Power Enhancement of a Heavy-Duty Rail Diesel Engine Considering the Exhaust Gas and ancillary facilities Temperature Limitation: A Feasibility Study

One of the important features of the heavy-duty internal combustion engine is power density in such a way that the limitations created by the engine's features and accessories are the main challenges in evaluating the performance and power enhancement of advanced diesel engines. In other words, the complexity and limited performance of some of these devices do not allow the use of different power enhancement methods. Among these limitations, temperature constraints are one of the main challenges in the power enhancement process. In this study, the feasibility of increasing the power of the R43L MTU4000 heavy rail diesel engine has been considered. In this regard, the limitations of turbocharger inlet temperature as one of the basic performance challenges of the engine have been investigated using a one-dimensional simulation. For validation, the simulation results from the GT-SUITE software are compared with the experimental results. In the results section, the influence of increasing fuel mass, decreasing the compression ratio (CR), and the start of injection timing (SOI) has been investigated. The results show that by raising the fuel quantity by 5%, the power increases by about 7.6%; however, this increase in power leads to an increase in the turbocharger inlet temperature by 20K. Due to the operating limitations of various engine systems, attempts were made to control the rise of exhaust gas temperature by reducing the CR. On the other hand, reducing the CR from 18 to 15 increases the BSFC by 2.5%, but these changes in the CR do not have a significant effect on the output power. Finally, to examine the SOI timing in the enhanced engine at the maximum speed and power, different SOIs are tested and the optimal point is determined.