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The future environmental constraints [e.g. WLTC +RDE, CAFE, Euro 6.2, 7] for the pollutant emissions lead to new challenges for the internal combustion engine. One of the solutions to decrease the fuel consumption, the CO2 and pollutant emissions whilst keeping the same driving and thermal comforts is the engine's thermal management, in particular during the warm-up phase. Furthermore, the traditional cooling system is not designed to work at the new engine transient thermal conditions at a non-optimal temperature in terms of fuel economy and exhaust emission. This paper describes a new technology for engine cooling systems that is able to control the coolant flow and temperature in relation to the engine conditions such as load and rotational speed. With a no flow in crankcase cooling strategy and a high engine temperature regulation, the Active Cooling Thermomanagement Valve succeeds in decreasing the fuel consumption without deteriorating engine's performance.

Emission regulations have become increasingly stringent in recent years. Current regulations need the development of a new worldwide driving cycle which gives greater weight to the pollutants emitted during transient phases or cold starts. Powertrains contain a large number of components such as multistage turbocharger systems; exhaust gas recirculation, after-treatment devices and sometimes an electric motor. In this context, 0D predictive models of heat transfer in the exhaust line, calibrated with experimental data, are particularly interesting. Many investigations are related to the development of precise control laws in order to optimize the light-off of after-treatment elements during the engine starting phase. A better understanding of the thermal phenomena occurring in the exhaust line is necessary. To study the heat transfer in the exhaust line of a Diesel engine during transient conditions, the temperature in the exhaust line must be known precisely.

The tightening restrictions, in terms of fuel consumption, have pushed the vehicle manufacturers and equipment suppliers into searching for innovative ways to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions. Along with the ameliorations added to the engine itself, additional systems are grafted to the engine in order to keep up with the ever-changing laws. Isolating the impact on the fuel consumption of an added system, by on board testing, is a complicated task. In this case, using simulation modeling allows the reduction of delays related to prototyping and testing. This paper presents modeling of various thermal systems in a vehicle and their interactions to evaluate the fuel consumption using AMESim software. As means to reduce the CPU cost of the model (calculation time), without decreasing its predictability, engine modeling has been done by two steps: high frequency model and mean value model.

Today turbochargers are used by car manufacturers on Diesel engines and on an increasing number of gasoline engines, especially in the scope of downsizing. This component has to be well understood and modeled as simulation is widely used at every step of the development. Indeed development cost and time have to be reduced to fulfill both customers’ wishes and more stringent emissions standards. Current turbocharger simulation codes are mostly based on look-up tables (air mass flow and efficiency) given by manufacturers. This raises two points. Firstly, the characteristics are known only in the same conditions as manufacturers’ tests. Secondly, the turbine efficiency given by turbochargers manufacturers is the product of the isentropic efficiency and the turbocharger mechanical efficiency. This global efficiency is suitable for the calculation of the power transferred to the compressor.

Engine downsizing is potentially one of the most effective strategies being explored to improve fuel economy. A main problem of downsizing using a turbocharger is the small range of stable functioning of the turbocharger centrifugal compressor at high boost pressures, and hence the measurement of the performance maps of both compressor and turbine. Automotive manufacturers use mainly numerical simulations for internal combustion engines simulations, hence the need of an accurate extrapolation model to get a complete turbine performance map. These complete maps are then used for internal combustion engines calibration. Automotive manufacturers use commercial softwares to extrapolate the turbine narrow performance maps, both mass flow characteristics and the efficiency curve.

Downsizing has nowadays become the more widespread solution to achieve the quest for reaching the fuel consumption incentive. This size reduction goes with turbocharging in order to keep the engine power constant. To reduce the development costs and to meet the ever tightening regulations, car manufacturers rely more and more on computer simulations. Thus developing accurate and predictable turbocharger models functioning on a wide range of engine life cases became a major requirement in industrial projects. In the current models, compressors and turbines are represented by look-up tables, experimentally measured on a turbocharger test bench, at steady point and high inlet turbine temperature. This method results in limited maps : on the one hand the compressor surge line and on the other hand the flow resistance curve behind the compressor. Mounted on an engine, the turbocharger encounters a wider scale of functioning points.

Pollutant emissions standards (such like EURO 6 in Europe) are increasingly severe and force a search of new in-cylinder strategies and/or aftertreatment devices / schemes at a reasonable cost. On a conventional Diesel engine an excess of air is usually used to allow very high combustion efficiencies and reasonable levels of soot which can then be after-treated in a diesel particulates filter (DPF). As a consequence, NOx emissions cannot be easily after-treated (lean NOx trap (LNT) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) are quite expensive even if effective, solutions), as a result they are generally controlled by means of internal measures such as High Pressure (HP) or Low Pressure (LP) exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). In light of ever more stringent NOx emissions regulations, NOx aftertreatment devices seem to be becoming unavoidable.

The impact of the drag coefficient of a vehicle on its fuel consumption is very important. This paper will treat a proposition to reduce the drag coefficient via a reduction of the underhood opening area. The coastdown technique is adopted to find the drag coefficient. Three post-processing methods are then compared. Although, reducing the underhood opening ameliorates the drag coefficient, it influences as well the thermal performance of the cooling system, causing a possible overheating of the engine. For this reason, the impact of the underhood opening area on the cooling air speed is studied in detail as well. The purpose of these tests is to draw some variation laws that govern the response of a vehicle to a reduction in the underhood opening.

Unsteady intake wave dynamics have a first order influence on an engine's performance and fuel economy. There is an abundant literature particularly for naturally aspirated SI engines on the subject of intake manifolds and primary runner lengths aimed to achieve a tuned intake air line. A more demanding design for today's engines is to increase efficiency to meet the requirements of lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Today's tendencies are downsizing the engine to meet these demands. And for drivability purposes, the engine is combined with a turbocharger coupled with a charge air cooler. However, when the engine's displacement is reduced, it will be very dependent on its boosting system. A particularly interesting point to address corresponds to the engine's operation in the low speed range and during transients where the engine has large pumping losses and poor boost pressure. This operation point can be optimized using acoustic supercharging techniques.

In order to reduce greenhouse gases and respect stringent pollutant emission regulations, the modern engine is increasingly required to incorporate energy recovery systems to enhance performance and increase efficiency. This paper deals with the exhaust energy recovery through turbocompounding. Both series and parallel turbocompounds are discussed. In the first part of the document, literature on turbocompounding is introduced. Then a simulation study carried on AMESim software, using a 2L Diesel engine model is presented. The parallel turbocompounding is simulated by expanding a part of the exhaust gases in a converging nozzle instead of the turbocharger turbine. The power produced is evaluated as a function of the pressure drop in case a turbine is mounted instead of the nozzle. A global study over the entire engine map is described, and two steady state points 2000 rpm, 8 bar and 3500 rpm, 7 bar are chosen.

A new methodology for modeling engine intake has been presented; it is based on a transfer function relating pressure response and mass flow rate that makes use of the corresponding frequency spectrum obtained on the so-called “dynamic flow bench”. This new approach provides a way to obtain fast and robust results, which take into account all the phenomena inherent to compressible unsteady flows. Recently the potential of this method has been explored by incorporating it in a GT-Power model to produce a coupled frequency - time domain simulation of a naturally aspirated engine. The method exhibited promising results. One strategy utilized to combat the increasingly stringent emissions standards and reduce fuel consumption is to employ downsized turbocharged engines equipped with charge air coolers (CAC). Therefore, research and development must focus not only on naturally aspirated engines but also on turbocharged ones.

To comply with the evermore stringent polluting emission regulation, such as Euro 6c and its new homologation WTLP cycle, the use of turbochargers, already high in Diesel engines, is steeply rising in Gasoline ones. Turbochargers come into a large variety of implementations such as single/two stage(s) or even parallel. In the meantime, car manufacturers intend to decrease development cost and time by using more and more simulation over experimental measurements. However, usual turbocharger models have not followed this trend of modernity. While the heating part of the standard driving test cycle becomes a major topic, turbocharger models are still map based, built from turbocharger manufacturer’s data and measured only in hot conditions. To improve their accuracy, new turbocharger models need to take into account the thermal transfers.