Testing and Implementation of a Turbocharged Formula SAE Vehicle

Research on turbocharging for FSAE at the University of Malta, has been ongoing for a number of years. 1D simulations were done to determine best design configuration and determine a lowered compression ratio. A decompression plate was installed on the Kawasaki 600 cc engine. Calibration of the engine was performed on the engine dynamometer. A hot-gas test stand for testing of the turbocharger was developed. The turbocharger speed was measured by a custom built hall-effect sensing setup that is compact enough to be implemented also in the FSAE vehicle. Bespoke camshafts with optimized valve timing determined through WAVE 1D simulations and designed with Valdyn® were machined. The turbocharged setup was used on the University of Malta FSAE vehicle in the FSAE Italy 2017 competition.

Knock was investigated through in-cylinder pressure measurements and use of commercial knock sensor on the 600 cc engine. Benchmarking in-cylinder pressure measurement tests were carried out on a 1.4 liter naturally aspirated Ford engine for both ‘masked’ and ‘unmasked’ in-cylinder pressure sensors to assess the possibility and effect of cavity resonance in such experimental tests. High speed data acquisition was performed at 200 kHz per channel and was post-processed using LabVIEW®. Calibration of the knock detection feature on the programmable ECU required the determination of the relevant parameters namely: knock frequency, reference and knock windows and knock to reference window amplitude ratio. Calibration of the ECU knock parameters was aided by playing back recorded engine sensor data to minimize the time of engine knocking.