Heavy Duty Testing
Targeting off-highway and commercial vehicle engine makers, Ricardo has expanded its Chicago Technical Center to help them comply with upcoming emissions regulations.
In October of last year, independent engineering technology firm Ricardo announced a test cell expansion project at its 21,500-ft2 (2000-m2) Chicago Technical Center (CTC), located in Burr Ridge, IL. Scheduled for completion this month, the $4.8 million project adds two new heavy duty emissions test cells designed for developing engines to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2007 emissions requirements.
The first phase of the project was completed in September 2001 and added heavy-duty engine transient testing to the company’s existing CTC Test Cell 2. This phase included a new full dilution constant volume sampling (CVS) tunnel, dilute exhaust analytical instrumentation, and upgraded engine and dynamometer control software meeting the requirements of the U.S. On-highway Federal Test Procedure and
other transient emissions cycles.
The just-completed phase two of the expansion added CTC Test Cell 3, which is specified as a 750-hp (560-kW) heavy-duty transient cell sharing phase-one emissions equipment, and Test Cell 4, a 600-hp (448-kW) heavy-duty engine development cell with transient drive-cycle capability and dual line raw gas emissions. The dynamometers in these cells have a capacity of 800 and 620 hp (600 and 460 kW), respectively, for other types of testing. Prior to these two new test cells, the tech center was performing certification- quality emissions testing of heavy-duty engines up to 500 hp (373 kW).
The largest supplier of equipment to the test cells is Schenck through two of its divisions: the dynamometers have been supplied by Schenck Pegasus, and the control and data-acquisition hardware and software by Interautomation. The emissions equipment was supplied by Horiba, including new raw gas emissions benches that are suitable for both on- and off-highway work as well as some upgrades to the dilute CVS particulate measurement system. Project design engineering and construction services were provided by Emprise.
The tech center was purpose-built in 1992 for Ricardo’s powertrain engineering, software, and heavy-duty engine development testing businesses. The engine test facility occupies 60% of the building’s floor space. “We [now] have a total of four performance and emissions heavy-duty test cells: two of them will be transient with CVS emissions trains, and the other two will have access only to typical raw gas emissions measurement,” said Jim Baustian, Manager of Heavy-Duty Powertrain Development at Ricardo.
“Our test cells have been targeted toward the high torque, relatively lower-speed characteristics of heavy-duty engines,” he added. At the CTC, “we specialize in engines that spend most of their life at or near rated power, whether they be truck engines or agricultural- and construction equipment engines—all the way down to small engines because they also spend most of their time at rated power.” Marine- and stationary-engine projects are also conducted in the test cells.
“In planning for this expansion, we very much had in mind both on- and off-highway applications,” he said, noting that the test cells are well suited to typical off-highway performance and emissions development programs. “With the [test cells’ increased] power capacity, perhaps we can capture a little bit more of the off-highway market than we had in the past.”
While diesel engines are the main thrust of development testing at the CTC, the expanded facility has been equipped with a new state-of-the-art fuel farm to serve other types of engines as well. “We have natural gas fueling available, as is widely used in stationary power and now in some dual-fuel mobile applications,” said Baustian. “We also have the capacity to include heavy-duty gasoline engines in this range. A particular interest in the upgrade project was to provide dynos with a bit more speed capacity than our original two test cells and thereby be able to offer transient testing of gasoline engines for the heavy-duty market.” A variety of other alternate fuels can be accommodated in the fuel farm, according to Baustian, but hydrogen is not one of them because it would have lead to “significant additional engineering and cost.”
The development testing process begins when a customer engine is received. Ricardo uses its palletized, rapid installation system to prepare the engine outside of the test cell, and then to install the engine, commission, and initialize the actual target project work. The test cell consists of the life support system needed to run the engine, beginning with the dynamometer, which provides the load to simulate the vehicle. Depending on the test requirements, sophisticated instrumentation can monitor highly detailed data on the engine such as fluid temperatures, metal temperatures, the emissions, and the power being generated.
“Typically a development project will consist of steady state development, followed by a transient phase where the engine is tested and developed over drive-cycle kinds of conditions. The test cell simulates the conditions the engine will see in a vehicle by rapidly varying speed and load to simulate accelerations, decelerations, changes in load, etc.,” said Baustian. Transient operation can include tests that are standardized, or customer-specified transient cycles if there is a particular requirement for performance over a transient maneuver such as a load pickup test, he added.
The test cells have been designed to cover “essentially all of the topics that can be encountered” in performance and emissions development, according to Baustian. “Each of them has access to high-speed data acquisition for doing basic combustion-system development with in-cylinder pressure measurement, [and] all of them have access to at least one and usually multiple emissions trains,” he said. “One of the emerging technologies that we’re developing for customers is heavy-duty engines with after treatment technology. We’ve seen a need there to supply test cells that have not only a single emissions train but dual and sometimes even three emissions trains for doing engine out emissions and then post-catalyst or post-aftertreatment emissions simultaneously.”
With this recent expansion Ricardo was attempting to get out ahead of the forthcoming emissions requirements, said Baustian. “We have some of the first commercially available test cells for U.S. 2007 on-road type requirements, which are also well suited to Tier 3 off-road requirements. Talk about transient test cells and people immediately jump to on-highway applications, but the off-road market has got an
emerging transient test as well, and we’ve considered that offroad transient in the design of these test cells,” he added.
In May, the U.S. EPA finalized new emissions regulations for nonroad diesel engines. Included in these Tier 4 standards is the requirement for certification testing over a standardized transient duty cycle, designated the Nonroad Transient Composite (NRTC) test cycle. The NRTC supplements the current steady-state test requirements, thus requiring that most Tier 4 engines be certified using both tests. The Tier 4 regulations, including the implementation of the NRTC test requirement, become effective for some engines beginning in MY 2008 and are phased into full implementation over the following five or six model years.
Upcoming emissions regulations present a challenge to both the development and the testing of heavy-duty engines. “Ricardo and our customers are currently challenged to make some very significant reductions in exhaust emissions, while still preserving the
performance and fuel-economy levels that the end user needs,” said Baustian. “The challenge there is to both develop the low-emissions technologies themselves, which include revised combustion systems for low NOx engine-out as well as low particulate matter engine out, plus the after treatment technologies that are going to be inevitable to meet some of these regulations out in the future.
“Along with developing those engine technologies, we’ve got to be able to measure these really low emissions levels, which is a particular challenge with emissions equipment as well…. It has required us to upgrade almost everything we own,” Baustian noted. “In addition, we’re seeing the emergence of some non-regulated emissions measurement requirements. That’s one of the reasons we’ve added things like the online mass spectrometer for monitoring ‘non-regs’ along the way.”
Another unique aspect of the new test cells, according to Baustian, is that they have been set up with the same control and data-acquisition equipment that was chosen by the U.S. EPA for its new heavy-duty transient emissions facility in Ann Arbor, MI. “Our dynos, our control schemes, and even our emissions sampling trains are probably about the closest thing to a copy of [the EPA’s] new facility as will be available commercially. So this may be one of the few places to go if a customer is interested in doing it the way the EPA is doing it.”
2003 Engineering Excellence Honor Award Learn More
