A Novel Approach to develop the Exhaust Backpressure Measurement System for Automotive Application

Backpressure is one of key acoustic performance evaluation criteria of exhaust muffler (or Silencer) /EATS (Exhaust after treatment system) as well as for the exhaust system. Exhaust back pressure is an important parameter for fuel efficiency of a vehicle. Typically, the engine manufacturer specifies an upper limit for this. Usually, exhaust back pressure is measured during the driving condition of the vehicle at maximum power condition of the engine either on road or on chassis dynamometer. Both these methods, need a lot of preparatory works, test setup arrangement, 3 or more manpower and special skills. In this research, authors are tried to develop a new backpressure measurement set up for automotive vehicle application, which is simple and innovative, to fulfill the backpressure test requirement. In this design, mainly following devices are used namely Pitot tube, Compressed air, Manometer (or pressure gauge), Thermocouple, Fluke thermometer, along with standalone exhaust layout. Two numbers of case studies done to verify the usefulness and effectiveness of measurement system and set up with respect to the present backpressure measurement methods. The proposed method found helpful in simplifying the task (Back-Pressure measurement) to a great extent along with significant time saving. Also, it shows the measurement accuracy level of around 97% in reference to existing methods. This method can be extended to different vehicle platforms with different engine size. The proposed method is also suitable to develop product (i.e. -Exhaust System layout) through optimization based on Design of Experiments (DoE). Keywords: Backpressure, Muffler, Pitot Tube, Manometer, Max Power