Abstract
The global emission regulations and fossil fuel pollution control have
necessitated the need to study the effect of injector fuel splitting time and flow rate on
engine performance. To achieve this, an automated prototyped 4-cylinder injector
engine was developed to replicate the real-time activities of the injector system in the
internal combustion (IC) engine. Arduino Nano open-source platform was used to
integrate the various component parts such as the fuel injector, fuel tank, submersible
fuel pump injector rail, transparent plastic chamber, flexible hose, Engine Control Unit
(ECU), connecting wires, frame, Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), switch button, relay
module, current sensor, potentiometer, Arduino nano, and pressure sensor that were
used for the design experiment. Programmable circuit board microcontroller, Arduino
(Integrated Development Environment) IDE, and C++ coding language were used to
achieve the smart regulations of the injector operation system to replicate the real-time
situation when the engine is running. This was achieved by incorporating Arduino
microcontroller ATMEGA328, C++, and Arduino IDE software. The Arduino
programming initiates the injection system and measures the injection output
parameters. The system was designed to vary the splitting time delay between the four
injectors and to measure the flow rate of the fuel injected. The experimental study
showed that at a very high splitting time delay, the amount of fuel injected is more than
the fuel injected at a relatively low splitting time delay with an average flow rate of
4.36 l/min at 50 microseconds and 0.02 l/min at 500 microseconds for high and low
splitting time, respectively. This study will help the stakeholders in the automotive
industry to virtualize the invisible situation of the fuel injector in real-time performance
in the engine.