Dimensionless Study on Efficiency and Speed Characteristics of a Compressed Air Engine

Abstract

To eliminate the pollutants exhausting, this paper presents an idea of using compressed air as the power source for engines. Instead of an internal combustion (IC) engine, this automobile is equipped with a compressed air engines (CAEs), which transforms the energy of the compressed air into mechanical kinematic energy. Through analysis of the working process of a CAE, the mathematical model is setup. Experiments are carried out to verify the engine performance and the basic model’s validity. By selecting the appropriate reference values, the mathematical model is transformed to a dimensionless expression. The dimensionless speed and efficiency characteristics of the CAE are obtained. Through analysis, it can be obtained that the dimensionless average rotating speed is mainly determined by the intake duration angle, the dimensionless inertia parameter, the dimensionless exhaust pressure, and the scale factor of exhaust valve. Moreover, the efficiency of the CAE is mainly determined by the dimensionless exhaust pressure, the intake duration angle and the dimensionless cylinder clearance. This research can be referred to in the design of CAE and the study on optimization of the CAE.