Diesel particulate filters are well known for their efficiency and reliability in trapping particulate matter out of diesel engines.
In the last years, many efforts have been done to improve their performances, leading to the employment of new materials and architectures, as well as sophisticated regeneration and management strategies.
A lumped parameter model has been developed by the authors able to ensure good accuracy and fast processing for DPF control applications.
In this paper, the attention is at first addressed towards the loading process; the evolution with time of pressure drop inside the filter structure is computed and basing on the engine operative condition, a parametrization of the deposited soot layer profile is proposed, in which the effect of the flow distribution at the cross section of the filter is accounted for. The regeneration process is then investigated and temperature profile inside the filter channel is analyzed.
The developed model is described in detail and some significative results are presented and discussed.