Effect of Thermal Mass on Aging and Emissions Performance

This paper seeks to accomplish two objectives. The first is to understand the emissions performance of the newest experimental substrates. The second is to verify or refute the hypothesis that a higher cell density part will age more severely in the same conditions than the lower cell density part. This paper will also seek to identify when during aging this occurs and the shape of the curve of performance loss for each cell density.

Three configurations including thinwall and ultra-thinwall cell geometries were tested. The test consisted of five repeated iterations in partial aging and testing, up to 100 hours of aging. The steps were in uneven increments to gain the most knowledge about the aging curve. Testing was performed after each partial aging step on a chassis dynamometer ULEV vehicle using the 3 bag FTP protocol. Data was examined on the basis of emissions performance and temperatures for each aging step, providing information to optimize substrate selection in automotive applications.