Search Results

CuO-water nanofluids was utilized as heat transfer medium in the cooling system of the diesel engine. By using CFD-Fluent software, for 0.5%, 1%, 3% and 5% mass concentration of nanofluids, 3-dimensional numerical simulation about flow and heat transfer process in the cooling system of engine was actualized. According to stochastic particle tracking in turbulent flow, for solid-liquid two phase flow discrete phase, the moving track of nanoparticles was traced. By this way, for CuO nanoparticles of different mass concentration nanofliuds in the cooling jacket of diesel engine, the results of the concentration distribution, velocity distribution, internal energy variation, resident time, total heat transfer and variation of total pressure reduction between inlet and outlet were ascertained.

The design of engine intake system affects the intake uniformity of each cylinder of the engine, which in turn has an important impact on the engine performance, the uniform distribution of EGR exhaust gas and the combustion process of each cylinder. In this paper, the constant-pressure supercharged diesel engine intake pipe is used as the research model to study the intake air flow unevenness of the intake pipe of the supercharged diesel engine. The pressure boundary condition at the outlet of each intake manifold is set as the dynamic pressure change condition. The three-dimensional numerical simulation of the transient flow process in the intake manifold of diesel engine is simulated and analyzed by using numerical method, and the change of the Intake air flow field in the intake manifold under different working conditions during the intake overlapping period is discussed.

Corona ignition is a promising technology that has been demonstrated to be capable of improving the reliability of lean combustion. However, arcing is unavoidable during corona discharge. The high current surge during arcing can cause excessive damage to the corona ignition system. In this work, a control framework is proposed to help reduce and prevent arcing from happening in a corona ignition system. Experimental results are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

This paper presents a novel lumped parameter model(LPM) and its parameter identification method for the hydraulic engine mount(HEM) with a suspended decoupler. In the new model the decoupler membrane’s variable stiffness caused by being contact with the metallic cage is considered. Therefore, the decoupler membrane in the model can be taken as a spring. As a result, two parameters of the decoupler’s variable stiffness and the equivalent piston area are added. Then the finite element method is employed to analyze the suspended decoupler membrane’s variable stiffness characteristics under the contact state with the metallic cage. A piecewise polynomial is used to fit the decoupler membrane’s variable stiffness. To guarantee the symmetry of the stiffness, the polynomial only keeps the odd power coefficients.

The active engine mount (AEM) is developed in automotive industry to improve overall NVH performance. The AEM is designed to reduce major-order signals of engine vibration over a broad frequency range, therefore it is of vital importance to extract major-order signals from vibration before the actuator of the AEM works. This work focuses on a method of real-time extraction of the major-order acceleration signals at the passive side of the AEM. Firstly, the transient engine speed is tracked and calculated, from which the FFT method with a constant sampling rate is used to identify the time-related frequencies as the fundamental frequencies. Then the major-order signals in frequency domain are computed according to the certain multiple relation of the fundamental frequencies. After that, the major-order signals can be reconstructed in time domain, which are proved accurate through offline simulation, compared with the given signals.

Positioning system is a key module of autonomous driving. As for LiDAR SLAM system, it faces great challenges in scenarios where there are repetitive and sparse features. Without loop closure or measurements from other sensors, odometry match errors or accumulated errors cannot be corrected. This paper proposes a construction method of LiDAR anchor constraints to improve the robustness of the SLAM system in the above challenging environment. We propose a robust anchor extraction method that adaptively extracts suitable cylindrical anchors in the environment, such as tree trunks, light poles, etc. Skewed tree trunks are detected by feature differences between laser lines. Boundary points on cylinders are removed to avoid misleading. After the appropriate anchors are detected, a factor graph-based anchor constraint construction method is designed. Where direct scans are made to anchor, direct constraints are constructed.

To overcome the unfavorable operation conditions caused by lean/diluted charges in modern Spark Ignited (SI) engines, various advanced ignition systems have been proposed in the past. Among them, the dual-coil and multi-coil Transistor Coil Ignition (TCI) systems with offset discharge strategy caused significant attention in literature because they can generate a continuous spark with high spark energy being delivered into the cylinder. Comparing with the dual-coil system, a multi-coil system is capable to apply more flexible control strategies and generate a higher discharge current. However, the spark energy and transfer efficiency of the multi-coil system are still worthy to investigate as they are important performance indicators for a TCI system. In this paper, the discharge characteristics of the dual-coil and triple-coil strategies under both quiescent and flow conditions were studied firstly by experimental methods.

A semi-empirical turbulent flame growth model has been developed based on thermodynamic equilibrium calculations and experiments in a 125-mm cubical combustion chamber. It covers the main flame growth period from spark kernel formation until flame wall contact, including the effects of laminar flame speed, root mean square turbulence intensity, turbulent eddy size, and flame size. As expected, the combustion rate increases with increasing laminar flame speed and/or turbulence intensity. The effect of turbulent eddy scale is less obvious. For a given turbulence intensity, smaller scales produce higher instantaneous flame speed. However, turbulence of a smaller scale also decays more rapidly. Thus, for a given laminar flame speed and turbulence intensity at the time of ignition, there is an optimum turbulent eddy size which leads to the fastest combustion rate over the period considered.

The ever-growing demand to meet the stringent exhaust emission regulations have driven the development of modern gasoline engines towards lean combustion strategies and downsizing to achieve the reduction of exhaust emission and fuel consumption. Currently, the inductive ignition system is still the dominant ignition system applied in Spark Ignited (SI) engines. It is popular due to its simple design, low cost and robust performance. The new development in spark ignition engines demands higher spark energy to be delivered by the inductive ignition system to overcome the unfavorable ignition conditions caused by the increased and diluted in-cylinder charge. To meet this challenge, better understanding of the inductive ignition system is required. The development of a first principle model for simulation can help in understanding the working mechanism of the system in a better way.

Advanced combustion engines, as power sources, dominate all aspects of the transportation sector. Stringent emission and fuel efficiency standards have promoted the research interest in advanced combustion strategies and alternative fuels. Owing to the comparable energy density to the existing fossil fuels and renewable production, alcohol and ether fuels may be a suitable replacement, or an additive to the gasoline/diesel fuels to meet the future emission standards with minimal modification to current engine geometry. Furthermore, lean and diluted combustion are well-researched pathways for efficiency improvement and reduction of engine-out emissions of modern engines. However, lean-burn or EGR dilution can introduce combustion inefficiencies in the form of excessive hydrocarbon, carbonyl species and carbon monoxide emissions.

The effectiveness of after-treatment systems depends on the exhaust gas temperature, which is low during cold-start. As a result, Euro III, Euro IV and FTP75 require that the emissions tests include exhaust from the beginning of cold start. It is proved that 50%∼80% of HC and CO emissions are emitted during the cold start and the amount of unburned fuel from the crevices during starting is much higher than that under warmed engine conditions. The piston crevices is the most part of combustion chamber crevices, and results of mathematical simulations show that the piston crevice contribution to HC emissions is expected to increase during cold engine operation. Based on the transient HC test data and the double zone combustion model, this paper presents the study of the crevice HC Mechanism of the first firing cycle at cold start on an LPG SI Engine. A fast-response flame ionization detector (FFID) was employed to measure transient HC emissions of the first firing cycle.

Diesel fueling and exhaust flow strategies are investigated to control the substrate temperatures of diesel aftertreatment systems. The fueling control includes the common-rail post injection and the external supplemental fuel injection. The post injection pulses are further specified at the early, mid, or late stages of the engine expansion stroke. In comparison, the external fueling rates are moderated under various engine loads to evaluate the thermal impact. Additionally, the active-flow control schemes are implemented to improve the overall energy efficiency of the system. In parallel with the empirical work, the dynamic temperature characteristics of the exhaust system are simulated one-dimensionally with in-house and external codes. The dynamic thermal control, measurement, and modeling of this research intend to improve the performance of diesel particulate filters and diesel NOx absorbers.

As a prerequisite for energy management of hybrid vehicles, the results of speed prediction can optimize the performance of vehicles and improve fuel efficiency. Energy management strategies are usually developed based on standard driving cycles, which are too generalized to show the variability of driving conditions in different time and locations. Therefore, this paper constructs a representative driving cycle based on driving data of the corresponding time and location, used as historical information for prediction. We propose a method to construct the driving cycle based on Markov chain theory before constructing the prediction model. In this paper, multiple prediction methods are compared with traditional parametric methods. The difference in prediction accuracy between multiple prediction methods under the single time scale and multiple time scale were compared, which further verified the advantages of the speed prediction method based on Markov chain theory.

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is effective to reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) from diesel engines. However, when excessive EGR is applied, the engine operation reaches zones with higher combustion instability, carbonaceous emissions, and power losses. In order to improve the engine combustion process with the use of heavy EGR, the influences of boost pressure, intake temperature, and fuel injection timing are evaluated. An adaptive fuel injection strategy is applied as the EGR level is progressively elevated towards the limiting conditions. Additionally, characterization tests are performed to improve the control of the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) type of engine cycles, especially when heavy EGR levels are applied to increase the load level of HCCI operations. This paper constitutes the preparation work for a variety of algorithms currently being investigated at the authors' laboratory as a part of the model-based NOx control research.

The centrifugal compressor is one of the most commonly used air compressors for fuel cell air supply systems, and it has the small volume, high pressure ratio and low noise. However, surge in a centrifugal compressor severely limits its stable flow range. In this paper, a mathematical model of the compressor aerodynamic performance based on the energy transfer method was established, some parameters of model were identified by experimental data, and the model was validated through experiments. Then the dynamic model of the compression system was derived based on the compressor model and the Moore-Greitzer model. The stability analysis of the compression system was conducted, and it was strictly proved that when the compression system is unstable, there is the limit cycle in this nonlinear system, namely the surge cycle. Furthermore, the simulation of the compression system was conducted and the instability condition of the compression system was presented.

In this work, engine tests were performed to realize EGR-enabled LTC on a single-cylinder common-rail diesel engine with three different compression ratios (17.5, 15 and 13:1). The engine performance was first investigated at 17.5:1 compression ratio to provide baseline results, against which all further testing was referenced. The intake boost and injection pressure were progressively increased to ascertain the limiting load conditions for the compression ratio. To extend the engine load range, the compression ratio was then lowered and EGR sweep tests were again carried out. The strength and homogeneity of the cylinder charge were enhanced by using intake boost up to 3 bar absolute and injection pressure up to 180 MPa. The combustion phasing was locked in a narrow crank angle window (5~10° ATDC), during all the tests.

Low temperature combustion (LTC), though effective to reduce soot and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) simultaneously from diesel engines, operates in narrowly close to unstable regions. Adaptive control strategies are developed to expand the stable operations and to improve the fuel efficiency that was commonly compromised by LTC. Engine cycle simulations were performed to better design the combustion control models. The research platform consists of an advanced common-rail diesel engine modified for the intensified single cylinder research and a set of embedded real-time (RT) controllers, field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices, and a synchronized personal computer (PC) control and measurement system.

This work investigates the benefits and challenges of enabling neat n-butanol HCCI combustion on a high compression ratio (18.2:1) diesel engine. Minor engine modifications are made to implement n-butanol port injection while other engine components are kept intact. The impacts of the fuel change, from diesel to n-butanol, are examined through steady-state engine tests with independent control of the intake boost and exhaust gas recirculation. As demonstrated by the test results, the HCCI combustion of a thoroughly premixed n-butanol/air lean mixture offers near-zero smoke and ultralow NOx emissions even without the use of exhaust gas recirculation and produces comparable engine efficiencies to those of conventional diesel high temperature combustion. The test results also manifest the control challenges of running a neat alcohol fuel in the HCCI combustion mode.

Active engine mounts (AEMs) notably contribute to ensuring superior performance of vehicle’s noise, vibration, and harshness. This paper incorporates a filtered-x-least-mean-squares (FxLMS) controller into the active control engine mount system to attenuate the transmitted force to the body. To avoid the error caused by substituting the load cell for acceleration transducer, the FIR model of the secondary path was obtained by experiment. Finally, a hardware-in-the-loop testing system is built to verify the performance of the active engine mount. It can be observed from the test results that the vibration is reduced notably after control, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the active engine mount and the controller in vibration attenuation.

Manufacturers have been encouraged to accommodate advanced downsizing technologies such as the Variable Displacement Engine (VDE) to satisfy commercial demands of comfort and stringent fuel economy. Particularly, Active control engine mounts (ACMs) notably contribute to ensuring superior effectiveness in vibration attenuation. This paper incorporates a PID controller into the active control engine mount system to attenuate the transmitted force to the body. Furthermore, integrated time absolute error (ITAE) of the transmitted force is introduced to serve as the control goal for searching better PID parameters. Then the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is adopted for the first time to optimize the PID parameters in the ACM system. Simulation results are presented for searching optimal PID parameters. In the end, experimental validation is conducted to verify the optimized PID controller.