25 parts per million (ppm) with differing injection pressures of 180 bar, 200 bar, 220 bar, and 240 bar. The tests were created using a statistical programme known as design of experiments, which is purely based on Taguchi and response surface methodology.

Combustion concepts for future SI engines try to meet CO2-emission commitments and legislation all over the world. Where the Diesel engine has an advantage by principle, the efficiency of the SI engine has to be improved significantly, while of course the exhaust emissions must not become worse. An approach is to reduce the gas exchange losses using fully variable valve trains on the intake side of the combustion engine. OptiVent is a patented new way of controlling the mass air flow in the cylinder of a combustion engine using opening valves during the compression phase of a four stroke engine. This technology regards a wider range of variability on the valvetrain components of the engine especially for opening the valves more than one time during a cycle. On the other hand it is necessary to combine this technology with direct injection to avoid fuel losses in the exhaust system and raising the exhaust hydrocarbon emission of the engine.

An two-dimensional axial symmetrical finite volume model will be introduced for the calculation of catalytic converters. It is able to predict transient temperatures and conversion rates in different converter systems according to the driving conditions. Input data are the mass-flow rate, the converter inlet temperature and the raw emissions. The performance of this model is demonstrated on an Indian motorcycle application. Cold start behavior and peak temperatures are investigated. This model has proven to be an effective tool for the preselection of an optimal cost effective catalyst system.

Affordable, efficient and durable catalytic converters for the two and three wheeler industry in developing countries are required to reduce vehicle emissions and to participate in a cleaner and healthier environment. As a contribution Continental Emitec started a comprehensive testing program with a state of the art 180 cc Bharat Stage (BS) III Indian motorcycle. The program consists of testing the state of the art of Metallic substrates with structured foils with various catalyst sizes and positions (original or close coupled). The publication presents a short literature survey and the results of the investigation with a big catalyst volume mounted in underfloor position as well as in close coupled position, gained over the World-wide harmonized Motorcycle Test Cycle, considering the two possible vehicle classifications of this motorcycle, Sub-Class 2.1 and Sub-Class 2.2.

Five different diesel fuels, having been made available by the mineral oil industry within the framework of a research program of the Coordinating European Council (CEC/PF-26), were examined in addition to this program by the Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG by means of the 13-mode test in accordance with the former US legislation and the ECE regulation No. 49 and by US Transient Tests. The results have been compared with results based on commercial European diesel fuel. There has been observed the emission behaviour of an 8-cylinder NA engine with a “state of the art” direct fuel injection system by particularly taking into consideration the particulate emission and the particulate components. The gaseous emissions, particularly CO and HC, are unfavourably influenced by low cetane numbers being associated with increased aromaticity in the diesel fuel.

Field tests for a variety of fuels on different tractor engines were carried out during the summers of 1981 through 1986. Fuels tested included alkali refined and winterized sunflower oil blended with diesel fuel, crude degummed sunflower oil blended with diesel fuel, high oleic safflower oil blended with diesel fuel, methylester of sunflower oil, or soybean oil. Blends of either 25% vegetable oil and 75% diesel fuel or 50% vegetable oil and 50% diesel fuel were used. Methylesters were not blended with diesel fuel. The manufacturers that participated in the project were John Deere, J.I. Case and Allis Chalmers. The project indicated that farm diesel tractors can be operated on any of the fuels that were tested. Care should be taken, however, since some signs of premature engine problems were observed. In general, continued use of these fuels cannot be recommended at this time.

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) use electric energy from the grid rather than fuel energy for most short trips, therefore drastically reducing fuel consumption. Different configurations can be used for PHEVs. In this study, the parallel pre-transmission, series, and power-split configurations were compared by using global optimization. The latter allows a fair comparison among different powertrains. Each vehicle was operated optimally to ensure that the results would not be biased by non-optimally tuned or designed controllers. All vehicles were sized to have a similar all-electric range (AER), performance, and towing capacity. Several driving cycles and distances were used. The advantages of each powertrain are discussed.

The current study has concentrated on discovering and developing clean alternative energy sources like biodiesel and employing novel methods to reduce harmful emissions and enhance engine performance behavior. The consumption of biodiesel in diesel engines reduces the emissions from the tailpipe, but some researchers claim that it actually produces more NOx pollution than engines that run on regular diesel, which limits the use of biodiesel. In this study, Ricinus communis biodiesel was generated through transesterification process, and its fuel properties were assessed. The employ of biodiesel in diesel engines minimize exhaust emissions; however, multiple investigators claim that the consumption of biodiesel generates greater amounts of nitrogen oxide pollutants than diesel-fueled engines, which limits the possibility of biodiesel usage.

Affordable, efficient and durable catalytic converters for the Commercial Vehicle and Non-Road industry in all countries are required to reduce vehicle emissions under real world driving conditions and fulfill future legal requirements. Specially for India traffic conditions and payload to engine size conditions new cost-effective solutions are needed to participate in a cleaner and healthier environment. Metallic substrates with structured foils like the Transversal StructureTM (TS) or the Longitudinal StructureTM (LS) have been proved to be capable of improving conversion behavior, even with smaller catalyst size. Now Vitesco Technologies is developed a new Substrate for Heavy duty applications that specifically maintains the geometric surface area at a very high level and improves further the mass transport of the pollutants, which potentially leads together to very high pollutant conversion rates.

Due to the rising costs of fuel and increasingly stringent regulations, auto makers are in need of technology to enable more fuel-efficient powertrain technologies to be introduced to the marketplace. Such powertrains must not sacrifice performance, safety or driver comfort. Today's engine and powertrain manufacturers must, therefore, do more with less by achieving acceptable vehicle performance while reducing fuel consumption. One effective method to achieve this is the extreme downsizing of current direct injection spark ignited (DISI) engines through the use of high levels of boosting and cooled exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). Key challenges to highly downsized gasoline engines are retarded combustion to prevent engine knocking and the necessity to operate at air/fuel ratios that are significantly richer than the stoichiometric ratio.

Powertrain electrification is becoming increasingly common in the transportation sector to address the challenges of global warming and deteriorating air quality. This paper introduces a novel “Build Your Hybrid” approach to experience and test various hybrid powertrain concepts. This approach is applied to the light commercial vehicles (LCV) segment due to the attractive combination of a Diesel engine and a partly electrified powertrain. For this purpose, a demonstrator vehicle has been set up with a flexible P02 hybrid topology and a prototype Hybrid Control Unit (HCU). Based on user input, the HCU software modifies the control functions and simulation models to emulate different sub-topologies and levels of hybridization in the demonstrator vehicle. Three powertrain concepts are considered for LCVs: HV P2, 48V P2 and 48V P0 hybrid. Dedicated hybrid control strategies are developed to take full advantage of the synergies of the electrical system and reduce CO2 and NOx emissions.

The extensive use of rotative machines in the diverse branches of the modern world has made the rising undesirable mechanical and acoustic vibration levels to be a problem of special importance for the machines normal operation as for the communities that are each time more affected by the problem. It makes the study of vibration and acoustic phenomena also to be even more important and the applications of its concepts more sophisticated. Several are the concepts used for decreasing vibration levels, like common dampers, hydraulic dampers, active dampers, natural frequencies changes and others. The choice of use of one or another depends greatly on the engineering possibilities (weight, energy, physical space, other components functional interference, vibration levels, etc.) as well as the cost of implementation of each one.

For 1974, Ford Motor Company is providing, as standard equipment, a solid state ignition system on all 400 CID and 460 CID engines as well as on all California vehicles equipped with 200 through 351 CID engines. This paper explains the Ford solid state ignition system and the objectives and design philosophy that was used in the development of the system. Further, a review of the design and production validation test plans is discussed. With this background, specific examples of the effectiveness of complete problem analysis for fundamental cause and corrective action is presented in addition to control methods and evaluation of corrective action. This problem analysis system allowed this automotive electronic product to go into production with a high degree of confidence in meeting the reliability goals.

The method of flame ionization was used for measuring total hydrocarbons in both single-cylinder and multicylinder 4-cycle, direct injection diesel engine exhaust. Use of the emission parameters of hydrocarbon concentration, per cent unburned fuel, specific hydrocarbon rate, mass of hydrocarbons per million cycles, mass of hydrocarbons per mile, and mass of hydrocarbons per ton-mile are discussed. The basic approach used in the flame ionization detector is shown. The hydrocarbon sample was transferred from the exhaust system through a heated sample line and oven operating at 375 F. The sample line was aspirated to reduce the sample residence time to 2 sec. The effect various sampling locations have on hydrocarbon measurements from a single-cylinder engine is shown and discussed. The effects of load, speed, and injection timing on hydrocarbon emission data are shown for a single-cylinder engine.

Regulated emissions from four current production European vehicles were measured over the Common Artemis Driving Cycles (CADC). Particulate Mass and Particle Number measurements were made in accordance with the newly-developed draft Particulate Measurement Programme (PMP) developed for the UN-ECE's expert group on pollution and energy (GRPE). During the test programme measurements were also made of currently non-regulated emissions including PAHs and speciation of the particulate material and key hydrocarbons. CADC results are presented for each of the four vehicles tested (one conventional gasoline vehicle, two different types of diesel without Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) and one diesel with DPF) with results measured on the regulated New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) test for comparison. The emissions results on the Artemis cycles showed some significant differences from those on the regulated (NEDC) test cycle.

Consideration of the approaching ‘energy crisis’ reveals two requirements for future light duty automotive engines. 1) maximum economy and 2) the ability (perhaps with detail design re-optimisation) to accept a range of fuels of petroleum or other extract, of differing ignition characteristics. One combustion system which meets these requirements is the MAN ‘FM’, the potential of which has already been demonstrated in truck-size engines but on which little information has been published in light-duty engine bore sizes. The paper describes both design and experimental work carried out to evaluate the application of the FM combustion system to a light duty passenger car engine. Consideration is given to the critical design parameters associated with the application of the FM system to a multi-cylinder gasoline based engine and how the criteria can be met. Details of the design and construction of a single cylinder derivative of the multi-cylinder engine are given.

Abstract An investigation into the pre-ashing of new gasoline particulate filters (GPFs) has demonstrated that the filtration efficiency of such filters can be improved by up to 30% (absolute efficiency improvement) when preconditioned using ash derived from a fuel-borne catalyst (FBC) additive. The additive is typically used in diesel applications to enable diesel particulate filter (DPF) regeneration and can be added directly into the fuel tank of the vehicle. This novel result was compared with ash derived from lube oil componentry, which has previously been shown to improve filtration efficiency in GPFs. The lube oil-derived ash utilized in this work improved the filtration efficiency of the GPF by −30%, comparable to the ash derived from the FBC additive.