Pressure sensing diesel glowplugs coming out in 2007

[PHOENIX]

A buddy of mine clued me into this article and after reading it, thought i would share it with you guys because i find it really awesome. There would be real time cylinder pressure sensors which would do amazing things for tuning and knock detection/prevention.

"Pressure-sensing glowplugs from Beru and a joint venture between Siemens/VDO and Federal-Mogul are said to be on their way to the diesel market by "mid-2007". That's good timing, considering the new Tier 2 Bin 5 emission standards slated to go into effect for passenger-car diesel in the U.S. next year.

Exhaust gas oxygen sensors, as used in gasoline engines, don't work on diesel due to the fact that they typically run lean (meaning not much information can be extracted from measuring residual oxygen), and of course particulates and other diesel byproducts do the delicate sensors no favors. Indirect combustion-quality sensing methods, such as exhaust gas temperature, can be difficult to correlate to actual combustion performance. (More after the jump...)

The direct sensing of cylinder pressure, however, is the Holy Grail for engine-management engineers. Being able to measure the pressure vs. crank angle during the combustion process will theoretically allow for maximizing mean cylinder pressure (that's good for power) while minimizing peak cylinder pressure (that's good for durability and NOx emissions). It will also help to equalize cylinder-to-cylinder performance, which has traditionally been a problem for diesels.

Now, if only we could get a similar system for spark-ignition engines. That's probably not far behind, and I'm thinking that this technology will prove to be very useful in HCCI engines as well."

"You could tune to see your cylinder pressure increase steadily, and the moment you saw any abrupt increase...back off. Obviously it would be a little bit more involved than that, but talk about solid usable information. You could know exactly what was happening in the combustion chamber."

[G3aR]

friggin awesome. cant wait to be able to use it in a stand alone EMS tuning environment

[PHOENIX]

exactly......this could be huge to tuners. Quick, someone come out with an aftermarket company that supplies this stuff and we will be rich!

[Weasy2k]

yea i am reading about this everywhere, its been out of a couple years but notihng in "real production".

GOnna be sweet!

I also heard that some of yamahas new heads for toyota will have actually cyl pressure ports taped into the head with a small sensor in there as well. THats something thats been floating around.

[G3aR]

that should be really interesting if toyota starts using something like this. I think the tuning inustry is going to come to the point where we can tune individual cylinders more precisely and be able to compensate for inferior intake manifold designs (cough, gen2 manifold, cough) that dont disperse the air and fuel very well. Man, i just cant wait!

[Enthalpy]

In-cylinder pressure sensing is already here for spark-ignited engines! They put it into the spark plug itself. It's about 1000 per plug, but it's a great thing!

Of course, when ion sensing comes to the aftermarket, this will all be academic.

[PHOENIX]

out of curiosity sakes, do you know where to get these spark plugs? id like to read more about these.

[Enthalpy]

The company's name is Optrand. http://www.optrand.com/products.htm

At the time, I deemed it too rich for my blood, which is why I didn't invest in them. Perhaps I should take another look at this. I mostly tune MR2s, and modified MR2s use BKR7E spark plugs quite commonly.

[PHOENIX]

dang those are cool, neat setup they got going.

[Enthalpy]

Yeah, they are cool. Their spec-built A/D setup is quite impressive. When the shop I'm affiliated with gets on its feet more, I'm going to request they get one of them. There's definitely no money at the moment, though.

[PHOENIX]

okay.....so they plug these bad boys in, which then go to the little white box...then what? does it plug into EMS's or are they strictly used for dyno tuning? Id like to learn more about this stuff, im definatly the type of guy that likes to know whats going on in my engine, and if the price is right, it seems worth it to me.

[Enthalpy]

It will give you readouts of pressure vs. time, pressure vs. crank position, that type of stuff.

You can look at the pressure waveform to see detonation LONG before you ever hear it! You can also align the pressure with the mechanically-advantageous piston position to maximize power and mileage. That's what a tuner uses a dyno to do right now.

So....with these little bad boys, dynos will probably be phased out as a necessary tool for giving a customer a really great tune! Wouldn't that be an interesting world?

[Weasy2k]

Originally Posted by Enthalpy

It will give you readouts of pressure vs. time, pressure vs. crank position, that type of stuff.

You can look at the pressure waveform to see detonation LONG before you ever hear it! You can also align the pressure with the mechanically-advantageous piston position to maximize power and mileage. That's what a tuner uses a dyno to do right now.

So....with these little bad boys, dynos will probably be phased out as a necessary tool for giving a customer a really great tune! Wouldn't that be an interesting world?

Very much so!
There is even a Spark plug with a camera in it :P Toyota used to take pictures of detonation....its crazy

[Enthalpy]

I think I've seen those pictures, although I thought they were taken in a University laboratory setting that wasn't affiliated with an OEM. Interesting.

[Weasy2k]

well it was something to that extgent of course....it was all simulated but did what it had to

[PHOENIX]

wow, i think ill search for those pictures

thanks for they info flyboy, thats some good information.

[G3aR]

if anyone can find those toyota pics that would be awesome if they posted them up here

[Weasy2k]

ill see what i can dig up

[G3aR]

thanks dude, hit me up on aim if you find them

[PHOENIX]

ya i searched and failed. although i did find a cool contest that bosch did with some cool pictures from igniting a spark plug with propane. If you find them, i would like to see them too.