Brien Lloyd Fulton

Ford's 1996 Crown Victoria Dedicated Natural Gas Vehicle

Ford Motor Company has introduced a Crown Victoria dedicated natural gas vehicle (NGV) to meet rising demand for vehicles powered by cleaner burning fuels and to reduce dependency on foreign energy imports. The Crown Victoria NGS is a production vehicle maintaining Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) quality and warranty while complying with all applicable corporate, federal and state requirements.

In-cylinder pressure sensor–based NOx model for real-time application in diesel engines

A real-time implementable, zero-dimensional model for predicting engine-out emissions of nitrogen oxides using in-cylinder pressure measurements is developed. The model is an extension of existing works in open literature that align well with the objectives of real-time implementation. The proposed model uses a simplified Zeldovich NOx mechanism that uses combustion-related parameters derived from simplified thermodynamic and combustion sub-models. The performance of the model is discussed for both a heavy-duty and a light-duty diesel engines. The model behavior is evaluated under input uncertainty so as to provide realistic performance bounds.

A structured approach to uncertainty analysis of predictive models of engine-out NOx emissions

Predictive models of engine-out NOx emissions continue to be a topic of active research in the diesel powertrain community. Renewed interest in the use of in-cylinder pressure sensor has presented an opportunity for improving these models through the availability of direct information about the in-cylinder combustion process. Despite several research efforts in this domain seen in open literature, there is a significant paucity of work that reports on the uncertainty analysis of such models. These models are typically designed for real-time implementation, and the model prediction is often used for control and/or diagnostic functions. It is therefore critical to establish the expected error bounds or an error probability distribution and the model prediction for consideration during the design of relevant control and/or diagnostic algorithms.