Ford is investigating a new engine management approach that could help make the company's three-cylinder 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine more fuel efficient.
EcoBoost-equipped vehicles last year accounted for one in four new Ford vehicles sold in Europe. The 1.0-litre EcoBoost, the most popular, is available with automatic as well as five-speed, and six‑speed manual transmissions, and across 10 different models - from Fiesta to the all-new Mondeo.
On-road tests using a working prototype showed fuel efficiency improvements of up to six per cent after engineers conducted an experimental investigation into cylinder deactivation, said Ford.
To enable cylinder deactivation to take place at a wider range of engine loads and speeds they developed a new dual mass flywheel which they claim also minimized noise, vibration and harshness levels.
These findings were presented at the Vienna Engine Symposium by Andreas Schamel, Ford director, Global Powertrain, Research & Advanced Engineering. Cylinder deactivation is among a number of fuel efficiency solutions Ford is investigating for the 1.0-litre EcoBoost, at the European Research and Innovation Centre in Aachen, Germany.
"Even for an aggressively downsized engine such as the 1.0-litre EcoBoost, a significant improvement in vehicle fuel economy could be found by exploiting cylinder deactivation," Schamel said. "The highest priority in the development of new combustion engines for automotive applications is the ongoing reduction of fuel consumption."
For testing, engineers equipped a Ford Focus 1.0-litre EcoBoost with cylinder deactivation hardware that they could monitor deactivation of one cylinder, and also a rolling cylinder deactivation to run the engine in ‘half-engine' mode.
They prototype was also fitted with a newly developed system that combined a dual mass flywheel, a pendulum absorber, and a tuned clutch disc; which Ford said is particularly effective at low revs. As well as enabling a wider operating range of cylinder deactivation, this system helped counteract any effect that the cylinder deactivation had on levels of noise, vibration and harshness.
Fuel efficiency improvements were recorded in homologated conditions and during test drives of the first prototype vehicle, for a typical commuter distance of fifty five km on a combination of motorway, city roads and rural roads, in and around Cologne, Germany. The development is a collaboration with Ford's engineering partners at the Schaeffler Group.
M. Cairns - 08/07/2015 14:16
I'm looking forward to EcoBoost MK2. The 125bhp unit is just absolutely brilliant engineering (even Clarkson agreed when they took the Fiesta to Chernobyl) and leaves many other cars sitting with its performance and fuel economy from a tiny 1-litre engine. After today's UK Budget 2015 and imminent UK Road Tax hikes for everybody (including the current upgrade from £0 for ALL Ecoboost owners to £140 from April 2017), I'm eager for them to keep pushing the envelope for the technology.