Investigation of the Effects of Using Plastic Instead of Aluminum in Tractor Engines, Intercooler Tanks on Engine Performance

In recent years, researchers have been working on more environmentally friendly engine systems and the efficient use of depleting fuel resources. One of these research topics is intercoolers used in turbocharged engines. Intercooler tanks are generally made of aluminum due to their good heat transfer coefficient. In this study, the suitability of the use of plastic tanks was investigated by examining the engine performance changes as a result of using plastic instead of aluminum, which is the traditional material, in the intercooler tanks of an 81 kW Perkins tractor engine. For this purpose, experiments were carried out at 1400 and 2200 rpm for intercoolers with both materials. According to the results obtained from the experiments, a 0.62%25 torque increase was obtained at 1400 rpm in the engine with a plastic tank material intercooler compared to the engine with an aluminum material intercooler. According to the data obtained from the experiments carried out at 2200 rpm, a power increase of 0.74%25 was determined. Similarly, it was determined that the effects of parameters such as radiator upper and lower hose temperatures, turbo inlet and outlet air temperatures, and intake manifold inlet temperature on engine performance were negligible. According to these findings, it has been determined that if the tanks of the intercoolers are plastic, there will be a negligible performance loss compared to the traditional material aluminum. Plastic is lighter, cheaper, and easier to manufacture than aluminum. Considering the production and operating conditions, it was concluded that such materials should be researched and developed by manufacturers

Guide Vane Swirl and Tumble Device to Improve in-cylinder Air Flow of CI Engine Using Vegetable Oil

AbstractA guide vane swirl and tumble device (GVSTD) can be used in compression ignition (CI) engines running on vegetable oils to generate better in-cylinder air flow characteristics to improve combustion efficiency. In this paper, IC engine simulations were performed to determine the effect of GVSTD on the air flow using 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. The effects of various vane heights by means of parametric optimization were investigated. The results of average in-cylinder pressure, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and velocity were analyzed before the optimum vane height to the pre-set values of vane angle, number and length were decided. Interestingly, the highest vane height failed to improve all the analyzed parameters. At a GVSTD vane height of 0.2 times the intake runner radius, the average in-cylinder pressure, TKE and velocity were found better than with other settings

METHODOLOGY FOR AUTOMOTIVE AIR-CONDITIONING CONTROL OPTIMIZATION USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

The transient nature of automotive air conditioning systems control is generally achieved through proportional–integral–derivative controllers (PID’s) parameters tunning. Due to the vast database available from decades of automotive manufacturers design and expertise, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) might be able to identify underlying patterns to predict and properly tune the air-conditioning PID control systems under different thermal requirements. Recently, advances in computational capability have enabled compact embarked systems to rapidly solve complex, multi-variable sets of equations, thus allowing for ANN to promptly calculate tunning parameters and act upon PID controllers. As any new application, technical literature is still scarce. On this research, a coupled PID and 6-layers perceptron ANN system was devised, programmed and used to simulate how an air-conditioning system performance can be optimized through proportional–integral–derivative controllers tuning. This proposed setup response was then compared to a conventional heuristic PID tunning method (Ziegler Nichols) to demonstrate how ANN’s can more rapidly stabilize the system output

A Hybrid Droplet Vaporization-Chemical Surrogate Approach for Emulating Vaporization, Physical Properties, and Chemical Combustion Behavior of Multicomponent Fuels

The complex nature of multicomponent aviation fuels presents a daunting task for accurately simulating combustion behavior without incurring impractical computational costs. To reduce computation time, chemical fuel surrogates comprised of only a few species are used to emulate the combustion of complex pre-vaporized fuels. These surrogates are often unable to match the vaporization behavior and physical properties of the real fuel and fail to capture the effect of preferential vaporization on combustion behavior. Therefore, a computationally efficient, hybrid droplet vaporization-chemical surrogate approach has been developed which emulates both the physical and chemical properties of a multicomponent kerosene fuel. The droplet vaporization/physical portion of the hybrid uses the Coupled Algebraic–Direct Quadrature Method of Moments with delumping to accurately solve for the evolution of every discrete species in a vaporizing fuel droplet with the computational efficiency of a continuous thermodynamic model. The chemical surrogate portion of the hybrid is linked to the vaporization model using a functional group matching method, which creates an instantaneous surrogate composition to match the distribution of chemical functional groups (CH2, (CH2)n, CH3 and Benzyl-type) in the vaporization flux of the full fuel. The result is a hybrid method which can accurately and efficiently predict time-dependent, distillation-resolved combustion property targets of the vaporizing fuel and can be used to investigate the effects of preferential vaporization on combustion behavior

Research on Flow Characteristics of Electronically Controlled Injection Device Developed for High-Power Natural Gas Engines

Accurate fuel supply is a key factor that influences the performance of high-power natural gas engines. The premixed and single-point natural gas supply system is the most commonly used method to ensure a large fuel supply but one of its shortcomings is the inaccuracy of the fuel supply. A new type of natural gas injection device with fungiform configuration and electronically controlled actuator was developed to achieve high efficiency and stable operation in high-power natural gas engines. Firstly, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the injection device was created. Based on this model, the key structure parameters that have a significant influence on the outlet flow were confirmed. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) model was developed to identify the optimal outflow structure. Then, a flow function for precise flow supply control was constructed based on a response surface model, according to the flow rates of the device under different control parameters. Finally, a flow-characteristic test bench and a high-power engine prototype were developed to verify the simulation and optimization results. The results indicate that the optimized outflow structure shows low pressure loss and a large flow rate, improving injection efficiency by 10.37% and mass flow by 11.78% under 0.4 Mpa pressure difference. More importantly, the cycle fuel supply could be controlled accurately for each cylinder owing to the developed flow function. Consequently, compared with the original engine using a single-point natural gas supply system, the cylinder performance imbalance was improved by 37.47%

Impact of Solar Control PVB Glass on Vehicle Interior Temperatures, Air-Conditioning Capacity, Fuel Consumption, and Vehicle Range

The objective of the study was to assess the impact of Saflex1 S-series Solar Control PVB (polyvinyl butyral) configurations on conventional vehicle fuel economy and electric vehicle (EV) range. The approach included outdoor vehicle thermal soak testing, RadTherm cool-down analysis, and vehicle simulations. Thermal soak tests were conducted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Vehicle Testing and Integration Facility in Golden, Colorado. The test results quantified interior temperature reductions and were used to generate initial conditions for the RadTherm cool-down analysis. The RadTherm model determined the potential reduction in air-conditioning (A/C) capacity, which was used to calculate the A/C load for the vehicle simulations. The vehicle simulation tool identified the potential reduction in fuel consumption or improvement in EV range between a baseline and modified configurations for the city and highway drive cycles. The thermal analysis determined a potential 4.0% reduction in A/C power for the Saflex Solar PVB solar control configuration. The reduction in A/C power improved the vehicle range of EVs and fuel economy of conventional vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

Model-Based Ammonia Slip Observation for SCR Control and Diagnosis

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] The control of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems, via NH3 injection, requires from a precise estimation of the SCR load in order to ensure NOx reduction by minimizing ammonia slip. This article aims to resolve the cross-sensitivity of current NOx sensors at the outlet of the SCR, by providing the control unit with an estimation of NOx and ammonia slip. The problem of discerning between NOx and ammonia slip is solved by identifying an intermediate variable representing the SCR load. The SCR load is estimated by combining the mass conservation principle between the inlet and the outlet of the SCR and a NOx reduction model, via an extended Kalman filter. Current models and observers have several limitations to represent the real behavior of the SCR along all the operating conditions; on one hand, when relying on the mass conservation, small errors at models are integrated, leading to important bias on the SCR load and on the other hand, the dynamics at the SCRmust be preciselymodelled for an adequate adaptation of the model. The main focus of the developed algorithm is to use a simplified model which might be used for ammonia slip estimation, being aware of current limitations of SCR models in real operation. Experimental results in a EURO 6 compression ignited (CI) engine show the potential of such observation in transient conditions and an adequate correlation with external ammonia measurements provided by additional sensors available on the test bench.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad under project TRA2016-78717-R.Guardiola, C.; Pla Moreno, B.; Bares-Moreno, P.; Mora, J. (2020). Model-Based Ammonia Slip Observation for SCR Control and Diagnosis. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics. 25(3):1346-1353. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMECH.2020.2974341S1346135325

A Supplemental Analysis of Selected Two-Vehicle Front-to-Rear Collisions from the NASS/CDS

The National Automotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Database System (NASS/CDS) is a well-known digital repository containing statistics on hundreds of thousands of vehicle crashes that occurred over the past 30 years. Many of the NASS crashes contain estimates of Delta-v calculated using WinSMASH, a common software reconstruction package. Recent work indicates that WinSMASH typically underestimates Delta-v in frontal impacts, and that inclusion of restitution significantly improves the estimate of Delta-v to within 1% of the value recorded on EDR-equipped vehicles [1]. Prior experiments have shown that in front-to-rear collisions, restitution is a strong inverse function of closing velocity (the difference between the respective pre-impact speeds in the bullet and target vehicles) [2], with calculated restitutions ranging from 0.265 down to 0.0 for closing speeds varying from 11.4 mph to as high as 36 mph. This work uses front-to-rear impact data from the NASS/CDS to examine the effect of coefficient of restitution on calculated Delta-v values for both the bullet and target vehicles. The WinSMASH-based values of Delta-v and dissipated energy contained in the NASS/CDS were compared to Delta-v values computed using traditional analytical (energy and momentum) equations. With restitution set equal to zero, the mean value of the calculated values of Delta-v (for bullet and target vehicles) ranged between −1.76 and 1.47 percent of the values contained in the NASS/CDS. However, including values of restitution computed iteratively using pre-impact closing velocity increased the computed values of Delta-v for both bullet and target vehicles by an average of 10.38 - 13.17 percent over those provided (in the absence of restitution) by the NASS/CDS. In addition, it was found that small errors in reported values of vehicle mass or dissipated energy (2% - 10%) produced similar or smaller percentage variations in calculated Delta-v values for both the bullet and target vehicles

Aging evaluation of high power lithium cells subjected to micro-cycles

A typical operating condition of storage batteries requires to deliver and absorb small currents in large intervals of time, in order of minutes or hours. However, in the last years lithium batteries have been more and more considered in "power oriented" applications, in which they are required to manage large currents in short intervals of time, typically a few seconds or tens of seconds. Unfortunately, very limited information about this kind of usage is available in literature, in terms of battery performance and aging. Therefore, the paper focuses firstly on the experimental evaluation of performance of high power and super high power lithium batteries also in comparison to other power oriented storage systems adequate for use onboard hybrid vehicles, such as supercapacitors (SCs). The evaluation has been performed through experimental tests. Results have shown that these batteries are able to guarantee significant performance, even higher than data declared by manufacturer, with slight over-temperature.Then, for high power lithium batteries aging is discussed, when they are subjected to shallow-depth charge/discharge cycles. The aim is to evaluate if the battery life corresponding to such micro-cycles can reach several hundreds of thousands that are required for applications such as hybrid vehicles and hybrid stationary generation systems. Also in this case experimental tests able to prove it have been executed. They have shown a substantially unaltered capacity fade during the execution of hundreds of thousands of micro-cycles, thus confirming the vocation of these devices for power-oriented applications

A novel tread model for tire modelling using experimental modal parameters

Modal parameter model acts as an analytical model of tire, because it can represent the entire tire characteristics, when applied to the tire modelling. However, without considering the effect of transfer characteristics of adjacent tread spring elements, the accuracy of modal parameter model may be limited in previous studies. Based on contact mechanics and the modal parameter model, a novel tread model is proposed considering tread transfer characteristics, and then a modified model using the modal parameters was obtained using the novel tread model. The effects of tire external characteristics were analyzed by modifying the modal parameter static vertical model. Finally, the experimental and calculated data were compared, the proposed tread model improved the accuracy of calculation. The results show that the tread transfer characteristics significantly affect contact length, i.e., by improving the predictive accuracy by 50 %, and the effect on improving the squat of tire can be ignored. The developed model may help to optimize tire modelling