Probleemstelling:

ABC Engines is a major Belgian engine manufacturer of medium speed engines for a.o. marine and genset applications. On their premises in Ghent they have recently built a single cylinder research engine to test different engine settings such as engine geometry or engine parameters (e.g. diesel injection timing), but also different fuels like hydrogen and methanol.

ABC has a framework collaboration with Ghent University to research the fundamentals of their engines and to explore the parameters that have an influence on engine performance. To avoid expensive engine test benches and time consuming experiments, ABC asked Ghent University to analyze the experiments from there single cylinder research engine and to make a 1D single cylinder model.

Doelstelling:

For this thesis you start from measurements on the research engine and from a preliminary model in GT-Power, a commercial and user-friendly package for 1D engine simulations. The goal of this thesis is to understand the fundamentals of different phenoma and to optimize the GT-Power model.

Currently the model for determining NOx emissions is not accurate. As NOx is a highly regulated emission in international waters (see International Maritime Organization (IMO) Tier III) a good NOx prediction is however of great importance. Next to the NOx model, the engine’s friction model should be updated. When using a single cylinder engine friction is higher than with a six cylinder engine. Though for different certification processes ABC wants to scale up results from a one cylinder to a 6, 8 or 12 cylinder. In this way engine tests only have to be performed on a single cylinder engine, in this saving fuel costs.