Search Results

Amid all nondestructive testing (NDT) methods Ultrasound is considered the most practically feasible modality for quality assessment and detection of defects in automobile industry. Pattern recognition of the ultrasonic signals gives us important information about the interrogated object. This information includes size, geometric shape and location of the defect zone. However, this would not be straightforward to extract this information from the backscattered echoes due to the overlapping signals and also the presence of noise. Here in this study, we suggest a new method for classification of different defects in inspection of adhesively bonded joint. At the first step of this method, the problem of parameter estimation of the reflected echoes is defined in a Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) framework. Then a space alternating generalized Expectation Maximization (SAGE) algorithm is implemented to solve the MLE problem.

Aluminum engines have been successfully used to replace heavy gray cast engines to lighten the car's weight and reduce the fuel consumption. To overcome the aluminum alloys' poor wear resistance, cast iron liners and thermal spraying coatings were used as cylinder bore materials for wear protection. A plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) technique had also been proposed to produce an oxide coating on aluminum cylinder bore. The oxide coating can have a low coefficient of friction (COF) and minimum wear shown in the lab tests. To conserve more fuel, the stopping and restarting system was introduced when the vehicle was forced to stop immediately for a short time. When the engine was forced to stop and restart, the reciprocating speed of the piston was very slow, and the friction between the piston and the cylinder was high. In this research, a pin-on-disc tribometer was used to investigate tribological behavior of the oxide coating on an aluminum alloy.

In this work, a spatially distributed spark ignition strategy was employed to improve the ignition process of well-mixed ultra-lean dilute gasoline combustion in a high compression ratio (13.1:1) single cylinder engine at partial loads. The ignition energy was distributed in the perimeter of a 3-pole igniter. It was identified that on the basis of similar total spark energy, the 3-pole ignition mode can significantly shorten the early flame kernel development period and reduce the cyclic variation of combustion phasing, for the spark timing sweep tests at λ 1.5. The effect of ignition energy level on lean-burn operation was investigated at λ 1.6. Within a relatively low ignition energy range, i.e. below 46 mJ per pole, the increase in ignition energy via ether 1 pole or 3 pole can improve the controllability over combustion phasing and reduce the variability of lean burn combustion. Higher ignition energy was required in order to enable ultra-lean engine operation with λ above 1.6.

Extensive empirical work indicates that exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is effective to lower the flame temperature and thus the oxides of nitrogen (NOx) production in-cylinder in diesel engines. Soot emissions are reduced in-cylinder by improved fuel/air mixing. As engine load increases, higher levels of intake boost and fuel injection pressure are required to suppress soot production. The high EGR and improved fuel/air mixing is then critical to enable low temperature combustion (LTC) processes. The paper explores the properties of the Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines (FACE) Diesel, which are statistically designed to examine fuel effects, on a 0.75L single cylinder engine across the full range of load, spanning up to 15 bar IMEP. The lower cetane number (CN) of the diesel fuel improved the mixing process by prolonging the ignition delay and the mixing duration leading to substantial reduction of soot at low to medium loads, improving the trade-off between NOx and soot.

Friction between the piston and cylinder accounts for large amount of the friction losses in an internal combustion (IC) engine. Therefore, any effort to minimize such a friction will also result in higher efficiency, lower fuel consumption and reduced emissions. Plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) coating is considered as a hard ceramic coating which can provide a dimpled surface for oil retention to bear the wear and reduce the friction from sliding piston rings. In this work, a high speed pin-on-disc tribometer was used to generate the boundary, mixed and hydrodynamic lubrication regimes. Five different lubricating oils and two different loads were applied to do the tribotests and the COFs of a PEO coating were studied. The results show that the PEO coating indeed had a lower COF in a lower viscosity lubricating oil, and a smaller load was beneficial to form the mixed and hydrodynamic lubricating regimes earlier.

In order to reduce the weight of an automotive engine, an aluminum (Al) alloy engine block with cast iron liner has been successfully used to replace the gray cast iron engine. For newly emerging Al linerless engine in which the low surface hardness of the aluminum alloy has to be overcome, a few surface processing technologies are used to protect the surface of cylinders. Among them, plasma transferred wire arc (PTWA) thermal spraying coating is becoming popular. Plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) coating is also proposed for increasing the wear resistance of aluminum alloy and reducing the friction between the cylinder and piston. In this work, a PEO coating with a thickness of ∼20 μm was prepared, and a high speed pin-on-disc tribometer was used to study the tribological behavior of the coating at oil lubricant conditions. Different surface roughness of the coating and a large range of the sliding speeds were employed for the tests.