<p>Due to stricter emission legislation, there is a need for more efficient control of diesel engines with exhaust gas recirculation(EGR). In particular, it is important to estimate the air/fuel ratio accurately in transients. Therefore a new engine gas flow model has been developed. This model divides the gas into one part for oxygen and one part for inert gases. Based on this model an observer has been designed to estimate the oxygen concentration in the gas going into the engine, which can be used to calculate the air/fuel ratio. This observer can also be used to estimate the intake manifold pressure. The advantage of estimating the pressure, instead of low pass filtering the noisy signal, is that the observer does not cause time delay.</p>

<p>Today’s diesel engines are complex with systems like VGT and EGR to be able to fulfil the stricter emission legislations and the demands on the fuel consumption. Controlling a system like this demands a sophisticated control system. Furthermore, the authorities demand on self diagnosis requires an equal sophisticated diagnosis system. These systems require good knowledge about the signals present in the system and how they affect each other.</p><p>One way to achieve this is to have a good model of the system and based on this calculate an observer. The observer is then used to estimate signals used for control and diagnosis. Advantages with an observer instead of using just sensors are that the sensor signals often are noisy and need to be filtered before they can be used. This causes time delay which further complicates the control and diagnosis systems. Other advantages are that sensors are expensive and that some engine quantities are hard to measure.</p><p>In this Master’s thesis a model of a Scania diesel engine is developed and an observer is calculated. Due to the non-linearities in the model the observer is based on a constant gain extended Kalman filter.</p>

Background: Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive type of glioma and associated with poor prognosis. Apart from ionizing radiation and some rare genetic disorders, few aetiological factors have been identified for primary brain tumours. Inverse associations to asthma and low IgG levels for varicella zoster virus have in previous studies indicated that the immune system may play a role in glioma development. Little is known about prognostic factors in glioma. Previous studies have shown an association between age, Karnofsky performance status, O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) hypermethylation, and prognosis. Polymorphisms in different low penetrance genes have in some studies been associated with glioma prognosis. Material and methods: In paper I, we analysed IgG levels for four different viruses, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), varicella zoster virus (VZV) and adenovirus (Ad), in prediagnostic blood samples from 197 cases with glioma and 394 controls collected from three large cohorts: the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study; the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study; and the Diet, Cancer and Health cohort from Copenhagen. ELISA was used to measure IgG levels and for EBV response to both the nuclear antigen (EBNA1) and the viral capsid antigen (VCA) was measured, for VCA using immunoflourescence. IgG levels were divided into quartiles and binary logistic regression was used to compare the quartiles in cases and controls. All odds ratios were adjusted for age, sex, and cohort. In paper II-IV, we studied 176 glioblastoma cases from Sweden and Denmark. We collected treatment and follow-up data on the cases. We genotyped 30 tagging SNPs in EGF, 89 in EGFR, 27 in VEGFR2, and 17 in VEGF. We also studied 1458 SNPs in 136 DNA repair genes. Hazard ratios were calculated using Cox regression; the major allele was set as categorical variable and all HR were adjusted for age, sex, country, and treatment. For the DNA repair gene results, we adjusted the p-values for multiple testing. Significant findings were confirmed in separate datasets. Results and Discussion: We found a trend towards higher IgG VZV levels in controls compared to glioma cases, especially when restricting the analyses to only include glioma cases with at least 2 years between blood sample and diagnosis. This finding might indicate that there is an aetiological and not a disease-related association. This confirms previous findings and support that a strong immune system can detect and inhibit growth of small cancer clusters. In EGF, we found seven SNPs in one haplotype block that were significantly associated with glioblastoma survival. Four of the SNPs were available for confirmation; however, none reached statistical significance. One explanation could be age differences in the different cohorts. In EGFR, four SNPs associated with survival were found; however, as 89 polymorphisms were tested this was the expected outcome by chance. In VEGF and VEGFR2, we found two SNPs associated with glioblastoma survival, but they could not be confirmed in the separate dataset, and due to multiple testing, were considered to be false positives. Among the DNA repair genes, we found nine SNPs in three genes-MSH2, RAD51L1 and RECQL4-associated with glioblastoma survival after confirmation and adjustment for age, sex, country, and treatment. After adjusting for multiple testing, one SNP in MSH2 and one in RECQL4 remained significant. Conclusions: Our studies provide additional knowledge to the aetiological and prognostic factors important for glioma, emphasising the possible importance of immune function mechanisms. We found limited evidence for the role of genetic variants in glioma progression genes, and some for DNA repair variants as prognostic factors for glioblastoma survival.

Au cours du développement embryonnaire, le destin d'une cellule est spécifié par l'expression de gènes dits de lignage. Le contrôle de l'expression de ces gènes est essentiel à la cohérence du développement embryonnaire. Pour savoir comment s'effectue ce contrôle, nous avons choisi un modèle de spécification dans le cerveau postérieur des vertébrés, le rhombencéphale. Au cours de son développement, cet organe comprend sept groupes de cellules homogènes, appelés rhombomères (r) et notés de r1 à r7, qui subissent des processus de spécification distincts. La voie de spécification de r3 et r5 est la mieux connue car elle est contrôlée par un facteur unique, Krox20. En l'absence de ce facteur, les cellules de r3 et r5 ne sont pas correctement spécifiées et voient leur destin neuronal modifié. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous dévoilons les mécanismes qui permettent de contrôler le nombre de cellules exprimant le gène Krox20, donc la taille de r3 et r5. Ces mécanismes contrôlent la dynamique de transcription de Krox20, en régulant l'activité de ses éléments régulateurs. Deux éléments, B et C, sont responsables de l'initiation de l'expression de Krox20 ; un troisième, noté A, l'amplifie et la prolonge grâce à une activité autorégulatrice. Nous montrons (i) que les cellules n'acquièrent l'identité r3/r5 que si elles activent l'élément A, (ii) que l'activation de l'élément A suit un mode tout-ou-rien, selon le niveau d'initiation de Krox20. Ces conclusions ont été obtenues par l'analyse d'un modèle mathématique, contraint par des données expérimentales obtenues chez le poisson-zèbre, et suffisamment résolutif pour décrire l'activation de A à l'échelle moléculaire.

Because of new emission and on board diagnostics legislations, heavy truck manufacturers are facing new challenges when it comes to improving the engines and the control software. Accurate and real time executable engine models are essential in this work. One successful way of lowering the NOx emissions is to use Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR). The objective of this thesis is to create a mean value model for Scania's next generation EGR system consisting of a poppet valve and a two stage cooler. The model will be used to extend an existing mean value engine model. Two models of different complexity for the EGR system have been validated with sufficient accuracy. Validation was performed during static test bed conditions. The resulting flow models have mean relative errors of 5.0% and 9.1% respectively. The temperature model suggested has a mean relative error of 0.77%.

Due to stricter emission legislation, there is a need for more efficient control of diesel engines with exhaust gas recirculation(EGR). In particular, it is important to estimate the air/fuel ratio accurately in transients. Therefore a new engine gas flow model has been developed. This model divides the gas into one part for oxygen and one part for inert gases. Based on this model an observer has been designed to estimate the oxygen concentration in the gas going into the engine, which can be used to calculate the air/fuel ratio. This observer can also be used to estimate the intake manifold pressure. The advantage of estimating the pressure, instead of low pass filtering the noisy signal, is that the observer does not cause time delay.

Today’s diesel engines are complex with systems like VGT and EGR to be able to fulfil the stricter emission legislations and the demands on the fuel consumption. Controlling a system like this demands a sophisticated control system. Furthermore, the authorities demand on self diagnosis requires an equal sophisticated diagnosis system. These systems require good knowledge about the signals present in the system and how they affect each other. One way to achieve this is to have a good model of the system and based on this calculate an observer. The observer is then used to estimate signals used for control and diagnosis. Advantages with an observer instead of using just sensors are that the sensor signals often are noisy and need to be filtered before they can be used. This causes time delay which further complicates the control and diagnosis systems. Other advantages are that sensors are expensive and that some engine quantities are hard to measure. In this Master’s thesis a model of a Scania diesel engine is developed and an observer is calculated. Due to the non-linearities in the model the observer is based on a constant gain extended Kalman filter.

<p>The demands on tomorrows diesel engines regarding fuel consumption and emission levels keep getting more difficult to fulfill. Due to this fact, the control demand is getting bigger and bigger. To be able to comply with the Euro 6 standards, it is believed that engine control need to be conducted individually from cylinder to cylinder if the need for after-treatment systems should be minimized.</p><p>Scania’s approach to handle emission levels so far has been to use exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). To be able to optimize the use of EGR it is necessary to know how the inert gases, water and carbon dioxide, are distributed between the cylinders. The distribution variation become even more difficult to predict since the EGR is cooled, sometimes leading to condensation of some of the water content. The condensation of water and its behavior in the inlet manifold is studied in this thesis.</p><p>Different ways of measuring non-uniformity in the gas composition between cylinders with respect to EGR in general and water content in particular are evaluated. Using these results, measurements have been conducted on an engine and conclusions are drawn from them.</p><p>The conclusions are that uneven distribution of above all liquid water, due to puddle formation, have an impact on emission formation that should be accounted for in some of the examined operating conditions.</p>

This study was concerned with the performance of biofuels in diesel engines. Generally, the basic combustion and emission characteristics of Rapeseed Oil (RSO) and Soya Oil (SO) result in a lower in-cylinder pressure peak than diesel. This led to the reduction of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) emissions and to relatively high soot emissions. Further measurements of RSO were done in order to investigate the influence of injection pressure, injection timing and Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) on combustion and emission characteristics. A high soot emission from RSO was reduced by increased injection pressure. Moreover, injection timing also had to be varied in order to reduce the soot emissions from RSO. The retarded injection timing (3 deg bTDC) and increased injection pressure (1200 bar) for the blend of 30% RSO resulted in a reduction of soot emission to the same level as from diesel fuel. Further investigation regarding the soot emissions was done for Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) under turbocharged engine operation. The application of the boost pressure resulted in stable engine operation at a late injection timing of 5 deg aTDC. A simultaneous reduction of soot and NOx emissions has been achieved for RME at an injection timing of TDC and high EGR percentage (40 – 50 %). The soot particles size distribution under different engine operating conditions for RME and diesel has also been investigated. Moreover, the characteristic of Electrostatic Mobility Spectrometer (EMS) and the design of primary dilution system have been provided in order to understand the influence of the dilution process and to obtain more real results. Generally, RME showed less particles concentration in the nucleation mode when compared to diesel. Moreover, high EGR caused a shift of the particles from the nucleation mode by agglomeration into the accumulation mode for both fuels. The effect of injection pressure could only be seen in the accumulation mode, where high injection pressure slightly reduced the concentration number. The soot emission was effectively reduced by the usage of the diesel particulate filter (DPF). For this purpose, the soot particles size distributions before and after the DPF have been measured at different engine speeds and loads. At low engine torque, the soot was effectively filtered while the operation under high engine loads resulted in low soot particle concentration especially in the nucleation mode, after the DPF.

Modern engines are faced with increasingly stringent requirements for reduced fuel consumptionand lower emissions. A technique which can partly be used to reduce emissionsof nitrogen oxides is recirculation of combusted gases (Exhaust Gas Recirculation, EGR). Ingasoline engines, it also has the advantage that it can save fuel by reducing pumping losses.To large mixture of EGR in the air to the cylinders will however affect the combustion stabilitynegatively. To investigate EGR rate and dynamics with respect to different actuatorinputs, the thesis develops an engine model that includes EGR. The model focus on the airflow in the engine and extends an existing mean value engine model. Two types of EGRsystemare investigated. They are short-route EGR which is implemented between intakemanifold and exhaust manifold and long-route EGR which is implemented between compressorand turbine. The work provides a simulation study that compares both stationaryand transient properties of the two EGR-systems, such as fuel consumption, maximum EGR,and rise time with respect to different actuators.