Combustion diagnostics and calibration of the GT POWER "DI-Pulse" heat release model for a 11.0L diesel engine for heavy-duty applications

In the last few year, emissions have become a crucial point in automotive world, stricter emissions regulations push manufacturers to design ‘greener’ vehicles, developing new engines with higher and higher fuel efficiency and low emissions. Current technologies such as EGR, common rail and aftertreatment system for exhaust gases are valid solutions in the short period, but these restrictions are going to be even stricter in the next future, so new technologies and a much stronger integration between vehicles and the surrounding infrastructures are necessary. These are the purposes of IMPERIUM Project (IMplementation of Powertrain Control for Economic and Clean Real driving EmIssion and ConsUMption), an ambitious project supplied by some of the biggest heavy-duty manufacturers in Europe, among which FPT Industries. In this thesis the engine under investigation is Cursor 11, a 11L diesel turbocharged engine for heavy-duty applications. For this engine several operating points from test bench are provided, but the calibration of the model on GT POWER software powered by Gamma Technologies is made on 152 among over 3000 steady operation points. The aim of this thesis is the calibration and the assessment of a predictive combustion model for diesel engine on GT POWER software called DI Pulse. Once this model is calibrated, the full model engine is capable to obtain valid estimates of several combustion parameters such as the indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP), crank angle at which 50% of the fuel mass has burned (MFB50), the maximum pressure in camera and at which crank angle it happens, and other useful information about engine emissions (NOx, Soot, CO2, HC). These results are then compared with test data from test rig provided by FPT Industries.