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A 3-D numerical analysis model of transient heat transfer among the multi-component coupling system in combustion chamber of internal combustion engine has been developed successfully in the paper. The model includes almost all solid components in combustion chamber, such as piston assembly, cylinder liner, cylinder head gasket, cylinder head, intake valves and exhaust valves, etc. With two different coupling heat transfer modes, one is the lubricant film heat conduction between two moving components, another is the contact heat conduction between two immovable solid components, and with the direct coupled-field analysis method of FEM, the heat transfer relation among the components is established. The simulation result dedicates the transient heat transfer process among the components such as moving piston assembly and cylinder liner, moving valves and cylinder head. The effect of cylinder head gasket on heat transfer among the components is also studied.

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is an important measure to proactively guarantee vehicle safety. In this paper, the method of four-wheel hub-motor torque control is compared with the traditional single-wheel hydraulic brake control in ESC system. The control strategy adopts the hierarchical structure. In upper controller, the stability of the vehicle is identified by threshold method, the additional yaw moment control uses a way to get the moment including feedforward and feedback parts based on the linear quadratic regulator (LQR). The medium controller is tire slip rate control, in order to get the optimal target slip rate from the upper additional yaw moment, a method of quadratic programming to optimize the longitudinal force is proposed for each wheel. The inputs of tire state for the magic tire model is introduced so as to calculate the target slip rate from the target longitudinal force.

In automatic driving application, the velocity planner can be considered as a key factor to ensure the safety and comfort. One of the most important tasks of the velocity planner is to simulate the velocity characteristics of human drivers. In this paper, two Driver In-the-Loop (DIL) experiments are designed to explain velocity characteristics of human drivers. In the first experiment, static obstacles are placed on both sides of the straight road to shorten the cross range that vehicles can driver across. Moreover, different cross ranges are set to study the influence of the steering wheel error. In the second experiment, velocity characteristics are investigated under the condition of different road widths and curvatures in a U-turn road contour. In both tests, different drivers’ preview behavior is analyzed through the operation of throttle, braking, and steering.

In the present study, we developed a reduced chemical reaction mechanism consisted of n-heptane and toluene as surrogate fuel species for diesel engine combustion simulation. The LLNL detailed chemical kinetic mechanism for n-heptane was chosen as the base mechanism. A multi-technique reduction methodology was applied, which included directed relation graph with error propagation and sensitivity analysis (DRGEPSA), non-essential reaction elimination, reaction pathway analysis, sensitivity analysis, and reaction rate adjustment. In a similar fashion, a reduced toluene mechanism was also developed. The reduced n-heptane and toluene mechanisms were then combined to form a diesel surrogate mechanism, which consisted of 158 species and 468 reactions. Extensive validations were conducted for the present mechanism with experimental ignition delay in shock tubes and laminar flame speeds under various pressures, temperatures and equivalence ratios related to engine conditions.

Recovering the braking energy and reusing it can significantly improve the fuel economy of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).The battery ability of recovering electricity limits the improvement of the regenerative braking performance. As one way to solve this problem, the technology of brake-by-wire can be adopted in the HEVs to use the recovery dynamically. The use of high-power electrical equipment, such as electromechanical brake (EMB), is working in the form of brake-by-wire. Due to the nature of EMB, there exists an obvious coupling relationship between the energy flow and brake force distribution. In this paper, a brake force distribution controller is proposed in HEV with EMB, which can maximize braking energy recovery, compared with the conventional distribution control without EMB. Meanwhile, an energy flow strategy working with the distribution controller is designed, which is less limited to the performance of the battery.

This paper presents a study of LPG lean burn in a motorcycle SI engine. The lean burn limits are compared by several ways. The relations of lean burn limit with the parameters, such as engine speed, compression ratio and advanced spark ignition etc. are tested. The experimental results show that larger throttle opening, lower engine speed, earlier spark ignition timing, larger electrode gap and higher compression ratio will extend the lean burn limit of LPG. The emission of a LPG engine, especially on NOx emission, can be significantly reduced by means of the lean burn technology.

Turbochargers can improve vehicle dynamic performance and fuel economy and are applied widely nowadays. Due to the existence of turbocharger delay effect, acceleration delay and insufficient combustion are its disadvantages. By collecting high pressure gas which generates from the inertia of the turbine in the intake passage when the vehicle slows down, the gas can be supplied for the shortage while the vehicle is accelerating, which can reduce turbocharger delay effect directly. However, turbocharger delay effect changes a little at high speed and low speed which is subjected to the air inflation and short air-release time. This paper adds a set of pressure booster device on the existing inflating-deflating device, whose thermal energy comes from the compressed air and lubricating oil, to facilitate pressure increasing in inflating-deflating device and help the chamber change sooner, which avails to relieve the delay effect.

This paper presents a method of calculating temperature field of the piston by using a wavelet neural network (WNN) to identify the unknown boundary conditions. Because of the complexity of the heat transfer and limitations of experimental conditions of heat transfer analysis of the piston in a diesel engine, boundary conditions of the piston temperature field were usually obtained empirically, and thus the result itself was uncertain. By employing the capability of resolution analysis from a wavelet neural network, the method obtains improved boundary heat transfer coefficients with a limited number of measured temperatures. Using FEA software iteratively, results show the proposed wavelet neural network analysis method improves the prediction of unknown boundary conditions and temperature distribution consistent with the experimental data with an acceptable error.

For series hybrid electric vehicles (SHEV), rule-based strategies are realistic and powerful in real-time applications. However, the previous rule-based strategy cannot strike a balance between the best fuel economy and the best battery performance while maintaining the advantages of real-time applications. In order to obtain higher efficiency and reduce battery consumption, we have developed an adaptive hybrid thermostat strategy. On the basis of maintaining the load leveling of the thermostat strategy, the threshold-changing mechanism is added to realize the adaptive adjustment of the engine starting power under different SOC conditions, so as to achieve the goal of prolonging the battery life. In addition, the more fuel-efficient emergency handling rules designed to further reduce comprehensive fuel consumption.

The articulated steering system is widely used in engineering vehicles due to its high mobility and low steering radius. The design parameters have a vital impact on the selection of the steering system assemblies, such as the operation stroke, pressure, and force of the hydraulic cylinders during the steering process, which will affect the system weight. The system energy consumption is also relevant to the geometry parameters. According to the kinetic analysis of the steering system and dynamic analysis of the steering process, the kinetic model of an engineering vehicle steering system is built, and the length and pressure variation of the cylinder is calculated and validated by the field test. The influence of the factors is analyzed based on the established model. To lower the system weight, needed pressure, and force, the multi-objective particle swarm optimization method is initiated to optimize the geometry parameter of the articulated steering system.

For the purpose of predicting the interior noise of a passenger automobile at middle and high frequency, an energy finite element analysis (EFEA) model of the automobile was created using EFEA method. The excitations including engine mount excitation and road excitation were measured by road experiment at a speed of 120 km/h. The sound excitation was measured in a semi-anechoic chamber. And the wind excitation was calculated utilizing numeric computation method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The sound pressure level (SPL) and energy density contours of the interior acoustic cavity of the automobile were presented at 2000 Hz. Meanwhile, the flexural energy density and flexural velocity of body plates were calculated. The SPL of interior noise was predicted and compared with the corresponding value of experiment.

The hydraulic retarder is the most stabilized auxiliary braking system [1-2] of heavy-duty vehicles. When the hydraulic retarder is working during auxiliary braking, all of the braking energy is transferred into the thermal energy of the transmission medium of the working wheel. Theoretically, the residual heat-sinking capability of the engine could be used to cool down the transmission medium of the hydraulic retarder, in order to ensure the proper functioning of the hydraulic retarder. Never the less, the hydraulic retarder is always placed at the tailing head of the gearbox, far from the engine, long cooling circuits, which increases the risky leakage risk of the transmission medium. What's more, the development trend of heavy load and high speed vehicle directs the significant increase in the thermal load of the hydraulic retarder, which even higher than the engine power.

This paper presents experimental studies of particulate emissions in a small SI engine fueled with LPG and gasoline fuels. A single cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, 125cc EFI engine with gasoline fuel is used as the baseline engine. Characteristics of the particulate emissions of the two fuels are compared. Test results show that: there are great quantities of particulate emissions for both fuels, but the total numbers of particulate emissions for the two fuels are generally in the same level. The distribution of the particulate sizes is in bimodal type for the gasoline, but for the LPG its first peak is not markedly in some conditions. The particulate sizes of the second peak for the two fuels appear at about the same size. At middle loads and 3000r/min, the particulate emissions for both of the two fuels are the greatest.

To make full use of engine exhaust heat and further improve the utilization of the energy efficiency of the heavy truck, thermoelectric module is used to contribute to thermoelectric power generation. The hot-end temperature of the module varies with the engine operating condition because it is connected with the exhaust pipe. The cold-end of the thermoelectric module is mainly cooled by engine cooling system. Increasing the temperature difference between the hot-end and cold-end of the thermoelectric module is a good way to improve the thermoelectric conversion efficiency. For the poor controllability of the hot-end temperature of the thermoelectric module, this study puts forward by lowering the cold-end temperature of the thermoelectric module so as to ensure the improvement of the thermoelectric conversion efficiency. The cooling circle for the cold-end of the thermoelectric module which is independent of the engine cooling system is built.

This paper presents an experimental study of the emission characteristics of a small Spark-Ignited, LPG engine. A single cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, 125cc SI engine for motorcycle is modified for using LPG fuel. The power output of LPG is above 95% power output of gasoline. The emission characteristics of LPG are compared with the gasoline. The test result shows that LPG for small SI engine will help to reduce the emission level of motorcycles. The HC and CO emission level can be reduced greatly, but NOx emissions are increased. The emission of motorcycle using LPG shows the potential to meet the more strict regulation.

Butanol has proved to be a very promising alternative fuel in recent years. The production of bio-butanol, typically done using the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation process is expensive and consumes a lot of energy. Hence it is of interest to study the intermediate fermentation product, i.e. water-containing ABE as a potential fuel. The combustion and emissions performance of ABE29.5W0.5 (29.5 vol.% ABE, 0.5 vol.% water and gasoline blend), ABE30 (30 vol.% ABE and gasoline blend) and ABE0 (pure gasoline) were investigated in this study. The results showed that ABE29.5W0.5 enhanced engine torque by 9.6%-12.7% and brake thermal efficiency (BTE) by 5.2%-11.6% compared to pure gasoline, respectively. ABE29.5W0.5 also showed similar brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) relative to pure gasoline.

An air-cooled, four-stroke, 125 cc electronic gasoline fuel injection SI engine for motorcycles is altered to burn ethanol fuel. The effects of nozzle orifice size, fuel injection duration, spark timing and the excess air/ fuel ratio on engine power output, fuel and energy consumptions and engine exhaust emission levels are studied on an engine test bed. The results show that the maximum engine power output is increased by 5.4% and the maximum torque output is increased by 1.9% with the ethanol fuel in comparison with the baseline. At full load and 7000 r/min, HC emission is decreased by 38% and CO emission is decreased 46% on average over the whole engine speed range. However, NOx levels are increased to meet the maximum power output. The experiments of the spark timing show that the levels of HC and NOx emission are decreased markedly by the delay of spark timing.

Hybrid Electric Vehicles with a power split system provide a variety of possibilities to promote the fuel economy of vehicles and better adapt to various driving conditions. In this paper, a new power split system of a hybrid electric bus which consists of double planetary gear sets and a clutch is introduced. The system is able to decouple both the torque and speed of the engine from the road load, which makes it possible for the engine to operate on its optimal operation line (OOL). Considering the features of the system configuration and bus driving cycle, the driving mode of the bus is divided into Electric Vehicle (EV) mode, Electric Variable Transmission (EVT) mode and Parallel mode. By controlling the engagement of the clutch at high vehicle speed (after the mechanical point), the system operates in the parallel mode rather than EVT mode. This avoids the problem that the system efficiency sharply declines in high speed region which EVT configurations are generally faced with.

In order to improve the mode switching performance of parallel hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and make better use of the dynamics of the vehicle, this paper proposes a three-stage control method for the start-up mode of start-up, speed synchronization, and clutch slip based on the response characteristics of actual vehicle components and the complex working conditions of the actual road. In the speed synchronization phase, a coordinated control method of “engine speed active following + continuously variable transmission (CVT) speed ratio motor speed limiting” is proposed. The real vehicle test results show that the engine starting-up coordinated control method can significantly accelerate the speed synchronization and shorten the starting-up mode duration during the rapid acceleration, so that the vehicle’s power performance can be well played and the ride comfort can be effectively guaranteed.

For fracture cracks that occurred in the tight coupling exhaust manifold durability test of a four-cylinder gasoline engine with EGR channel, causes and solutions for fracture failure were found with the help of CFD and FEA numerical simulations. Wall temperature and heat transfer coefficient of the exhaust manifold inside wall were first accurately obtained through the thermal-fluid coupling analysis, then thermal modal and thermoplastic analysis were acquired by using the finite element method, on account of the bolt pretightening force and the contact relationship between flange face and cylinder head. Results showed that the first-order natural frequency did not meet the design requirements, which was the main reason of fatigue fracture. However, when the first-order natural frequency was rising, the delta equivalent plastic strain was increasing quickly as well.