Development of an Air-Cooled Induction Manifold for Internal Combustion Engines

Abstract

Extreme weather conditions in the Arabian Gulf such as Qatar tends to be humid and high in temperature mostly throughout the year and this affects the performance of the vehicles engines negatively, especially diesel engines. Moreover, it increases engines exhaust emissions which in return maximizes greenhouse effect. Consequently, many studies have been conducted for innovating and testing new designs for controlling the ambient conditions at the inlet manifold of diesel engines; consequently enhancing engine's performance characteristics. In this project, different systems were designed for controlling inlet air temperature. The design of systems were captured from earlier studies investigating the effect of inlet ambient conditions on automobiles. The experimental tool used for this project is a naturally aspirated single cylinder diesel engine test bid modified with a controlled air-cooled induction manifold. The test investigates the effect of running the engine at different controlled inlet air temperatures and observes engine's performance and emission characteristics. Furthermore, this study aims to track in-cylinder pressure relative to crank angle via a GW-Instek digital storage oscilloscope in addition to analyze the gained power after utilizing the cooling system. It was found that running the diesel engine at lower inlet air temperament can maximize in-cylinder maximum pressure by 60% and increase the volumetric efficiency by 11%. It was also concluded that using the cooling system justifies its consumed power as the net gained power has increased by 12% due to increase of the drawn air density which resulted in a better fuel-injection atomization and more complete combustion.