Accurate Gas Exchange and Combustion Analysis Directly at the Test Bed

Accurate combustion analysis at the test bed is an important tool for the development engineer. It can help engine design, efficiency improvements or emissions reduction by providing instantaneous feedback on the combustion process. It can also provide detailed combustion information to help speed-up the engine calibration process. By implementing shared memory communication, multiple core capability and streamlined calculation techniques, the calculation time of AVL gas exchange and combustion analysis software GCA (Gas Exchange and Combustion Analysis) has been dramatically reduced without significantly decreasing calculation results accuracy. This allows AVL IndiCOM (in combination with AVL GCA) to perform accurate gas exchange and combustion analysis calculations directly and promptly at the test bed. This opens the door to a number of promising new applications by erasing the bridge between measurement data acquisition and post-processing analysis. Increase of measurement data consistency and the reduction of development time are two of the most important benefits of being able to perform “on-line” plausibility checks of measurement data. The strong links connecting AVL GCA calculation results to the measurement data and the redundancy between calculation and measurement for the assessment of some highly relevant engine parameters (e.g. IMEP, air mass flow) can greatly extend the “on-line” plausibility checks functions already available in AVL IndiCom or AVL test bed automation software PUMA. Some passenger car application examples, where valve train flexibility is used to enhance fuel economy or reduce exhaust emissions of internal combustion engines, show that the immediate availability at the test bed of gas exchange related parameters (e.g. internal EGR rate, scavenged mass, mass flows through the valves) supports an intuitive optimization of the valve train parameters.