Development of an installation to emulate altitude, ambient temperature, and ambient humidity on thermal engines. Application to the study of the impact over e6 engine performance

Resumen

Increasingly restrictive regulations on pollutant emissions for motor vehicles imposed by the European Union have forced original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to provide research centers with tools and facilities that can accurately and repeatedly reproduce different atmospheric conditions during the early stages of engine development. Nowadays, the European legislation includes real driving emissions (RDE) tests at different atmospheric conditions, with altitudes up to 1300 meters above sea level and temperatures reaching -7 ºC. This has been done typically using altimetric and climatic chambers, which allow the reproduction of the atmospheric conditions in the whole test cell. More recently, connecting to the engine altitude simulators coupled with air handling units (AHU). In this Ph.D. Thesis, the improvement of the altitude simulator commercialized by the company HORIBA called MEDAS, carried out by inductive and deductive procedures, is presented to extend the installation's performance range, improve the combustion air pressure control accuracy, and reduce the installation global energy consumption. Furthermore, during this phase, the development of a 1D model of the altitude simulator is carried out, with which it is possible to obtain accurate results about the performance of the installation for different boundary conditions such as the engine operation point, the room pressure, or the cooling water temperature. Following, two new pieces of equipment have been developed: MEDAS Temperature Module (MTM) and MEDAS Humidity Module (MHM), improving the control strategies and some key components (i.e., the bubbles water-column) to increase the accuracy of the combustion air temperature and humidity control. Together with the MEDAS, these two create a complete atmosphere simulator, which allows the independent control of the three psychrometric variables of the engine combustion air: pressure, temperature, and humidity. Lastly, the atmosphere simulator developed is used to study the effect that the three psychometric variables of the ambient air have on the performance and the pollutant emissions of a Euro 6 turbocharged diesel engine, proving the significant effect that the ambient humidity has on the diesel engines pollutant emissions and the necessity of considering this parameter in the calibration strategies. Some results could be the reduction in power that the engine suffers when operating in altitude conditions, the changes that the ambient temperature causes at the turbocharger operative point, or the decrease in NOx emissions that happen when the ambient humidity increases.