Experimental and Theoretical Analysis of the Energy Balance in a DI Diesel Engine

In recent years, the spread use of after-treatment systems together with the growing awareness about the climate change is leading to an increase in the importance of the efficiency over other criteria during the design of internal combustion engines. In this sense, it has been demonstrated that performing an energy balance is a suitable methodology to assess the potential of different injection or air management strategies, to reduce consumption as well as determining the more relevant energy terms that could be improved. In this work, an experimental energy balance with the corresponding comprehensive analysis is presented. The main objective is the identification of how the energy is split, considering internal and external balances. For this purpose, some parametric studies varying the coolant temperature, the intake air temperature and the start of the injection timing have been performed. The results quantify the effect of each parametrical study on engine efficiency. In particular, the variation of the coolant temperature has showed an almost negligible influence, however, cooling the air leads to an improvement about 1%, while the effect of advancing the SOI 13° is about 1.5%.