Studies on Performance and Emission Characteristics of Compression Ignition Engine using MATLAB® and Simulink® Simulation

Diesel engines have been widely used as power source of engineering machinery, automobile, and shipping equipment for its excellent drivability and thermal efficiency. At the same time, diesel engines are major contributors of various types of air pollutant emissions such as Carbon monoxide (CO), Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx), Particulate matter (PM), and other harmful compounds. With the increasing concern of environmental protection and more stringent government regulation on exhaust emissions, reduction in engine emissions becomes a major research task in engine development. Hence it is necessary to predict the performance and emission characteristics of diesel engine without conducting experiments to avoid cost of experimentation and delay in conduction and analysis of results. The focus of present study is modeling of performance and emission characteristics of Diesel engine at various engine speeds and loads, using modified versions of Simulink® pre built models. In this work a Simulink® model was created using Powertrain Blockset™ components, and the model was simulated for different simulation runtimes, ranging from 10 to 90 minutes. Three emission parameters and two performance parameters were evaluated against this model. Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and Hydrocarbons as emission parameters are plotted against engine speed keeping engine load constant, and vice versa. Power at crank and the exhaust mass flow rate were the two performance parameters plotted and evaluated. From the various plots and their trends, it was concluded that the trends closely resembled actual profile of the respective plots that are found in actual Diesel Engine Testing.