A Phenomenological Approach to Model Diesel Engine Combustion and In-Cylinder Pollutant Emissions Adapted to Control Strategy

The pollutant emissions becoming more and more constraining, the automotive manufacturers need to adopt a global optimization approach of engine and exhaust after-treatment technologies. Engine control strategies seem to be an essential way to address this issue. The problem is particularly complex, considering the compromise to be reached between the drivability which must be maintained, the reduction of the fuel consumption and the in-cylinder pollutant emissions, and the optimisation of the conditions to reach high conversion efficiencies via exhaust gas after-treatment systems. The development of sophisticated control strategies and models can only be achieved with a complete understanding of the physical phenomena that occur in the combustion chamber, using experimental data and system numerical simulations. In this context, 0D predictive models of combustion and pollutant emissions, calibrated with experimental data, are particularly useful to study a wide range of parametric variations which are difficult and expensive to perform at the testbed. This paper presents an under-development combustion and pollutant emissions model, initially based on the 0D approach of Barba et al. (2000). In order to validate the model on steady state operating conditions, comparisons between experimental measurements and simulations are presented, pointing out the pollutant emissions during variations of loads and engine speeds.