Engine technology is changing so rapidly that the demands placed on the fuel and lubricant performance are evolving quickly. The Advanced Engine Fluids (AEF) consortium will continue the research and development work begun in the Pre-Ignition Prevention Program to expand into other critical areas for the engine and petroleum industries. This new program will investigate how fuel and lubricant chemistry affects engine combustion and vice versa.
Main Areas of Concentration
The AEF consortium will research the impact of fuels and lubricants on engine combustion and the requirements needed for optimizing future engine technologies. The research will focus on ways to accelerate improvements for fuels and lubricants to keep up with emerging fuel economy standards. SwRI’s decades-long experience in fuels and lubricant testing combined with our industry-leading research on advanced engines gives us unique insight into the challenges facing modern fuel and lubricant companies.
Program Task Areas
The initial task areas are detailed below. Since the AEF consortium is a continuously evolving research program, the distribution of effort for these areas will vary based on budget, client direction, and research findings.
Topic areas for the AEF consortium
- Fundamental causes of low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI)
- Identify the chemical pathways which lead to LSPI
- Investigate the potential for transient deposit formation to cause LSPI
- Correlate exhaust particulate and gaseous emissions to LSPI
- Evaluate market fuel and lubricant variation effect on LSPI
- Mitigation approaches for LSPI
- Develop real-time detection approaches for LSPI
- Demonstrate the potential to suppress LSPI using existing engine hardware
- Investigate the impact of piston ring dynamics on LSPI
- Investigate the impact of EGR on LSPI
- Fuel property impacts on potential engine efficiency
- Correlate chemical and physical properties of gasoline with the potential efficiency gain of increased compression ratio for a range of engine architectures
- Demonstrate the increased efficiency of modern engines using optimized fuels
- Demonstrate the impact of optimized fuels on legacy engine hardware
- Dual-fuel combustion lubrication requirements
- Investigate the chemical and physical aging of lubricants under dual-fuel (natural gas-diesel) combustion
- Identify the combustion chemistries which are critical in developing new lubricants for dual-fuel engines
- Impacts of alternative fuels on CI combustion systems
- Investigate the impact of potential alternative diesel fuels on lubricant life
- Investigate combustion and emissions performance of a heavy-duty CI engine using potential alternative diesel fuels
Join AEF.