Abstract
Abstract
The paper demonstrates practical optical tools which significantly reduce the development time of gasoline engines.
First at all, the current status of AVL's optical diagnostic tools for combustion system development is described. Both their working principles together with example results and typical applications are outlined.
In the second part, it will be shown how the use of these tools allows the development engineers to reach a reliable understanding of the mechanisms leading to some phenomena such as :
- knocking and irregular combustion,
- catalyst aging,
- cold start emissions peaks, that are usually hampering the increase of the full load and emissions performance of gasoline engines.
As far as knocking and irregular combustion events are concerned, they are reducing the fuel consumption reduction potentials of downsized engines and are therefore at the heart of current gasoline engine development activities.
Measurements recently performed by AVL for both internal R&D purposes as well as experience gained in customers´ projects are described and the analysis of the results obtained will be explained.
As a conclusion, the implementation and regular use of advanced optical diagnostic tools is nowadays an important part of the AVL engine development process as it enables the direct diagnostics and analysis of important performance limiting phenomena,