Design of An Active Exhaust Attenuating Valve For Internal Combustion Engines
Design of An Active Exhaust Attenuating Valve For Internal Combustion Engines
Design of An Active Exhaust Attenuating Valve For Internal Combustion Engines
combustion engines.
R. Boonen, P. Sas
KULeuven, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Celestijnenlaan 300 B, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium
e-mail: rene.boonen@mech.kuleuven.ac.be
Abstract
An active silencer to attenuate internal combustion engine exhaust noise is developed. The silencer consists of
an electrically controlled valve connected to a buffer volume. The pulsating flow from the engine is buffered
in the volume and the valve resistance is continuously controlled such that only the mean flow passes to the
atmosphere. This flow is free of fluctuations and consequently free of sound. The design of the active silencer
is carried out using electrical analog circuits. First, the interaction between the active silencer and the engine
will be studied using an analog circuit including the combustion engine and a linearized active silencer. Then, a
detailed valve model is built in a separate electrical analog circuit. It includes the electrical, the mechanical and
the flow-dynamic properties of the actuator valve. The actuator valve concept is then simulated, from which
a prototype can be constructed. The active silencer has been tested on a cold engine simulator. This device
generates realistic exhaust noise with the associated gas flow using compressed air. The silencer can attenuate
pulsations from engines at very low revolution speed, without passive elements preconnected between the
engine and the active silencer. This is not possible using loudspeaker based active silencers.
33
34 P ROCEEDINGS OF ISMA2002 - VOLUME I
d UZ d IR
=Z =0 (5)
dt dt
Figure 5: Simulated tail pipe absolute pressure. The Figure 7: Simulated absolute back pressure to the
controller starts at 0.2 s. engine. The controller starts at 0.2 s.
is presented. Actually, this diagram has no physical valve has a monotonic increasing valve resistance in
significance, it is an ”isothermal” simulation. Only terms of head displacement. This resistance is pre-
the pressure at the exhaust valve opening time point sented in figure 10. This is an advantage compared to
must have its correct value, which is deterministic for for example a butterfly valve, which has a sign rever-
the exhaust noise. The exhaust pressure in the tail sal in its resistance characteristic derivative in terms
pipe is displayed in figure 5. The controller is acti- of position angle.
vated at 0.2 s. Activating the controller at 0.2 s does
not effect the gas flow from the engine, as indicated
in figure 6. The engine behaves as a volume velocity
source. In figure 7, the absolute back pressure to the
engine is displayed. After the transient switching on
the controller, the back pressure returns to the preset-
ted value of 10 kPa.
Figure 13: Current through the actuator valve voice sible for the exhaust noise. Typically, the exhaust
coil. The controller starts at 2 s. cycle starts 40o to 60o crank angle before the bot-
tom dead center. Until about the bottom dead center,
the gases are discharged due to the pressure differ-
3 Experimental results ence between the cylinder and the exhaust manifold.
The cylinder volume change due to the piston move-
3.1 Cold engine simulator
ment around the bottom dead center remains small,
The development of the active silencer has been car- about 10% to 15%. Therefore, the blowdown pulse
ried out on a cold engine simulator. This device pro- can be approximated as a discharge of a constant vol-
duces realistic exhaust noise using compressed air ume over the exhaust valve resistance. The displace-
and permits to carry out acoustical and fluid-dynamic ment phase happens mainly at atmospheric level and
experiments with new concepts of exhaust systems ends when the exhaust valve closes at the top dead
without taking precautions against the hot and corro- center. The noise generated during the displacement
sive environment when directly testing on an opera- phase can be neglected compared to the blowdown
tional internal combustion engine. phase. The cold engine simulator will generate only
The exhaust noise of an engine is generated dur- the blowdown pressure pulse.
ing the exhaust cycle. When the exhaust valve opens,
the remaining pressure at the end of the expansion cy- 3.2 Working principle.
cle discharges to the exhaust manifold pressure level.
Then, the remaining gas is scavenged by the piston. The working scheme of the cold engine simulator is
The terms ”blowdown” and ”displacement” are used presented in figure 14. It consists of a regular engine
to denote these two phases of the exhaust cycle. The block whose pistons are fixed at the bottom dead cen-
blowdown phase is typically very short in duration ter. The intake collector is connected via an expan-
compared to the whole exhaust cycle and is respon- sion vessel and a pressure reduction valve to a con-
ACTIVE NOISE CONTROL 39
Figure 16: Exhaust acoustical impedances of the Figure 19: Exhaust acoustical source spectrum of the
cold engine simulator. cold engine simulator.
Figure 22: Tail pipe pressure during time. The feed- Figure 24: Current through the actuator valve voice
back controller is activated at 0.6 s. coil. The controller starts at 0.15 s.
conjunction with a buffer volume, capable to atten- [5] L. Hardouin, P. Micheau, J. Tartarin and J. Lau-
uate the low frequency components of the exhaust monier, An anti-pulsatory device used as an ac-
noise without preconnected passive silencers. tive noise control system in a duct , acta acustica,
This research project leads to the following con- vol 1,189-198,1993
clusions:
[6] S. Renault, P. Micheau, J. Tartarin and M. Be-
1. Any exhaust noise from a reciprocating engine sombes, Industrial applications of active con-
can be attenuated by balancing the buffer volume trol of pulsed flow , Proc. of the Internoise 96
and the engine back pressure. The back pressure Conference,1061-1066,1996
can be chosen and then the buffer volume can be
[7] L. L. Beranek, Acoustics , Mc Graw-Hill, 1954
determined (or vice versa).
2. An electrical analog circuit is proposed to simu- [8] I. E. Idel’cik, Memento des pertes de charge ,
late the active silencer on a combustion engine. Editions Eyrolles, 1986
The acoustic impedance and the source spectrum
of the modeled engine are similar to these of a [9] ISO/FDIS 10534-2, Determination of sound ab-
real engine. sorption coefficient and impedance in impedance
tubes , International Organisation for Standard-
3. The actuator valve itself is simulated using an
ization, Case postale 56, CH-1211 Genève 20,
electrical analog circuit, wherein the electri-
1998.
cal, mechanical and fluid-dynamic properties are
modeled in detail. From these results, a proto- [10] R. Boonen and P. Sas, Development of an ac-
type actuator valve can be constructed. tive exhaust silencer for internal combustion en-
4. A cold engine simulator is developed which gen- gines using feedback control. , SAE-paper 1999-
erates realistic exhaust noise using compressed 01-1844
air. It allows acoustic and fluid-dynamic ex-
periments on new concepts of exhaust systems, [11] J. B. Heywood, Internal combustion engine fun-
without taking precautions against hot corrosive damentals , McGraw-Hill,1988
gases. The exhaust acoustic impedance and the
source spectrum are similar to a real engine.
5. The active silencer has been built and tested on
the cold engine simulator. The noise attenuation
amounts 13 dBL (4 dBA), consuming about 5 W
electrical power and causing 10 kPa back pres-
sure to the engine.
References
[1] U. Sandberg, Noise emissions of road vehicles:
effect of regulations. , Noise News International,
147-206, September 2001.