Method for Turbocharging Single Cylinder Four Stroke Engines

This paper presents a feasibility study of a method for turbocharging single cylinder, four-stroke internal combustion engines. Turbocharging is not conventionally used with single cylinder engines because of the timing mismatch between when the turbo is powered, during the exhaust stroke, and when it can deliver air to the cylinder, during the intake stroke. The proposed solution involves an air capacitor on the intake side of the engine between the turbocharger and intake valves. The capacitor acts as a buffer and would be implemented as a new style of intake manifold with a larger volume than traditional systems. In order for the air capacitor to be practical, it needs to be sized large enough to maintain the turbocharger pressure during the intake stroke, cause minimal turbo lag, and significantly increase the density of the intake air. By creating multiple flow models of air through the turbocharged engine system, we found that the optimal size air capacitor is between four and five times the engine capacity. For a capacitor sized for a one-liter engine, the lag time was found to be approximately two seconds, which would be acceptable for slowly accelerating applications such as tractors, or steady state applications such as generators. The density increase that can be achieved in the capacitor, compared to air at standard ambient temperature and pressure, was found to vary between fifty percent for adiabatic compression and no heat transfer from the capacitor, to eighty percent for perfect heat transfer. These increases in density are proportional to, to first order, the anticipated power increases that could be realized with a turbocharger and air capacitor system applied to a single cylinder, four-stroke engine.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineerin

Validating a Method for Turbocharging Single Cylinder Four Stroke Engines

This paper presents a method for turbocharging single cylinder four stroke internal combustion engines, an experimental setup used to test this method, and the results from this experiment. A turbocharged engine has better fuel economy, cost efficiency, and power density than an equivalently sized, naturally aspirated engine. Most multi-cylinder diesel engines are turbocharged for this reason. However, due to the timing mismatch between the exhaust stroke (when the turbocharger is powered) and the intake stroke (when the engine intakes air), turbocharging is not used in commercial single cylinder engines. Single cylinder engines are ubiquitous in developing world offgrid power applications such as tractors, generators, and water pumps due to their low cost. Turbocharging these engines could give users a lower cost and more fuel efficient engine. The proposed solution is to add an air capacitor, in the form of a large volume intake manifold, between the turbocharger compressor and the engine intake to smooth out the flow. This research builds on a previous theoretical study where the turbocharger, capacitor, and engine system were modeled analytically. In order to validate the theoretical model, an experimental setup was created around a single cylinder four stroke diesel engine. A typical developing world engine was chosen and was fitted with a turbocharger. A series of sensors were added to this engine to measure pressure, temperature, and power output. Our tests showed that a turbocharger and air capacitor could be successfully fitted to a single cylinder engine to increase intake air density by forty-three percent and peak power output by twenty-nine percent.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tata Center for Technology and DesignNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant No. 1122374

Analyzing the Effect of Air Capacitor Turbocharging Single Cylinder Engines on Fuel Economy and Emissions Through Modeling and Experimentation

Turbocharging can provide a cost effective means for increasing the power output and fuel economy of an internal combustion engine. A turbocharger added to an internal combustion engine consists of a coupled turbine and compressor. Currently, turbocharging is common in multi-cylinder engines, but it is not commonly used on single-cylinder engines due to the phase mismatch between the exhaust stroke (when the turbocharger is powered) and the intake stroke (when the engine intakes the compressed air). The proposed method adds an air capacitor, an additional volume in series with the intake manifold, between the turbocharger compressor and the engine intake, to buffer the output from the turbocharger compressor and deliver pressurized air during the intake stroke. This research builds on previous work where it was shown experimentally that a power gain of 29% was achievable and that analytically a power gain of 40-60% was possible using a turbocharger and air capacitor system. The goal of this study is to further analyze the commercial viability of this technology by analyzing the effect of air capacitor turbocharging on emissions, fuel economy, and power density. An experiment was built and conducted that looked at how air capacitor sizing affected emissions, fuel economy, and the equivalence ratio. The experimental data was then used to calibrate a computational model built in Ricardo Wave. Finally this model was used to evaluate strategies to further improve the performance of a single cylinder diesel turbocharged engine with an air capacitor.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tata Center for Technology and DesignNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant No. 1122374

Testing gravitational-wave searches with numerical relativity waveforms: Results from the first Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project

The Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project is a collaborative effort between members of the numerical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The purpose of NINJA is to study the sensitivity of existing gravitational-wave search algorithms using numerically generated waveforms and to foster closer collaboration between the numerical relativity and data analysis communities. We describe the results of the first NINJA analysis which focused on gravitational waveforms from binary black hole coalescence. Ten numerical relativity groups contributed numerical data which were used to generate a set of gravitational-wave signals. These signals were injected into a simulated data set, designed to mimic the response of the Initial LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors. Nine groups analysed this data using search and parameter-estimation pipelines. Matched filter algorithms, un-modelled-burst searches and Bayesian parameter-estimation and model-selection algorithms were applied to the data. We report the efficiency of these search methods in detecting the numerical waveforms and measuring their parameters. We describe preliminary comparisons between the different search methods and suggest improvements for future NINJA analyses.Comment: 56 pages, 25 figures; various clarifications; accepted to CQ

Testing gravitational-wave searches with numerical relativity waveforms: Results from the first Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project

The Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project is a collaborative effort between members of the numerical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The purpose of NINJA is to study the sensitivity of existing gravitational-wave search algorithms using numerically generated waveforms and to foster closer collaboration between the numerical relativity and data analysis communities. We describe the results of the first NINJA analysis which focused on gravitational waveforms from binary black hole coalescence. Ten numerical relativity groups contributed numerical data which were used to generate a set of gravitational-wave signals. These signals were injected into a simulated data set, designed to mimic the response of the initial LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors. Nine groups analysed this data using search and parameter-estimation pipelines. Matched filter algorithms, un-modelled-burst searches and Bayesian parameter estimation and model-selection algorithms were applied to the data. We report the efficiency of these search methods in detecting the numerical waveforms and measuring their parameters. We describe preliminary comparisons between the different search methods and suggest improvements for future NINJA analyses. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd

Status of NINJA: The Numerical INJection Analysis project

The 2008 NRDA conference introduced the Numerical INJection Analysis project (NINJA), a new collaborative effort between the numerical relativity community and the data analysis community. NINJA focuses on modeling and searching for gravitational wave signatures from the coalescence of binary system of compact objects. We review the scope of this collaboration and the components of the first NINJA project, where numerical relativity groups, shared waveforms and data analysis teams applied various techniques to detect them when embedded in colored Gaussian noise. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd

Estimating the prevalence of food risk increasing behaviours in UK kitchens

© 2017 Jones et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Foodborne disease poses a serious threat to public health. In the UK, half a million cases are linked to known pathogens and more than half of all outbreaks are associated with catering establishments. The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has initiated the UK Food Hygiene Rating Scheme in which commercial food establishments are inspected and scored with the results made public. In this study we investigate the prevalence of food risk increasing behaviours among chefs, catering students and the public. Given the incentive for respondents to misreport when asked about illegal or illicit behaviours we employed a Randomised Response Technique designed to elicit more accurate prevalence rates of such behaviours. We found 14% of the public not always hand-washing immediately after handling raw meat, poultry or fish; 32% of chefs and catering students had worked within 48 hours of suffering from diarrhoea or vomiting. 22% of the public admitted having served meat “on the turn” and 33% of chefs and catering students admitted working in kitchens where such meat was served; 12% of the public and 16% of chefs and catering students admitted having served chicken at a barbeque when not totally sure it was fully cooked. Chefs in fine-dining establishment were less likely to wash their hands after handling meat and fish and those who worked in award winning restaurants were more likely to have returned to work within 48 hours of suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting. We found no correlation between the price of a meal in an establishment, nor its Food Hygiene Rating Score, and the likelihood of any of the food malpractices occurring

Fueling the gender gap? Oil and women's labor and marriage market outcomes

This paper analyzes the effect of resource-based economic specialization on women's labor market outcomes. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields in the Southern United States coupled with a county-level panel derived from US Census data for 1900-1940, we specifically test the hypothesis that the presence of mineral resources can induce changes in the sectoral composition of the local economy that are detrimental to women's labor market outcomes. We find evidence that the discovery of oil at the county level may constitute a substantial male biased demand shock to local labor markets, as it is associated with a higher gender pay gap. However, we find no evidence that oil wealth lowers female labor force participation or has any impact on local marriage and fertility patterns. While our results are consistent with oil shocks limiting female labor market opportunities in some sectors (mainly manufacturing), this effect tends to be compensated by the higher availability of service sector jobs for women who are therefore not driven out of the labor market

ARFIMA-GARCH modeling of HRV: Clinical application in acute brain injury

In the last decade, several HRV based novel methodologies for describing and assessing heart rate dynamics have been proposed in the literature with the aim of risk assessment. Such methodologies attempt to describe the non-linear and complex characteristics of HRV, and hereby the focus is in two of these characteristics, namely long memory and heteroscedasticity with variance clustering. The ARFIMA-GARCH modeling considered here allows the quantification of long range correlations and time-varying volatility. ARFIMA-GARCH HRV analysis is integrated with multimodal brain monitoring in several acute cerebral phenomena such as intracranial hypertension, decompressive craniectomy and brain death. The results indicate that ARFIMA-GARCH modeling appears to reflect changes in Heart Rate Variability (HRV) dynamics related both with the Acute Brain Injury (ABI) and the medical treatments effects. (c) 2017, Springer International Publishing AG