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Honeycomb substrates are widely used to reduce harmful emissions from gasoline engines and are exposed to numerous thermal shocks during their lifetime making thermal shock resistance one of the key factors in designing honeycomb substrates. More stringent emission regulations will require the honeycomb substrates to be lighter in weight to improve light-off performance and to have better thermal shock resistance than conventional honeycomb substrates to handle higher expected temperature gradients. Thermal shock resistance is generally evaluated on a substrate by evaluating the thermal strain caused by temperature gradients inside the substrate during durability testing [1,2]. During the test, a heated substrate is cooled at a surface face to generate temperature gradients while the temperature inside the honeycomb substrate is monitored by multiple thermocouples.

Diesel engines are more fuel efficient due to their high thermal efficiency, compared to gasoline engines and therefore, have a higher potential to reduce CO2 emissions. Since diesel engines emit higher amounts of Particulate Matter (PM), DPF systems have been introduced. Today, DPF systems have become a standard technology. Nevertheless, with more stringent NOx emission limits and CO2 targets, additional NOx emission control is needed. For high NOx conversion efficiency, SCR catalysts technology shows high potential. Due to higher temperature at the close coupled position and space restrictions, an integrated SCR concept on the DPFs is preferred. A high SCR catalyst loading will be required to have high conversion efficiency over a wide range of engine operations which causes high pressure for conventional DPF materials.