An Experimental Study on the Improvement of Fuel Economy according to Coolant and Oil Temperature

Abstract: Recently, the internal combustion engines have focused on reducing the CO2 gas in order to cope with severe regulations for fuel economy. Therefore, various new technologies have been developed. Among them, cooling system is spotlighted because it has great effect on fuel economy. In this study, we measured the friction losses of engine parts according to engine speed and oil temperature. We also obtained optimized oil temperature which has the minimum friction losses. Then, we selected optimized oil temperature range and gave informations of friction losses for each engine parts. In addition, we analyzed relationship between coolant temperature and oil temperature by using engine performance test system. From this experiment, we obtained the database for relationship between coolant temperature and oil temperature. Then, we found the optimal temperature about engine oil. We analyzed BSFC and exhaust emissions by controlling the high coolant temperture. If we controlled coolant temperature more higher, BSFC has a little difference but exhaust emissions such as THC and CO have reduced. By using these experimental results, we predicted that IC engine have more low fuel consumption and exhaust emissions by optimized cooling control strategy