State of the art engine development requires very advanced measurement technologies, especially for exhaust gas analysis. Beside combustion emission benches, smoke meter, smart sampler, opacimeter and constant volume sampling as standard devices, also dual differential mobility particle spectrometer at steady state engine operation and transient differential mobility particle spectrometer at transient engine operation are used to analyze particle number size distributions. Furthermore, mass spectroscopy of gaseous compounds, atomic emission spectroscopy, Photo Acoustic Soot Sensor (PASS), special HC-analysis (e.g. PAH, Aldehyde), fast FID, particle analysis (SOF, VOF), electron microscopy and gas chromatography are used as advanced measurement technologies. These advanced measurement technologies are utilized in close cooperation with the skill teams TA: Emission Measuring and TC: Fuels, Lubricants and Analytical Chemistry.
The soot loading of a Diesel particulate filter can easily be measured by weighing, whereas an analysis of the soot loading distribution leads to destruction of the filter for various procedures. AVL has developed a method based on Computer Tomographic investigations (CT), which leads to reproducible results without destruction of the DPF.