Automotive Science and Engineering

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In this study, a numerical simulation using the CFD software, FLUENT, has been conducted to examine the effect of various shapes of the venturi component sections in order to find the optimum venturi specifications to increase the EGR rate with minimum pressure loss at the part load operation range. The CFD results reveal that the venturi should be precisely optimized to introduce the required amount of EGR to the engine manifold. Then, the optimum venturi was manufactured, and it was installed on the engine intake system. By using the optimum Venturi EGR system instead of original system the 26% increase in EGR flow rate to the engine manifold is observed. In the second part of the paper, an experimental investigation was carried out on a “Lister 8-1” dual fuel (diesel – natural gas) engine to examine the simultaneous effect of inlet air pre-heating and EGR on performance and emission characteristics of a dual fuel engine. The use of EGR at high levels seems to be unable to improve the engine performance at part loads, however, it is shown that EGR combined with pre-heating of inlet air can slightly increase thermal efficiency, resulting in reduced levels of both UHC and NOx emissions. CO and HC emissions were reduced by 24% and 31%, respectively. The NOx emissions were decreased by 21% because of the lower combustion temperature due to the much inert gas brought by EGR and decreased oxygen concentration in the cylinder.

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Nitrogen oxides (NOx) contribute to a wide range of environmental effects including the formation of acid rain and destroy ozone layer. In-cylinder high temperature flame and high oxygen concentration are the parameters which affect the NOx emissions. The EGR system is a very effective way for reducing NOx emission from a diesel engine (via reduction of these parameters), particularly at the high load of engine operation condition. In this study, the influence of EGR on diesel engine combustion, NOx/PM emissions, brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), engine thermal efficiency, cylinder pressure and heat release rate (HRR) are analyzed and presented. The experiments have been conducted on a turbocharged DI diesel engine under full load condition at two different injection timings in order to distinguish and quantify some effects of Hot and Cooled EGR with various rates on the engine parameters. Experimental results showed that increase of EGR rate has a negative effect on air-fuel ratio. For a premixed combustion at constant boost pressure, ignition delay is increased leading to retardation of all combustion process, a low HRR peak and reduce of in-cylinder peak temperature. Using of Hot EGR reduces NOX emissions whereas PM emissions are increased. The advance of injection timing resulted in the reduction PM while both NOX emissions and fuel consumption were increased. The use of cooled EGR was more effective compared to the hot EGR. As a result, the EGR temperature has no significant impact on NOx emissions. With increasing EGR rate, unequal EGR distribution was increased in inlet port of cylinders while the reducing EGR temperature (cooled EGR) improved its distribution among the engine cylinders and decreased the EGR cylinder-to-cylinder variations.

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Global air pollution is a serious threat caused by excessive use of fossil fuels for transportation. Despite the fact that diesel fuel is a big environmental pollutant as it contains different hydrocarbons, sulphur and crude oil residues, it is yet regarded as a highly critical fuel due to its wide applications. Nowadays, biodiesel as a renewable additive is blended with diesel fuel to achieve numerous advantages such as lowering CO2, and CO emissions as well as higher lubricity. However, a few key drawbacks including higher production cost, deteriorated performance and likelihood to increase nitrogen oxide emissions have also been attributed to the application of diesel-biodiesel blends. Expanded polystyrene (EPS), known as a polymer for packaging and insulation, is an ideal material for energy recovery as it holds high energy value (1 kg of EPS is equivalent to 1.3 liters of liquid fuel). In this study, biodiesel was applied as a solvent of expanded polystyrene (EPS) during a special chemical and physical treatment. Various percentages of EPS in biodiesel blended diesel were tested to evaluate the fuel properties, emissions and performance of CI engine. The results of the variance analysis revealed that the addition of the additive improved diesel fuel properties by increasing the flash point as well as the reduction of density and viscosity. Despite a 3.6% reduction in brake power, a significant decrease in brake specific fuel consumption (7.26%) and an increase in brake thermal efficiency (7.83%) were observed at the full load and maximum speed of the engine. Additionally, considerable reductions of CO, CO2, NOx and smoke were achieved.

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Porous media has interesting features in compared with free flame combustion due to the extended of the lean flammability limits and lower emissions. Advanced new generation of internal combustion (IC) engines are expected to have far better emissions levels both gaseous and particulate matter, at the same time having far lower fuel consumption on a wide range of operating condition. These criteria could be improved having a homogeneous combustion process in an engine. Present work considers simulation of direct fuel injection in an IC engine equipped with a chemically inert porous medium (PM), having cylindrical geometry that is installed in cylinder head to homogenize and stabilize the combustion process. A numerical study of a 3D model, PM engine is carried out using a modified version of the KIVA-3V code. Since there is not any published material for PM-engines in literature, the numerical results for combustion waves propagation within PM are compared with experimental data available in the literature for a lean mixture of air and methane under filtration in packed bed, the accuracy of results are very promising. For PM-engine simulation the methane fuel is injected directly through a hot PM which is mounted in cylinder head. Therefore volumetric combustion occurs as a result within PM and in-cylinder. The effects of injection timing on mixture formation, pressure and temperature distribution in both phases of PM and incylinder fluid together with combustion emissions such as CO and NO are studied in detail for an important part of the cycle.

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Modern diesel engines should have higher pollutant emissions standards with better performance and by using split injection strategies which could optimize the air – fuel mixture, this purpose could be achieved. After achieving the successful validation between modeling and experimental results for both single and double injection strategies, for the first time and in this paper, double injection strategies with new nozzle configuration were used in which number of nozzle holes were doubled and located below the previous holes and then double injection strategies were implemented in a case that for each pulse of injections upper or below holes were used, then this study focused on the effects of the new nozzle configuration holes angle in each pulse of injections. This study confirms that split injection could decrease Nox emission, because it has lower maximum in-cylinder temperature than single injection case due to its separate second stage of combustion, also results showed that using new nozzle configuration with two rows of holes could be more effective in decreasing pollutant emissions without any significant effects on engine performance.

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To improve the engine performance and reduce emissions, factors such as changing ignition and injection timing along with converting of port injection system to direct injection in SI(spark-ignited) engines and hydrogen enrichment to CNG fuel at WOT conditions have a great importance. In this work, which was investigated experimentally (for CNG engine) and theoretically (for combustion Eddy Break-Up model and turbulence model is used) in a single- cylinder four-stroke SI engine at various engine speeds (2000-6000 rpm in 1000 rpm intervals), injection timing (130-210 crank angle(CA) in 50 CA intervals), ignition timing (19-28 CA in 2 degree intervals), 20 bar injection pressure and five hydrogen volume fraction 0% to 50% in the blend of HCNG. The results showed that fuel conversion efficiency, torque and power output were increased, while duration of heat release rate was shortened and found to be advanced. NOx emission was increased with the increase of hydrogen addition in the blend and the lowest NOx was obtained at the lowest speed and retarded ignition timing, hence 19° before top dead center. 

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Pollutant emissions from diesel engines are significantly affected by fuel injection strategies that could reduce NOx and Soot emissions. For the first time and in this study, numerical simulations were performed to consider the influences of changing the injection duration in each pulse of the double injection strategies on in-cylinder parameters and pollutant emissions. Results confirmed that double injection strategies could influence the in-cylinder temperature, which leads to a reduction in NOx and soot emissions. Additionally, it is seen that decreasing the injection duration could increase the in-cylinder peak pressure and temperature. It could also reduce the soot emission owing to the better fuel atomization. Moreover, RATE+0.5CA case, which injection duration for each pulse increases 0.5 CA, was selected to be the optimum case in reduction of pollutant emissions.
 

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According to the global air pollution Crisis, it seems necessary to finding a way for cars pollutions. The Combination of alcoholic fuels with gasoline is one of the methods to reduce pollutions. For optimizing engine performance, fuel availability, toxicity and political advantage, a blend of ethanol, methanol and gasoline is likely to be preferable to using any of these individual substances alone. So the purpose of this paper is studying methanol, ethanol and gasoline blend effect on engine emissions at different engine speed. The simulated model was validated in different RPMs of gasoline engine at full load condition. The effect of combined fuel injection in the simulated model was investigated and compared with the experimental results. The results of simulation have good agreement with experiments. The results show that by ethanol and methanol with gasoline blend CO and HC emissions are lower than gasoline mode, but the NOx and CO2 pollutants increases.
 

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Changing various parts of different types of engines in the maintenance phase was always a remarkable question. Purpose of the present study is identifying the performance and emissions of a diesel-fueled engine (OM457) before and after replacing connecting rod and crankshaft with another engine (OM444) in the same engine family.

At the first step, a solid model was made then some CFD analyses were done and, results were compared with previous studies for validation after that in the CFD modeling the impact of these parts replacement were observed, and the performance and emissions of this engine were compared with data before replacements.

As the result of these replacements, compression ratio and performance were decreased. HC and CO were increased due to lower air-fuel ratio, and NO_X was decreased because of the lower temperature of in cylinder. Lowering the CR of a diesel engine will reduce the NOx emission numerously but the increase in other emissions will be slight. So for the environment issues lowering the CR will be a practical and low cost method.

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In this research, the separate and simultaneous effects of pilot-main injection dwell time, pilot fuel quantity, and hydrogen gas addition on combustion characteristics, emissions formation, and performance in a heavy-duty diesel engine were investigated. To conduct the numerical study, valid and reliable models such as KH-RT for the break-up, K-Zeta-F for turbulence, and also ECFM-3Z for combustion were used. The effects of thirty-one different strategies based on two variables such as pilot-main injection dwell time (20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 CA) and pilot fuel quantity (5, 10, and 15% of total fuel per cycle) on NDC and DHC were investigated. The obtained results showed that by decreasing pilot-main injection dwell time due to shorter combustion duration and higher MCP, MCT, and HRRPP, amounts of CO and soot emissions decreased at the expense of high NOx formation. Also, increasing pilot fuel quantity due to higher combustion temperature and less oxygen concentration for the main fuel injection event led to an increase of NOx and soot emissions simultaneously. The addition of H2 due to significant heating value has increased IP and improved ISFC at the expense of NOx emissions but considerably decreased CO and soot emissions simultaneously.

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A comparative full life cycle assessment of a gasoline vehicle and a fuel cell vehicle (FCV) with five different fuel cycles including steam methane reforming (SMR), coal gasification, photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal, and grid-based electrolysis is presented in this paper. The results show that the total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are mainly found in the materials production and the component manufacturing stages of the FCV. Among various hydrogen production methods, the FCV with PV electrolysis has the lowest GHG emissions of 0.13 kg CO₂ eq./km. The total GHG emissions of the gasoline vehicle are estimated as 0.30 kg CO₂ eq./km mainly from the operation stage. An uncertainty analysis is carried out to assess the effects of variations of different input parameters on the total emissions. With a 95% level of confidence, the total emissions of the FCV with PV electrolysis is 0.18±0.05 kg CO₂ eq./km. The component manufacturing and assembly stage drives the total GHG emissions uncertainty the most.

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Due to very low PM and NOx emissions and considerable engine efficiency, dual-fuel combustion mode such as RCCI strategy attracted lots of attention compared to other combustion modes. In this numerical research work, the impacts of direct injection timing and pressure of diesel fuel on performance and level of engine-out emissions in a diesel-butanol RCCI engine was investigated. To simulate the combustion process, a reduced chemical kinetic mechanism, which consists of 349 reactions 76 species was used. The influence of thirty-six various strategies based on two diesel spraying characteristics such as injection pressure (650, 800, 1000, and 1200 bar) and diesel spray timing (300 to 340 CA with 5 CA steps) have been examined. Results indicated that, under the specific operating conditions like 1000-bar spray pressure by direct injection at 45 CA BTDC and the spray angle of 145 degrees, the level of cylinder-out pollutants such as CO (up to 26%), NOx (about 86%), PM (by nearly 71%) and HC (about 17.25%) have been simultaneously reduced. Also, ISFC decreased by about 2.3%, IP increased by about 2.4%, and also ITE improved by nearly 2% compared to the baseline engine operating conditions.

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Diesel engines are the most trusted sources in the transportation industry. They are also widely used in the urban transportation system. Most pollutants are related to these engines. Therefore, it is important to increase the performance and reduce exhaust emissions of these engines. Alternative fuels are key to meeting upcoming targets.
An experimental and numerical study was performed to investigate the effect of diesel fuel and hydrogen addition to diesel fuel from 0 to 30% on performance and exhaust emissions. Also in this research for changing diesel fuel, an indirect injection engine converted to direct injection engine. The simulation study was conducted by Star cd codes and experimental investigation was carried out on a diesel engine (Perkins 1103A-33TG1), three- cylinders, and four-stroke with maximum engine power 72.3hp at 1800 rpm. The results from this study showed that the increase of hydrogen to diesel fuel improves the thermal efficiency, resulting in lower specific fuel consumption. Also, the results showed that adding hydrogen until 30%, the cylinder pressure increase by about 9% and occurred the delay of peak pressure about 8 degrees of a crank angle compared to diesel fuel. The other obtained results in emission with 30%H2+Diesel showed the soot emission reduced 11.3%, HC and CO reduced nearly 36%, but NOx increased by about 8.3% due to high combustion temperature.

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In the current study, the hydrogen-addition influence on the performance of an SI engine using a gasoline-ethanol blend is investigated numerically. The simulation and validation of the model are carried out in order to evaluate the engine performance using conventional gasoline (G100) and the blend of gasoline and ethanol (G75E25). Furthermore, the hydrogen is added to the gasoline–ethanol blend (G50E25H25) to improve the engine thermal efficiency and reduce the amount of brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) which leads to the reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The brake specific carbon dioxide (BSCO₂) is also studied in this paper. Results show that the addition of hydrogen increases the brake power and thermal efficiency, moderates the BSFC, and decreases the maximum temperature of combustion chamber which reduces the production of greenhouse gases as well as BSCO₂. In comparison with pure gasoline, by using G50E25H25, the maximum temperature of in-cylinder gas decreased by 12.55%, 10.82%, and 13.43% at 2000, 4000, and 6000 rpm, respectively. It is also evaluated that the lowest amount of BSCO₂ is related to G50E25H25 in most of the engine speeds. The bio-fuel of G75E25 and pure gasoline are placed in next positions, respectively.

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This study examines the impact of a fuzzy logic-based control strategy on managing peak power consumption in the auxiliary power unit (APU) of a hybrid electric bus. The APU comprises three components: an air compressor, a power steering system, and an air conditioning system (AC) connected to an electric motor. Initially, these components were simulated in MATLAB-SIMULINK software. While the first two were deemed dependent and independent of vehicle speed, respectively, the stochastic behavior of the steering was emulated using the Monte Carlo method. Subsequently, a fuzzy controller was designed and incorporated into the APU to prevent simultaneous operation of the three accessories as much as possible. The results of repeated simulations demonstrated that the designed fuzzy controller effectively distributed the operation of the accessories throughout the driving cycle, thereby reducing overlaps in auxiliary loads. Consequently, the APU's average and maximum power consumption exhibited significant reductions. Furthermore, through multiple simulations with an upgraded power system model integrating the new APU-controller package, it was established that the proposed strategy for managing auxiliary loads in the bus led to lower fuel consumption and emissions.