SPARKING LEVEL EVALUATION in DC ELECTRIC FUEL PUMP MOTOR for BRAZILIAN FLEX FUEL VEHICLE APPLICATION

2021-36-0047

02/04/2022

Features
Event
SAE BRASIL 2021 Web Forum
Authors Abstract
Content
In the Brazilian automotive market, the Flex Fuel vehicles are known for their ability to run with gasoline, ethanol, or any proportional mixture of them. To allow this flexibility, the vehicle’s fuel system has been adapted to support differences in fuel types available in the Brazilian market, including contaminated fuel that in this paper will be treated as aggressive ethanol. The fuel pump, which has the function of supply fuel to the engine, had to be specially developed for the flex fuel application to support the specific characteristics in Brazilian ethanol. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the influence of different fuels - gasoline, ethanol, and aggressive ethanol in the sparking level of the DC fuel pump commutation system. Using a digital oscilloscope, the voltage signals of the fuel pump were recorded, and it was applied a mathematical formulation to determine the sparking level of the DC motor for the different fuels. The results show that the higher the voltage, the larger the spark level intensity in all fuels considered herein. In addition, the increase in the fuel conductivity also showed an increase on the value for the evaluated parameter. Consequently, the fuel electrical conductivity that is one of the parameters monitored by the Brazilian specification, has a critical influence on the fuel pump operation, which can affect the fuel pump lifetime, due to electro erosion wear caused on the carbon brush and carbon commutator owing to the sparking level.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2021-36-0047
Pages
9
Citation
de Oliveira Melo, L., de Azevedo Fernandes, L., and da Silva, D., "SPARKING LEVEL EVALUATION in DC ELECTRIC FUEL PUMP MOTOR for BRAZILIAN FLEX FUEL VEHICLE APPLICATION," SAE Technical Paper 2021-36-0047, 2022, https://doi.org/10.4271/2021-36-0047.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Feb 4, 2022
Product Code
2021-36-0047
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English