Emissions testing!

Engine emissions analyser further improves Intertek’s emissions testing capability

An advanced FTIR analyser installed at Intertek’s engine test facility in Milton Keynes (GB) is enabling engineers to improve the quality of their tests on the gaseous components of engine exhaust emissions.

The gas analyser manufactured by Gasmet Technologies and installed by Quantitech, measures multiple organic and inorganic components simultaneously from a large library of compounds, enabling Intertek’s engineers to quickly and easily change the measured compounds; to change the fuel type or cycle conditions, and to see the impact on the emitted gases. The FTIR gas analyser is also highly portable so that it can be employed in any of the test cells at Intertek, a leading Total Quality Assurance provider.

Intertek’s engine test facility, which accommodates every type of motor vehicle engine covering all fuel types and including both hybrid and battery powered vehicles, provides its customers with the ability to conduct research on prototype engines and evaluate developments in engine technology. Intertek works with vehicle manufacturers, tier suppliers and high performance driveline development businesses.

The work in the test cells is complemented by Intertek’s ability to conduct on-road emissions testing using its state of the art Portable Emissions Measurement System (PEMS) to measure Real World Driving Emissions (RDE).

Intertek test engineer Cory Graham said: “Vehicle manufacturers are focused on improving both the performance and the emissions of their vehicles. FTIR provides a greater insight into exhaust emissions so that Intertek can assist manufacturers with their goals of improving air quality and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.”

Most recently the FTIR has been deployed in one of Intertek’s most sophisticated cells, which hosts a complete drive line including an engine, a gearbox and also a rig, which creates a complete ‘virtual’ car.

The regulatory tests that are undertaken on vehicles to check their emissions against international standards, have recently been under the spotlight, and the latest developments in the European Union will result in a move to vehicle emissions testing while the car is being driven (RDE) and this is now provided by Intertek.

Quantitech’s Dominic Duggan says: “Engine emissions testing is an ideal application for FTIR technology, because it provides automotive research and development engineers with a broad spectrum of measured compounds, creating a more complete picture of the products of combustion.”

@Quantitech #PAuto #FTIR

Engine inspections

Pic: Courtesy of Olympus 

Recent months have seen a surge in demand for hired video borescopes and many of these instruments are being used for engine inspection. Ashtead Technology’s Josh Thomas believes this is happening for three reasons: “Firstly, borescopes enable inspection without the cost and delay of dismantling engines. Secondly, instrumentation technology has advanced considerably recently and the latest video borescopes are very light and easy to use, but provide extremely high quality images. Thirdly, we now stock a wide range of the latest inspection equipment so that clients can rent the most appropriate equipment for each job.”

Borescope inspections are undertaken wherever internal components are difficult to access, and on both installed and uninstalled engines. For example, engine and gearbox manufacturers use them as part of their quality control procedures. “A number of motorsport teams, including Formula 1, have recently hired borescopes to help improve engine efficiency, and they have employed our high speed cameras to assess gearbox performance. However, we also have customers in other sectors including all sections of the automotive sector and clients with industrial engines and turbines.”

One of the latest additions to Ashtead Technology’s fleet of NDT inspection instruments is the Olympus IPLEX UltraLite. Weighing just 700 grams, it incorporates a combined control and display unit that fits in the palm of one hand and frees the other hand to guide the probe insertion tube. Observed images can be stored on a memory card as high-quality JPEG images and MPEG-4 movies.

Engine Control

National Instruments has released six Drivven C Series engine control modules, which provide engine researchers with rugged, modular engine-specific I/O for interfacing directly with internal combustion engine subsystems and actuators. Using these modules, which are programmed with LabVIEW FPGA, engineers can rapidly prototype engine control algorithms without having to create custom hardware or request lengthy code changes.

"The Direct Injector Module from Drivven enabled us to get the piezoelectric injector working well in a very short time,” said Jason King, Chief Engineer of Gasoline Engines at Ricardo. “We also created novel injection strategies because Drivven programmed the control aspects easily and quickly. The cost versus capability of Drivven products are superior to anything else on the market.”

Drivven C Series Module Features
· LabVIEW FPGA drivers: Engineers can easily adjust injection timing and software parameters using an open, intuitive programming language.
· Modular I/O: Engineers can rapidly prototype all the I/O necessary for a production engine controller.

Reducing engine friction

An innovative torque sensor is helping to reduce engine emissions and improve economy as part of a project to develop an intelligent lubrication system.

With engine efficiency under the spotlight like never before, automotive companies are exploring all avenues for improving performance. And because engines have a rotating power output, torque is the key measurement.

Car engines are the bett noir of the environmental lobby. There is no doubt that they are major contributors to carbon build up. But equally they are fundamental to modern life. A true replacement is decades away, so we have to make them as efficient as possible.

Engine lubrication systems are essentially dumb. They have a simple mechanical pump which has been sized to ensure an adequate supply of oil in the worst operating condition.  This is typically a hot engine at idle. The pump is thus hugely oversized for most of the rest of the speed range and, as a consequence, nearly 60% of its output is dumped straight back into the sump via the relief valve. It will also deliver the same amount of oil to every part of the engine regardless of what that system might actually need. The pump is also insensitive to engine load and thus the bearings will receive the same oil supply at a given speed regardless of
the load. This is a very inefficient system.

In addition the pump forces nearly a ton of oil per hour through the filter, and when the oil is cold this takes a huge amount of energy.

With this in mind a major British company asked Powertrain Technologies Ltd in Norfolk, to design an intelligent lubrication system and to analyse its effects on engine friction and parasitic losses. They built a highly specialised test rig for the project and since accuracy in measuring small changes in drive torque reliably and repeatably was a critical requirement a key part of the rig is a TorqSense transducer from Sensor Technology in Banbury.

The engine being tested was a current production Diesel and the test bed was configured for motored friction tests with a 6,000rpm 32kW electric motor driving the engine.

Andrew Barnes, a director at Powertrain explains: “We completely re-designed the engine lubrication system and installed a bank of five computer controlled oil pumps (to our own design). Each is capable of supplying individual parts of the engine with oil under conditions unique to that part of the engine and sensitive to the engine operating conditions (for example we can supply the head with oil at pressures different to the block and supply the bearings with more oil when the engine is under high load).”

The idea is to completely profile the performance of the engine under various lubrication conditions and to derive optimum configurations of the intelligent systems for best performance.

“Both petrol and Diesel engines run far cleaner than they did 20 or 30 years ago,” says Andrew. “However the need to operate efficiently under a wide range speeds and loads and environmental conditions from -40 degrees C to + 40 degrees C remains the Achilles Heel. Intelligent lubrication has the potential to improve performance no end, although quantifying the best configuration is painstaking work.”

He goes on to explain that the torque sensor is critical to the project since the object of the exercise is to measure the effect on friction of a range of different oil supply strategies and oil types.  Thus the changes in friction are represented by a change in the motored drive torque of the engine.

TorqSense sensors are particularly appropriate for development work because they are wireless. “It’s a fit-and-forget, non-contact, digital sensor,” says Tony Ingham of Sensor Technology, “meaning you don’t have to fiddle around wiring up slip rings for each new measurement and together with digital outputs good accuracies can be obtained. The adjacent RF pickup emits radio waves towards the SAW’s as well as collecting the reflected resonant changes and it this change in frequency of the reflected waves that identifies the applied torqueed.”

TorqSense effectively senses and measures the radio frequency, RF, waves generated by two Surface Acoustic Wave devices or SAW’s fixed onto a rotating shaft and converts them to a torque measurement using two tiny SAW’s made of ceramic piezoelectric material with frequency resonating combs laid down on their surface. The SAW’s are fixed onto the drive shaft at 90degrees to one another.  As the torque increases the combs expand or contract proportionally to the torque being applied. In effect the combs act similarly to strain gauges but instead measure changes in resonant frequency.  The adjacent RF pickup emits radio waves towards the SAW’s as well as collecting the reflected resonant changes and its this change in frequency of the reflected waves that identifies the applied torque.

Powertrain's research has now progressed to the next stage in which the test rig is forsaken and the engine installed in a car to quantify the effect on fuel economy.

“It’s now a matter of driving it under all sorts of conditions on a mixture of test tracks and rolling roads to build up profiles of fuel consumption," says Andrew.