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Using a holistic 1D engine simulation approach for the modelling of full-transient engine operation, allows analyzing future engine concepts, including its exhaust gas aftertreatment technology, early in the development process. Thus, this approach enables the investigation of both important fields - the thermodynamic engine process and the aftertreatment system, together with their interaction in a single simulation environment. Regarding the aftertreatment system, the kinetic reaction behavior of state-of-the-art and advanced components, such as Diesel Oxidation Catalysts (DOC) or Selective Catalytic Reduction Soot Filters (SCRF), is being modelled. Furthermore, the authors present the use of the 1D engine and exhaust gas aftertreatment model on use cases of variable valve train (VVT) applications on passenger car (PC) diesel engines.

Reliable estimation of pumping and friction losses in modern combustion engines allows better control strategies aiming at optimal fuel consumption and emissions. Sophisticated simulation tools enable detailed simulation of losses based as well on physical and thermodynamic laws as well as on design data. Models embedded in these tools however are not real-time capable and cannot be implemented into the programs of the electronic control units (ECU's). In this paper an approach is presented that estimates the pumping and friction losses of a combustion engine with variable valve train (VVT). Particularly the pumping losses strongly depend on the control of variable valve train by ECU. The model is based on a combination of a globally physical structure embedding data driven sub models based on test bed measurements. Losses are separated concerning different component groups (bearings, pistons, etc.).

The integration of safety-critical and major power-consuming electrical systems presents a challenge for the development of future automotive electrical networks. Both reliability and performance must be enhanced in order to guarantee the power supply to essential electrical consumers at a sufficient degree of power quality. Often, in order to cope with these requirements, merely an upgrade of the existing wiring harness design is used, resulting in additional complexity, weight, and cost [3]. A characterization of the wiring harness and its electrical consumers facilitates a systematic optimization approach aimed at designing new automotive power networks [1, 5]. Measurement and analysis methods to characterise the thermal behaviour of the wiring harness have been presented and discussed in a previous paper [4] This paper presents and compares two methods aimed at modeling the electrical behavior of consumers at various voltages and temperatures.

Advanced technologies such as direct injection DI, turbocharging and variable valve timing, have lead to a significant evolution of the gasoline engine with positive effects on driving pleasure, fuel consumption and emissions. Today's developments are primarily focused on the implementation of improved full load characteristics for driving performance and fuel consumption reduction with stoichiometric operation, following the downsizing approach in combination with turbocharging and high specific power. The requirements of a relatively small cylinder displacement with high specific power and a wide flexibility of DI injection specifications lead to competing development targets and additionally to a high number of degrees of freedom during optimization. In order to successfully approach an optimum solution, FEV has evolved an advanced development methodology, which is based on the combination of simulation, optical diagnostics and engine thermodynamics testing.

Both the electrical portion of the powertrain and the rising number of auxiliary systems will considerably increase the electrical power requirements in future vehicles. In addition, multiple voltage supply levels will enhance the complexity of the electrical distribution system (EDS), while strict cost, weight, packaging, and safety constraints must be upheld, posing serious design challenges in terms of robustness, reliability and energy efficiency. Currently, a self-contained integral test or evaluation of the EDS is normally not applied. For such a purpose, quantitative quality criteria are introduced here which allow a comparative assessment of an EDS by addressing the dynamic and static stability of the supply voltage, the reliability of the fusing system, and the ability to provide the required electrical power. The presented approach uses both precisely-defined test scenarios and a comprehensive EDS test bench.

The optimum design of an electrical distribution system (EDS) is based on the profound understanding and measurement of its thermal behavior, because this determines wire diameter and insulation material, has a major impact on the fusing strategy, and enables minimizing technical risk. Current methods of calculation require an extensive database, whereas the temperature measurements at selected points with normal sensors allow neither the precise rating of the actual insulation temperature within a wire bundle, nor the determination of the thermal impact of load currents. The presented approach is based on both a new measurement method and on a related evaluation algorithm. A common automotive wire is applied as a sensing device using its resistance temperature coefficient as the measurement principle.

The fulfillment of the aggravated demands on future small-size High-Speed Direct Injection (HSDI) Diesel engines requires next to the optimization of the injection system and the combustion chamber also the generation of an optimal in-cylinder swirl charge motion. To evaluate different port concepts for modern HSDI Diesel engines, usually quantities as the in-cylinder swirl ratio and the flow coefficient are determined, which are measured on a steady-state flow test bench. It has been shown that different valve lift strategies nominally lead to similar swirl levels. However, significant differences in combustion behavior and engine-out emissions give rise to the assumption that local differences in the in-cylinder flow structure caused by different valve lift strategies have noticeable impact. In this study an additional criterion, the homogeneity of the swirl flow, is introduced and a new approach for a quantitative assessment of swirl flow pattern is presented.

Prospective combustion engine applications require the highest possible energy conversion efficiencies for environmental and economic sustainability. For conventional Spark-Ignition (SI) engines, the quasi-hemispherical flame propagation combustion method can only be significantly optimized in combination with high excess air dilution or increased combustion speed. However, with increasing excess air dilution, this is difficult due to decreasing flame speeds and flammability limits. Pre-Chamber (PC) initiated jet ignition combustion systems significantly shift the flammability and flame stability limits towards higher dilution areas due to high levels of introduced turbulence and a significantly increased flame area in early combustion stages, leading to considerably increased combustion speeds and high efficiencies. By now, vehicle implementations of PC-initiated combustion systems remain niche applications, especially in combination with lean mixtures.

State-of-the-art spark-ignition engines mainly rely on the quasi-hemispherical flame propagation combustion method. Despite significant development efforts to obtain high energy conversion efficiencies while avoiding knock phenomena, achieved indicated efficiencies remain around 35 - 40 %. Further optimizations are enabled by significant excess air dilution or increased combustion speed. However, flammability limits and decreasing flame speeds with increasing air dilution prevent substantial improvements. Pre-Chamber (PC) initiated jet ignition combustion systems improve flame stability and shift flammability limits towards higher dilution levels due to increased turbulence and a larger flame area in the early Main-Chamber (MC) combustion stages. Simultaneously, the much-increased combustion speed reduces knock tendency, allowing the implementation of an innovative combustion method: PC-initiated jet ignition coupled with Spark-Assisted Compression Ignition (SACI).

A new approach is presented to modelling wall heat transfer in the exhaust port and manifold within 1D gas exchange simulation to ensure a precise calculation of thermal exhaust enthalpy. One of the principal characteristics of this approach is the partition of the exhaust process in a blow-down and a push-out phase. In addition to the split in two phases, the exhaust system is divided into several sections to consider changes in heat transfer characteristics downstream the exhaust valves. Principally, the convective heat transfer is described by the characteristic numbers of Nusselt, Reynolds and Prandtl. However, the phase individual correlation coefficients are derived from 3D CFD investigations of the flow in the exhaust system combined with Low-Re turbulence modelling. Furthermore, heat losses on the valve and the seat ring surfaces are considered by an empirical model approach.

The increasing power and safety requirements of electrical systems present a challenge for future automotive electrical networks. However, the modeling of use-profiles and the overall power consumption of electrical systems proves to be difficult as the number of potential on/off combinations of the loads is tremendous. Furthermore, the operation of some loads is correlated or depends upon the operating conditions. Thus, simple worst-case calculations applied to this complexity often lead to an over-specification of components. The proposed approach is based on the probabilities of loads being in the on-state and their respective interdependencies with each other and with boundary conditions such as time of day. Applying basic statistics and a new iterative algorithm, it allows the calculation of the probability of consumed total power for a given set of boundary conditions and of, very importantly, its expected continuous period.

For the prevention of technical risks and the optimum design of an electrical distribution system, considerable efforts have been made to implement thermal models of wires, bundles, and electromechanical components in order to improve thermal analysis. Unfortunately, in most cases, important input parameters such as the position of a wire within a bundle or the profiles of the currents are unknown. This leads to the use of worst-case scenarios, frequently providing unrealistic results and uneconomic over-dimensioning. The proposed approach is based on the thermal simulation of a large number of randomly-generated bundle configurations for given profiles of currents. Thus one gets a temperature distribution, allowing a much more precise analysis compared to a simple worst-case calculation. By applying the same method to various current profiles, one gets temperature distributions for each wire as a function of a normalized total bundle current.

This study investigated dual-fuel operation with a light duty Diesel engine over a wide engine load range. Ethanol was hereby injected into the intake duct, while Diesel was injected directly into the cylinder. At low loads, high ethanol shares are critical in terms of combustion stability and emissions of unburnt hydrocarbons. As the load increases, the rates of heat release become problematic with regard to noise and mechanical stress. At higher loads, an advanced injection of Diesel was found to be beneficial in terms of combustion noise and emissions. For all tests, engine-out NOx emissions were kept within the EU-6.1 limit.

Engine processes are subject to cyclic fluctuations, which a have direct effect on the operating and emission behavior of the engine. The fluctuations in direct injection gasoline engines are induced and superimposed by the flow and the injection. In stratified operation they can cause serious operating problems, such as misfiring. The current state of knowledge on the formation and causes of cyclic fluctuations is rather limited, which can be attributed to the complex nature of flow instabilities. The current investigation analyzes the cyclic fluctuations of the in-cylinder charge motion and the mixture formation in a direct injection gasoline engine using laser-optical diagnostics and numerical 3D-calculation. Optical measurement techniques and pressure indication are used to measure flow, mixture formation, and combustion processes of the individual cycles.

In this study the fuel influence of several bio-fuel candidates on homogeneous engine combustion systems with direct injection is investigated. The results reveal Ethanol and 2-Butanol as the two most knock-resistant fuels. Hence these two fuels enable the highest efficiency improvements versus RON95 fuel ranging from 3.6% - 12.7% for Ethanol as a result of a compression ratio increase of 5 units. Tetrahydro-2-methylfuran has a worse knock resistance and a decreased thermal efficiency due to the required reduction in compression ratio by 1.5 units. The enleanment capability is similar among all fuels thus they pose no improvements for homogeneous lean burn combustion systems despite a significant reduction in NOX emissions for the alcohol fuels as a consequence of lower combustion temperatures.

For gasoline engines controlled autoignition provides the vision of enabling the fuel consumption benefit of stratified lean combustion systems without the drawback of additional NOx aftertreatment. In this study the potential of certain biofuels on this combustion system was assessed by single-cylinder engine investigations using the exhaust strategy "combustion chamber recirculation" (CCR). For the engine testing sweeps in the internal EGR rate with different injection strategies as well as load sweeps were performed. Of particular interest was to reveal fuel differences in the achievable maximal load as well as in the NOx emission behavior. Additionally, experiments with a shock tube and a rapid compression machine were conducted in order to determine the ignition delay times of the tested biofuels concerning controlled autoignition-relevant conditions.

Gasoline particulate filters (GPF) recently entered the market, and are already regarded a state-of-the-art solution for gasoline exhaust aftertreatment systems to enable EU6d-TEMP fulfilment and beyond. Especially for coated GPF applications, the prognosis of the emission conversion performance over lifetime poses an ambitious challenge, which significantly influences future catalyst diagnosis calibrations. The paper presents key-findings for the different GPF application variants. In the first part, experimental GPF ash loading results are presented. Ash accumulates as thin wall layers and short plugs, but does not penetrate into the wall. However, it suppresses deep bed filtration of soot, initially decreasing the soot-loaded backpressure. For the emission calibration, the non-linear backpressure development complicates the soot load monitoring, eventually leading to compromises between high safety against soot overloading and a low number of active regenerations.

Combustion and pollutant formation in a new recently introduced Common-Rail DI Diesel engine concept with roof-shaped combustion chamber and tumble charge motion are numerically investigated using the Representative Interactive Flamelet concept (RIF). A reference case with a cup shaped piston bowl for full load operating conditions is considered in detail. In addition to the reference case, three more cases are investigated with a variation of start of injection (SOI). A surrogate fuel consisting of n-decane (70% liquid volume fraction) and α-methylnaphthalene (30% liquid volume fraction) is used in the simulation. The underlying complete reaction mechanism comprises 506 elementary reactions and 118 chemical species. Special emphasis is put on pollutant formation, in particular on the formation of NOx, where a new technique based on a three-dimensional transport equation within the flamelet framework is applied.

Within the Cluster of Excellence “Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass” (TMFB) at the RWTH Aachen University, two novel biogenic fuels, namely 1-octanol and its isomer dibutyl ether (DBE), were identified and extensively analyzed in respect of their suitability for combustion in a Diesel engine. Both biofuels feature very different properties, especially regarding their ignitability. In previous works of the research cluster, promising synthesis routes with excellent yields for both fuels were found, using lignocellulosic biomass as source material. Both fuels were investigated as pure components in optical and thermodynamic single cylinder engines (SCE). For 1-octanol at lower part load, almost no soot emission could be measured, while with DBE the soot emissions were only about a quarter of that with conventional Diesel fuel. At high part load (2400 min-1, 14.8 bar IMEP), the soot reduction of 1-octanol was more than 50% and for DBE more than 80 % respectively.

This paper introduces different modeling approaches of crankshafts, compares the refinement levels and discusses the difference between the results of the crankshaft durability calculation methodologies. A V6 crankshaft is considered for the comparison of the refinement levels depending on the deviation between the signals such as main bearing forces and deflection angle. Although a good correlation is observed between the results in low speed range, the deviation is evident through the mid to high speed ranges. The deviation amplitude differs depending on the signal being observed and model being used. An inline 4 crankshaft is considered for the comparison of the durability results. The analysis results show that the durability potential is underestimated with a classical crankshaft calculation approach which leads to a limitation of maximum speed of 5500 rpm.