Heavy Duty Diesel Engine Test Cell

Research activities with DoD, Detroit Diesel

ARC Heavy Duty Diesel Engine • Angela Violi and Jason Martz • Combined simulation and experiments, focused on understanding the chemical/physical causes of cetane number variation in JP-8, development of an improved JP-8 kinetic mechanism and chemical surrogate(s).

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JP-8 has replaced diesel as the single battlefield fuel of the US military in nearly all of its compression ignition (CI) engine powered tactical ground vehicles. There is no formal JP-8 specification for fuel ignitability (measured by cetane number, CN), so wide variations in JP-8 CN can result as the fuel is sourced from many different locations and feedstocks. These variations can challenge CI engine operation, potentially leading to misfire/cold starting difficulty, the deviation from optimal combustion phasing, which can degrade engine efficiency, and increased diesel knocking tendency, which can affect engine durability. Such issues can compromise the transition to a single battlefield fuel. Future heavy duty CI engine experiments will be performed with neat petroleum and synthetically derived JP-8 (S-8, IPK) and their blends to further assess the impact of fuel property variations, such as CN, on the CI combustion process. Insights gained from these experiments will help to enable new engine and control system designs to overcome these challenges, ensuring reliable CI engine operation in all theaters.

DDC Onboard Diagnostics and Controls • Anna Stefanopoulou, Jason Martz, Laura Olesky • Real time controls for fuel variability with advanced sensing • Diagnostics and On-board Calibration of EGR Recirculation

This facility is a critical piece of the Automotive Research Center's (ARC) vehicle R&D efforts, specifically of advanced heavy-duty diesel technology powertrains that require a highly dynamic alternating current (AC) dyamometer and completely integrated individual sub-systems, test devices, instruments and controls. This integrated hardware-in-the-loop test bed allows us to marry the computational modeling and simulation tools developed in the ARC with real world powertrain technologies through a rigorous, high fidelity experiment/simulation/validation cycle.

Detroit DD13 Engine:

Manufacturer: Detroit Diesel Corporation
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Configuration: Inline 6 Cylinder
Displacement: 12.8 L (781 cu. in.)

Data Acquisition and Calibration:

Low Speed: AVL PUMA Open
High Speed: Indimaster 672 Advanced, 16 Channels
ECU Calibration: Vector CANape

Test Cell Specifics:

Dynamometer: AVL APA 404/4,2PO
Absorbing Rating:
    Nominal Power: 440 kW
    Nominal Torque: 2801 Nm
Motoring Rating:
    Nominal Power: 396 kW
    Nominal Torque: 2521 Nm
Maximum Speed: 4200 rpm
Mass Inertia: 4.53 kgm²
Weight: 2750 kg

Emissions Analysis:

Bench: AVL SESAM i60 FT Multi Component Exhaust Measurement System
Analyzers: FTIR spectrometer (NO, NO₂, N₂O, NH₃, CO, CO₂, CH₄, etc.); FID to measure total hydrocarbons (THC); PMD for oxygen measurement (O₂); IRD to determine CO₂ concentration of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR); AVL Smoke Meter for soot measurement

Other systems:

A dSpace PX20 system equipped with a a DS1006 processor, a DS2202 HIL I/O board, and a DS4302 CAN interface enables real-time simulations in closed-loop with the engine test cells. This allows for performing engine-in-the-loop experiments with different types of simulated vehicles, powertrain architectures, and control strategies efficiently.