Abstract
Since the first diesel car in 1934, the Citroen-Ricardo Rosalie, Diesel passenger cars have been the reliable workhorse, returning the best fuel consumption but lacking in performance, refinement and excitement. Until now. Recent developments have seen the introduction of the 1.9 litre 150 HP VW TDi Golf and a new generation of large, high performance V8 Diesel engines. Plans are in place for even larger V10 and possibly
V12 engines of 60+kW/litre. The Diesel engine is demonstrating revolutionary levels of performance and refinement. The motoring press have described them as exciting.
This paper describes the possible application of such high performance Diesel powertrain to premium sports touring cars. The vehicle considered for this application was the Ferrari 456GT. The application of these engines was modelled using the Integrated Powertrain Tool (IPT), developed by Ricardo using routines from
MATLAB TM and SIMULINK TM . The resulting simulation provides detailed information on vehicle performance and fuel consumption. With these combined techniques the authors have considered 4 and 5 litre turbocharged Diesel engine options using air boosting assistance from mechanically or electrically driven supercharger systems. The results were compared with the performance from the Ferrari 456 5.4 V12 gasoline powered vehicle.
The diesel engine options provided a competitive performance package for the Ferrari 456 with a CO2 reduction of 45% and increase of vehicle range to 810km, an improvement of 330km.