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Several works have previously shown that the concept of pneumatic-combustion hybrid engine is an interesting alternative to the Electric Hybrid Vehicle, by leading to equivalent fuel savings for a probable lower cost. However, these studies have shown that the thermal insulation of the tank is a problem. Indeed, due to its size and its location, the adiabaticity of the pneumatic tank cannot be guaranteed. During a regenerative braking (pneumatic pump mode) the hot and pressurized air that is send to the tank cools, pressure drops and density increases. When reusing the air in pneumatic motor mode, the mass necessary to fill the cylinder is greater than the one that would have been necessary if the air was not cool at its stay in the tank. This phenomenon is the major cause to the quite low regenerative efficiency that has been observed on a prototype engine.

The objective of this paper is to present and to validate a numerical model of a single-cylinder pneumatic-combustion hybrid engine. The model presented in this paper contains 0-D sub-models for non-spatially distributed components: Engine cylinder, Air tank, wall heat losses. 1-D sub-models for spatially distributed components are applied on the compressive gas flows in pipes (intake, exhaust and charging). Each pipe is discretized, using the Two-Steps Lax-Wendroff scheme (LW2) including Davis T.V.D. The boundaries conditions used at pipe ends are Method Of Characteristics (MOC) based. In the specific case of a valve, an original intermediate volume MOC based boundary condition is used. The numerical results provided by the engine model are compared with the experimental data obtained from a single cylinder prototype hybrid engine on a test bench operating in 4-stroke pneumatic pump and 4 stroke pneumatic motor modes.

The amount of fresh air induced into the cylinder is the main parameter to be taken into account when developing the engine control laws. However, the instantaneous amount of induced air cannot be directly measured. Additionally, as the engine air ducting becomes more and more complex (high and low pressure exhaust gas recirculation, variable valve timing, pneumatic hybridization…), models used to develop engine control laws must be as predictive as possible. It has therefore been decided to use 1d aerodynamics simulation to provide accuracy to the control laws development and validation process. Commercial engine codes have been tested but did not give satisfactory results in terms of calculation time and flexibility. Additionally, in the case where no experimental data are available to determine valve discharge coefficient, simulation results were in total disagreement with the engine bench measurements.