Understanding the filtration mechanisms in partially damaged Diesel Particulate Filters is very important for the design of exhaust systems with efficient On-Board Diagnosis functionality, especially as new threshold limits have been recently applied for particulate mass leakage. Two common types of DPF failure are included in this study, namely rear plug removal and internal failure due to uncontrolled regeneration with excessive deposit loading. Initially, the two respective filters were loaded on the engine bench with particle measurement upstream and downstream, and then they were disassembled and sectioned to study the deposit distribution. The analysis of the second filter revealed several modes of failure that should be expected under real-life conditions such as material accumulation in the inlet channels, substrate melting, and crosswise and diagonal crack development. Moreover, a computational model with the necessary adjustments is used to simulate the loading experiments and interpret the underlying filtration mechanisms. The processed results reveal small effects of temperature and mass flow rate on the filtration efficiency and a comparatively stronger impact of the total deposit loading. The local deposit loading is uniform in the intact segments, while it is non-uniform with a minimum value at the failure location in the unplugged and internally damaged segments. This finding is consistent with the wall flow predicted by the model, whereas some discrepancies of the model can be attributed to a secondary collection mechanism.
