Application of artificial neural networks for the prediction of performance and exhaust emissions in SI engine using ethanol- gasoline blends

This study deals with artificial neural network (ANN) modeling of a spark ignition engine to predict the engine brake power, output torque and exhaust emissions (CO, CO2, NOx and HC) of the engine. To acquire data for training and testing of the proposed ANN, a four-cylinder, four-stroke test engine was fuelled with ethanol-gasoline blended fuels with various percentages of ethanol (0, 5,10,15 and 20%), and operated at different engine speeds and loads. An ANN model based on standard back-propagation algorithm for the engine was developed using some of the experimental data for training. The performance of the ANN was validated by comparing the prediction dataset with the experimental results. Results showed that the ANN provided the best accuracy in modeling the emission indices with correlation coefficient equal to 0.98, 0.96, 0.90 and 0.71 for CO, CO2, HC and NOx, and 0.99 and 0.96 for torque and brake power respectively. Generally, the artificial neural network offers the advantage of being fast, accurate and reliable in the prediction or approximation affairs, especially when numerical and mathematical methods fail. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.