Search Results

Reducing emissions from light duty vehicles is critical to meet current and future air quality targets. With more focus on real world emissions from light-duty vehicles, the interactions between engine and exhaust gas aftertreatment are critical. For modern engines, most emissions are generated during the warm-up phase following a cold start. For Diesel engines this is exaggerated due to colder exhaust temperatures and larger aftertreatment systems. The De-NOx aftertreatment can be particularly problematic. Engine manufacturers are required to take measures to address these temperature issues which often result in higher fuel consumption (retarding combustion, increasing engine load or reducing the Diesel air-fuel ratio). In this paper we consider an inner-insulated turbocharger as an alternative, passive technology which aims to reduce the exhaust heat losses between the engine and the aftertreatment. Firstly, the concept and design of the inner-insulated turbocharger is presented.

Global automotive fuel economy and emissions pressures mean that 48 V hybridisation will become a significant presence in the passenger car market. The complexity of powertrain solutions is increasing in order to further improve fuel economy for hybrid vehicles and maintain robust emissions performance. However, this results in complex interactions between technologies which are difficult to identify through traditional development approaches, resulting in sub-optimal solutions for either vehicle attributes or cost. The results presented in this paper are from a simulation programme focussed on the optimisation of various advanced powertrain technologies on 48 V hybrid vehicle platforms. The technologies assessed include an electrically heated catalyst, an insulated turbocharger, an electric water pump and a thermal management module.

Fuel consumption, and the physical behaviours behind it, have never been of greater interest to the automotive engineering community. The enormous design, development and infrastructure investment involved with a new engine family which will be in production for many years demands significant review of the base engine fundamental architecture. Future CO2 challenges are pushing car manufacturers to consider alternative engine configurations. As a result, a wide range of diesel engine architectures are available in production, particularly in the 1.4 to 1.6 L passenger car market, including variations in cylinder size, number of valves per cylinder, and bore:stroke (B/S) ratio. In addition, the 3 cylinder engine has entered the market in growing numbers, despite its historic NVH concerns. Ricardo has performed a generic architecture study for a midsize displacement engine in order to assess the pros and cons of each engine configuration.