Smart Materials and Its Applications: a Feasibility Study of Using Piezoelectric Devices in Diesel Engine Applications

An effort is made to understand the smart materials especially piezoelectric devices to understand its behavior and how it can be applied to the real world applications such as fuel injectors for automotives. Various potential stacks are tested. A thorough analysis of piezo stack behavior and failure characteristics is presented. Broadly, these stacks can be classified as high voltage stacks and low voltage / multilayer co-fired stacks. Extensive test were carried out on these stacks to evaluate their performance characteristics. Some of the key parameters of stack that are very much related to the fuel injection applications were evaluated namely: applied preload, input voltage, current, displacement, rise time, delay time, fall time, duty cycle, operating frequency and system compliance. Experiments were carried out on each of the above mentioned parameters and presented are presented in this book. Hydraulic Amplification System was designed to amplify the piezo displacement to suit fuel injector application requirements. A prototype Control Valve Actuator system was built and tested.