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The objectives of the present work are to investigate the regulated and unregulated (particle) emissions of a classical and modern 2-stroke and a typical 4-stroke scooter with different ethanol blend fuels. There is also comparison of two different ethanol fuels: pure ethanol (E) *) and hydrous ethanol (EH) which contains 3.9% water and is denatured with 1.5% gasoline. Special attention is paid in this research to the hydrous ethanol, since the production costs of hydrous ethanol are much less than those for (dry) ethanol. The vehicles are with carburettor and without catalyst, which represents the most frequent technology in Eastern Asia and offers the information of engine-out emissions. Exhaust emissions measurements have been performed with fuels containing ethanol (E), or hydrous ethanol (EH) in the portion of 5, 10, 15 and 20% by volume. During the test systematical analysis of particle mass (PM) and nano-particles counts (NP) were carried out.

A direct injection system in which fuel was injected through the cylinder wall was developed and detailed investigation was made for the purpose of reducing short-circuit of fuel in 2-stroke engines. As a result of dynamo tests using 430cc single cylinder engine, it was found that the injector was best attached at a location as close to TDC as possible on the rear transfer port side, and that the entire amount of fuel should be injected towards the piston top surface. Emissions were worsened if fuel was injected towards the exhaust port or spark plug. Although the higher injection pressure resulted in large emissions reduction effects, it did not have a significant effect on fuel consumption. When a butterfly exhaust valve, known to be effective against irregular combustion in the light load range, was applied, it was found to lead to further reductions in HC emission and fuel consumption while also improving combustion stability.

The road transportation sector is undergoing significant changes, and new green scenarios for sustainable mobility are being proposed. In this context, a diversification of the vehicles’ propulsion, based on electric powertrains and/or alternative fuels and technological improvements of the electric vehicles charging stations, are necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The adoption of internal combustion engines operating with alternative fuels, like methanol, may represent a viable solution for overcoming the limitations of actual grid connected charging infrastructure, giving the possibility to realize off-grid charging stations. This work aims, therefore, at investigating this last aspect, by evaluating the performance of an internal combustion engine fueled with methanol for stationary applications, in order to fulfill the potential demand of an on off-grid charging station.

Advanced Vehicle Technologies (AVT), a Ballarat Australia based company, has developed the World's first diesel to 100% LPG conversion for heavy haul trucks. There is no diesel required or utilized on the trucks. The engine is converted with minimal changes into a spark ignition engine with equivalent power and torque of the diesel. The patented technology is now deployed in 2 Mercedes Actros trucks. The power output in engine dynamometer testing exceeds that of the diesel (in excess of 370 kW power and 2700 Nm torque). In on-road application the power curve is matched to the diesel specifications to avoid potential downstream power-train stress. Testing at the Department of Transport Energy & Infrastructure, Regency Park, SA have shown the Euro 3 truck converted to LPG is between Euro 4 and Euro 5 NOx levels, CO2 levels 10% better than diesel on DT80 test and about even with diesel on CUEDC tests.

Engines and fuels for transport as well as off-road applications are facing a double challenge: bring local pollution to the level requested by the most stringent city air quality standard reduce CO2 emission in order to minimize the global warming risk. These goals stimulate new developments both of conventional and alternative engines and fuels technologies. New combustion processes known as Controlled Auto-Ignition (CAI™) for gasoline engine and Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) for Diesel engine are the subject of extensive research world wide and particularly at IFP for various applications such as passenger cars, heavy-duty trucks and buses as well as small engines. Because of the thermo-chemistry of the charge, the thermal NOx formation and the soot production are in principle much lower than in flames typical of conventional engines.

A gasoline Road Octane study was conducted by the Coordinating Research Council (CRC) to evaluate the effects of heavy aromatics (C9 and heavier) and ethanol content on Road Octane performance independent of Research Octane Number (RON) and Motor Octane Number (MON). Maximum-throttle and part-throttle Road ON’s were found to be well predicted by equations containing only RON and MON terms. Heavier aromatics were found to have a small adverse effect on both maximum-throttle and part-throttle Road ON independent of its direct effects on RON and MON. The all-car data did not show a significant ethanol-content effect, but eight of the thirty-seven cars did show significant effects for ethanol content.

Controlled Auto Ignition (CAI), also known as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), is one of the most promising combustion technologies to reduce the fuel consumption and NOx emissions. Currently, CAI combustion is constrained at part load operation conditions because of misfire at low load and knocking combustion at high load, and the lack of effective means to control the combustion process. Extending its operating range including high load boundary towards full load and low load boundary towards idle in order to allow the CAI engine to meet the demand of whole vehicle driving cycles, has become one of the key issues facing the industrialisation of CAI/HCCI technology. Furthermore, this combustion mode should be compatible with different fuels, and can switch back to conventional spark ignition operation when necessary. In this paper, the CAI operation is demonstrated on a 2-stroke gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine equipped with a poppet valve train.

Due to the general requirements in the automotive industry to reduce the power consumption, fuel consumption rate and CO2 emission a new HID (High Intensity Discharge) bulb with only 25W is under development for front lighting systems. A first headlamp integrated in a hybrid vehicle is now launched as a first application in the market. The current regulation in ECE allows to get rid of the mandatory headlamp cleaning system and the automatic leveling requirement once the 25W HID bulb is applied. The reason for this is the objective luminous flux of the 25W HID bulb, which emits less than 2000 lm, a boundary defined in the regulation, where a headlamp cleaning and an automatic leveling is requested. That simplifies especially the integration in smaller vehicles and electric and hybrid vehicles. The paper describes the special design of the headlamp, the projector unit, the light performance, packaging advantages and future outlook of further applications in the near future.

An investigation of the possibility to extend the 3-dimensional modeling capabilities from conventional diesel to the HCCI combustion mode simulation was carried out. Experimental data was taken from a single cylinder engine operating with early injections for the HCCI and a split-injection (early pilot+main) for the high speed Diesel engine operation. To properly phase the HCCI mode in the experiments, high amounts of cooled EGR and a decreased compression ratio were used. In numerical simulation performed using KIVA3-V code, modified to incorporate the Detailed Chemistry Approach the same conditions were reproduced. Special attention is paid on the analysis of the events leading up to the auto-ignition, which was reasonably well predicted.

A compound-laser welding method has been developed for the rapid three-dimensional welding of motorcycle aluminum-alloy structural parts. The term “compound-laser welding” means a high-speed welding method in which a number of lasers with different characteristics are arranged on the same axis. This paper reports the results of welding by a compound laser consisting of a YAG laser and a CO2 laser. It was found that compound-laser welding with two or more types of gases mixed as shielding gas gives a better welding performance than single-laser welding due to the advantages of the different lasers used in compound-laser welding.

The fuel injection in internal combustion engines plays a crucial role in the mixture formation, combustion process and pollutants' emission. Its correct modeling is fundamental to the prediction of an engine performance through a computational fluid dynamics simulation. In the first part of this work a tridimensional numerical simulation of a multi-hole’s injector, using ethanol as fuel, is presented. The numerical simulation results were compared to experimental data from a fuel spray injection bench test in a quiescent vessel. The break up model applied to the simulation was the combined Kelvin-Helmholtz Rayleigh-Taylor, and a sensitivity analysis of the liquid fuel penetration curve, as well on the overall spray shape was performed according to the model constants. Experimental spray images were used to aid the model tuning. The final configuration of the KH-RT model constants that showed best agreement with the measured spray was C3 equal to 0.5, B1, 7 and Cb, 0.

Recently the analysis of air-fuel mixing and combustion has become important under the stringent emissions regulations of diesel engines. In the case of gasoline engines, the KIVA computer program has been developed and used for the analysis of combustion. In this paper, the calculations of combustion phenomena in DI diesel engines are performed by modifying the KIVA program so as to be applicable to multi-hole nozzles and arbitrary patterns of injection rate. The thermophysical and ther-mochemical properties of gasoline are altered to those diesel fuel. In order to investigate the ability of this modified program, the calculations are compared with the experiments on single cylinder engines concerning the pressure, flame temperature and mass change of chemical species in cylinders. Furthermore, the calculation for the heavy duty DI diesel engine is performed with this diesel combustion program.

Renewable fuels, such as bio- and e-fuels, are of great interest for the defossilization of the transport sector. Among these fuels, methanol represents a promising candidate for emission reduction and efficiency increase due to its very high knock resistance and its production pathway as e-fuel. In general, reliable simulation tools are mandatory for evaluating a specific fuel potential and optimizing combustion systems. In this work, a previously presented methodology (Esposito et al., Energies, 2020) has been refined and applied to a different engine and different fuels. Experimental data measured with a single cylinder engine (SCE) are used to validate RANS 3D-CFD simulations of gaseous engine-out emissions. The RANS 3D-CFD model has been used for operation with a toluene reference fuel (TRF) gasoline surrogate and methanol. Varying operating conditions with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and air dilution are considered for the two fuels.

Many applications of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to commercial vehicles have used their corresponding diesel engine counterparts for their basic architecture. Here a review is made of the application to commercial vehicle operation of a robust 4 L, light-duty, 6-cylinder in-line engine produced by Ford Australia on a unique long-term production line. Since 2000 it has had a dedicated LPG pick-up truck and cab-chassis variant. A sequence of research programs has focused on optimizing this engine for low carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Best results (from steady state engine maps) suggest reductions in CO₂ emissions of over 30% are possible in New European Drive Cycle (NEDC) light-duty tests compared with the base gasoline engine counterpart. This has been achieved through increasing compression ratio to 12, running lean burn (to λ = 1.6) and careful study (through CFD and bench tests) of the injected LPG-air mixing system.

The legislations on emission reduction is getting stringent everywhere in the world. India is following the same trend, with Government of India (GOI) declaring the nationwide implementation of BS 6 legislation by April 2020 and Real Driving Emission (RDE) Cycle relevant legislation by 2023. Additionally GOI is focusing on reduction of CO2 emissions by introduction of stringent fleet CO2 targets through CAFE regulation, making it mandatory for vehicle manufacturers to simultaneously work on gaseous emissions and CO2 emissions. Simultaneous NOx emission reduction and CO2 reduction measures are divergent in nature, but with a 48 V Diesel hybrid, this goal can be achieved. The study presented here involves arriving at the right future hybrid-powertrain layout for a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) in the Indian scenario to meet the future BS 6 and CAFÉ legislations. Diesel engines dominate the current LCV and SUV segments in India and the same trend can be expected to continue in future.

The University of Liege and Breuer Technical Development, Belgium, have designed a parallel hybrid drive train, now implemented in a VW Lupo. The original objectives of the concept were the reduction of total CO2 emissions without performance loss and an acceptable zero-emission range for inner cities. This paper presents: Metropol, a homemade hybrid simulation software, including engine cold start and dynamic battery models, hybrid management strategy for the lowest CO2 emissions, final performance, consumption and emissions of the vehicle.

The 912 engine is a well known 4-cylinder horizontally opposed 4-stroke liquid-/air-cooled aircraft engine. The 912 family has a strong track record: 40 000 engines sold / 25 000 still in operation / 5 million flight hours annually. 88% of all light aircraft OEMs use Rotax engines. The 912iS is an evolution of the Rotax 912ULS carbureted engine. The “i” stands for electronic fuel injection which has been developed according to flight standards, providing a better fuel efficiency over the current 912ULS of more than 20% and in a range of 38% to 70% compared to other competitive engines in the light sport, ultra-light aircraft and the general aviation industry. BRP engineers have incorporated several technology enhancements. The fully redundant digital Engine Control Unit (ECU) offers a computer based electronic diagnostic system which makes it easier to diagnose and service the engine.

In the last two decades, piston engine specifications have deeply evolved. Indeed, new challenges nowadays concern the reduction of pollutant emissions (EURO regulations) and CO2 emissions. To satisfy these new requirements, powertrains have become very complex systems including a large number of high technology components (high pressure injectors, turbocharger, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) loop, after-treatment devices...). In this context, the engine control plays a major role in the development and the optimization of powertrains. Few years ago, engine control strategies were mainly defined by experiments on engine test benches. This approach is not adapted to the complexity of future engines: on the one hand, tests are too expensive and on the other hand, they do not give much information to understand interactions between components. Today, a promising alternative to tests may be the use of 0D/1D simulation tools.

In July 1997, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Regional Bioenergy Program, in cooperation with several industrial and institutional partners initiated a long-haul 322,000 km (200,000 mile) operational demonstration using a biodiesel and diesel fuel blend in a 324 kW (435 HP), Caterpillar 3406E Engine, and a Kenworth Class 8 heavy duty truck. This project was designed to: develop definitive biodiesel performance information, collect emissions data for both regulated and non-regulated compounds including mutagenic activity, and collect heavy-duty operational engine performance and durability information. To assess long-term engine durability and wear; including injector, valve and port deposit formations; the engine was dismantled for inspection and evaluation at the conclusion of the demonstration. The fuel used was a 50% blend of biodiesel produced from used cooking oil (hydrogenated soy ethyl ester) and 50% 2-D petroleum diesel.

Active prechamber combustion systems for SI engines represent a feasible and effective solution in reducing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions for both marine and ground heavy-duty engines. However, reliable and low-cost numerical approaches need to be developed to support and speed-up their industrial design considering their geometry complexity and the involved multiple flow length scales. This work presents a CFD methodology based on the RANS approach for the simulation of active prechamber spark-ignition engines. To reduce the computational time, the gas exchange process is computed only in the prechamber region to correctly describe the flow and mixture distributions, while the whole cylinder geometry is considered only for the power-cycle (compression, combustion and expansion). Outside the prechamber the in-cylinder flow field at IVC is estimated from the measured swirl ratio.