A Fully Flexible Valve Actuation System for internal combustion engines

• Main Author: Zhao, Junfeng
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/12919

Air pollution, global warming, and rising gasoline prices have lead governments, environmental organizations, and consumers to pressure the automotive industry to improve the fuel efficiency of cars. Since alternative fuels such as hydrogen are still quite far from being commercially viable, improving the existing internal combustion engine is still an important priority. Traditional internal combustion engines use a camshaft to control valve timing. Since the camshaft is rigidly linked to the crankshaft, engineers can optimize the camshaft only for one particular speed torque combination. All other engine operating points will suffer from a suboptimal compromise of torque output, fuel efficiency, and emissions. In an engine with a camless valve actuation system, valve events are controlled independently of crankshaft rotation. As a result, fuel consumption and emissions may be reduced by 15%~20% and torque output is enhanced in a wide range of engine speeds. The Fully Flexible Valve Actuation (FFVA) system is our approach to construct a camless valve actuation system. Within the limits of the dynamic bandwidth of the system, it allows for fully user definable valve trajectories that can be adapted to any need of the combustion process. The system is able to achieve 8mm valve lift in 3.4ms, which is suitable for an engine operating at 6000RPM. The valve seating velocity is similar to conventional valve trains that achieve 0.2m/s at high engine speeds and 0.05m/s at engine idle conditions. Finally, the energy consumption measured in an experimental test bed matches the friction losses of conventional valve trains and it can further be improved by using an optimized motor. This thesis describes the progress that has been made towards designing this technology. A design methodology is derived and important operation features of the mechanism are explained. Modeling and simulation results show significant advantages of the FFVA over previously designed electromagnetic engine valve drives.