The automotive industry is gearing up to meet the accelerated emission compliance changes posed by the government. This transition to eco-friendly system would also necessitate an automotive engineer to retain the engine packaging as compact and simple as possible. The packaging layout considered should not be at the expense of deteriorating engine performance.
The work started with concept level layout development, with the aim of having simplified system with minimum number of components. The engine on which the work was carried out was 4cylinder 3Liter with OHC configuration A number of layouts were developed which included gear type, belt drive and integrated shaft arrangement for driving FIP.
Each of these concepts were brainstormed with its advantages and disadvantages, based on which two concepts were initially proposed for driving FIP system (i) Front Driven FIP (ii) Rear Driven FIP. The difference between the two layouts was that in the latter case the FIP system was directly driven through exhaust camshaft with gear type arrangement.
For the above two proposed layouts, dynamic evaluation was done up-to max intermittent speed of engine by modeling complete valve-train system along with chain drive in AVL Excite timing drive.
The Excite timing drive model dynamic results showed that with the rear layout FIP system, the valve-train along with chain drive system was getting heavily loaded demanding more robust design leading to an unintentional increase in system mass. For further visualization of the two layouts, engine level testing was done by developing proto parts for both the concepts and the conclusive results were found to be in-line with the simulation results.