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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.

Proper lubrication of moving parts is a critical factor in internal combustion engine performance and longevity. Determination of ideal lubricant change intervals is a prerequisite to ensuring maximum engine efficiency and useful life. When oil change intervals are pushed too far, increased engine wear and even engine damage can result. On the other hand, premature oil changes are inconvenient, add to vehicle maintenance cost, and result in wasted natural resources. In order to determine the appropriate oil change interval, we have developed an oil condition sensor that measures the electrical properties of engine oil, and correlates these electrical properties to the physical and chemical properties of oil. This paper provides a brief background discussion of the oil degradation process, followed by a description of the sensor operational principles and the correlation of the sensor output with physical and chemical engine oil properties.

High performance lubricant additive systems have been developed to formulate SAE 5W-30 passenger car engine oils which meet current and anticipated requirements of the North American original equipment manufacturers. The trend in North America is to recommend SAE 5W-30 oils that not only meet the API SF requirements for gasoline engines (“first-generation” oils), but also meet the stringent API CC requirement for light duty diesel engines (“second-generation” oils). Furthermore, the engine builders have issued “world specifications” for motor oils which incorporate additional “second-generation” SAE 5W-30 characteristics, such as enhanced API SF limits, improved fuel efficiency, an increased margin of bearing protection, and lower finished-oil phosphorus levels. The additive systems described herein exceed API SF and CC requirements as well as “second-generation” performance hurdles.

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 results of several anti-knock studies are discussed in this paper. Road anti-knock performance for 1000 fuel blends covering the years 1940 to 1957 have been investigated. The laboratory Research octane numbers of these fuels covered the range from 80 to 105. The fuels were evaluated in 46 cars representing a cross-section of the automotive products for these years. The objective of these investigations was to determine the practical application of the laboratory to road octane rating relationships, and the effect of vehicles, and operating conditions on these relationships. The results show that there is a valid correlation between laboratory and road octane ratings. The relative importance of Research and Motor octane ratings on road performance is influenced by make of car, engine speed, throttle position, and distributor advance characteristics. It also indicated that aromatics improve, whereas olefins reduce high speed Modified Borderline ratings.

Over the last ten years there has been a steady growth in the market share of light-duty diesel engines, especially in Europe. At the same time, a general trend in petrol engine development has been seen, in which normal aspirated engines are being replaced by downsized turbocharged engines. Therefore, NVH engineers have to deal with new challenges. Turbochargers produce an aerodynamic noise in the frequency range above 1000Hz, which might influence the exterior and interior noise level. As a result, the additional requirement for acoustical components to reduce this flow noise is going to pose an increasing challenge for air intake system suppliers. This paper describes a new design of well-known wide band silencer first mentioned by A. Selamet, N.S.Dickey and J.M.Novak [1,2]. The silencer works according to the interference principle. The sound is guided into two or more parallel pipes of different lengths.

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.

This paper, confined to the application of hard chrome plated liners to high-speed four-stroke diesel and gasoline engines, illustrates the increase in their popularity in the United Kingdom, and the advanced production methods which make this economically possible. The need for balanced engine life has long been apparent and is even more important today, the growth of motor transport having outstripped repair facilities. Iron bore life has been surpassed by improvement in the life of other component parts in the modern diesel engine. The provision of hard chrome plated liners can restore the balance. Further development and turbocharging of diesel engines has shown the need for a bore material capable of preventing scuffing and galling at elevated temperatures. Hard chrome has already proved itself in four-stroke engines under these conditions.

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.

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.

This study proposes a novel biofuel for spark ignition (SI) engine, α-pinene (C10H16), which is non-oxygenated and thus has a gravimetric energy density comparable to that of hydrocarbon fuels. The ignition characteristics of α-pinene were evaluated in an ignition quality tester (IQT) under standard temperature and pressure conditions. The measured ignition delay time (IDT) of α-pinene is 10.5 ms, which is lower than that of iso-octane, 17.9 ms. The estimated research octane number (RON) for pinene from IQT is 85. A temperature sweep in IQT showed that that α-pinene is less reactive at low temperatures, but more reactive at high temperatures when compared to isooctane. These results suggest that α-pinene has high octane sensitivity (OS) and is suitable for operation in turbocharged SI engines. With these considerations, α-pinene was operated in a single cylinder SI engine.

Φ-sensitivity is a fuel characteristic that has important benefits for the operation and control of low-temperature gasoline combustion (LTGC) engines. A fuel is φ-sensitive if its autoignition reactivity varies with the fuel/air equivalence ratio (φ). Thus, multiple-injection strategies can be used to create a φ-distribution that leads to several benefits. First, the φ-distribution causes a sequential autoignition that reduces the maximum heat release rate. This allows higher loads without knock and/or advanced combustion timing for higher efficiencies. Second, combustion phasing can be controlled by adjusting the fuel-injection strategy. Finally, experiments show that intermediate-temperature heat release (ITHR) increases with φ-sensitivity, increasing the allowable combustion retard and improving stability. A detailed mechanism was applied using CHEMKIN to understand the chemistry responsible for φ-sensitivity.

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.

FUEL of 97 + octane number gives the most miles for the dollar, present calculations show. At this point, increased efficiency from high compression ratios equals the rising cost of high-octane fuel. For town driving about 95 octane is inherently the least expensive, and over-the-road cars can benefit from gasolines up to almost 99 octane number. This paper describes an analysis made by California Research Corp. of the costs and the value of high-octane gasolines. The economics of octane numbers was based on current commercial practices regarding improved efficiencies of higher compression ratio cars and higher manufacturing costs of higher octane gasolines. The authors believe that if compression ratio and octane number stay in proper relation to each other, the consumer will benefit.

ENGINE noise has become an increasing problem with the higher and higher compression ratios of present-day automotive engines. Because fuel octane number cannot be raised indefinitely, the problem is one of engine design and selection of crankcase lubricating oils and gasoline formulations, the authors think. This paper describes investigations into the cause of spark knock, wild ping, rumble, and the added problem of hot-spot surface ignition (which also intensifies as compression ratios increase). The authors have found gasolines with phosphorous additives, used with properly formulated multiviscosity lubricating oils, provide a partial answer to the problem of engine rumble. The authors conclude that very exact tailoring of fuels, lubricants, additives, and engines will be necessary to prevent engine noise if compression ratios continue to rise.

TODAY'S high-compression engines present new problems of engine noise to automotive engineers. This paper deals with some of the factors which contribute to rumble, knock, and surface ignition. The work was primarily concerned with the influence of fuel composition on the equilibrium octane number requirement and surface ignition tendency of high-compression engines. Both the effect of the combustion-chamber deposits formed by the fuel and the effect of the combustion characteristics of the fuel itself were considered. The results indicate that a reduction in gasoline tail-end volatility or the use of an effective ignition control additive can reduce knock, surface ignition, and rumble; while use of gasolines containing high concentrations of aromatic hydrocarbons can increase these combustion difficulties.

Gasoline compression ignition shows great potential in reducing NOx and soot emissions with competitive thermal efficiency by leveraging the properties of gasoline fuels and the high compression ratio of compression ignition engines operating air-dilute. Meanwhile, its control becomes challenging due to not only the properties of different gasoline-type fuels but also the impacts of injection strategies on the in-cylinder reactivity. As such, a computationally efficient zero-dimension combustion model can significantly reduce the cost of control development. In this study, a previously developed zero-dimension combustion model for gasoline compression ignition was extended to multiple gasoline-type fuel blends and a port fuel injection/direct fuel injection strategy. Tests were conducted on a 12.4-liter heavy-duty engine with five fuel blends.

Schlieren and shadowgraph imaging have been used for many years to identify refractive index gradients in various applications. For evaporating fuel sprays, these techniques can differentiate the boundary between spray regions and background ambient gases. Valuable information such as the penetration rate, spreading angle, spray structure, and spray pattern can be obtained using schlieren diagnostics. In this study, we present details of a z-type schlieren system setup and its application to port-fuel-injection gasoline sprays. The schlieren high-speed movies were used to obtain time histories of the spray penetration and spreading angle. Later, these global parameters were compared to specifications provided by the injector manufacturer. Also, diagnostic parameters such as the proportion of light cut-off at the focal point and the orientation of knife-edge (schlieren-stop) used to achieve the cut-off were examined.

LiquidPiston Inc. has developed a new engine that can run on multiple fuels, including diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. This platform uses an optimized thermodynamic cycle and a new rotary engine architecture and could increases flight endurance over conventional UAV engines by greater than 50%.

Most of the major industrialized areas of the world have been experiencing serious motor vehicle pollution problems over the last decade. The motor vehicle pollution control programs which have have been developed to deal with the effects have led to tremendous advances in gasoline car control technologies. Similar technologies are under intensive development for diesel cars and trucks. Several developing countries are now experiencing similar air pollution problems. This paper surveys the most recent data regarding adverse environmental impacts resulting from motor vehicles, reviews technologies developed to address these problems, and summarizes the current status around the world.