Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Application of GRNN for the prediction of performance and exhaust

emissions in HCCI engine using ethanol
Harisankar Bendu a,⇑, B.B.V.L. Deepak b, S. Murugan a
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, India
b
Department of Industrial Design, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The evaluation of the performance and emission parameters of an ethanol-fueled HCCI engine is a chal-
Received 30 December 2015 lenging one, because of non-linear nature of the parameters. In this investigation, a smart prediction tool
Received in revised form 26 April 2016 was developed for measuring the performance, and emission characteristics of the ethanol-fueled HCCI
Accepted 22 May 2016
engine. For this purpose, a study was conducted through a combination of experimental data analysis
Available online 30 May 2016
and generalized regression neural network (GRNN) modeling. This study used a set of experimental data
obtained from the ethanol HCCI engine to characterize variations in performance measures such as brake
Keywords:
thermal efficiency, and exhaust gas temperature, and the emission parameters such as unburned hydro-
HCCI
GRNN
carbons (UHC), carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), and smoke opacity. The neural network was
Ethanol trained, validated and tested with the experimental data sets. In addition, grid search method was used
Emissions to find the optimized kernel bandwidth to reduce the cross-validation error. The obtained results were
Performance validated and tested with the experimental HCCI performance and emission metrics. The validation
results predicted that the output parameters those lie within 2% error. The results also showed that
the GRNN models are advantageous for network simplicity and require less sparse data.
Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The major challenge of HCCI combustion is controlling of the

Achieving a cleaner environment is a challenge today, because
there is a continuous accumulation of different pollutants in the
air, disposal of toxic substances, degradable and non-degradable
substances in the air, land, and sea. The pollutants from the com-
bustion of fossil fuels and industrial activities are the main causes
for the polluted environment. It is reported that clean combustion
technologies and use of renewable fuels such as alcohols and
hydrogen may help to improve the air quality. In this context, it
is anticipated that homogeneous charge compression ignition
(HCCI) technology will produce ultra-low smoke and nitric oxide
(NO) emissions compared to conventional spark ignition (SI) and
compression ignition (CI) engines [1]. In principle, an HCCI engine
utilizes a homogeneous charge similar to SI engines and has igni-
tion of premixed charge similar to CI engines. Hence, HCCI engines
are hybrid of both SI and CI engines [2,3]. In the SI and CI engines,
the start of combustion is initiated by spark timing and fuel injec-
tion timing, respectively. But in HCCI, auto-ignition is purely gov-
erned by the chemical kinetics of the premixed fuel/air mixture.
Hence, HCCI combustion lacks direct control mechanism [4,5].
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hsbendu@gmail.com (H. Bendu).
combustion phase [3]. Other challenges are cold-start, narrow
operating range, unburned hydrocarbon emission (UHC) and
carbon monoxide (CO) emissions.
Utilization of renewable liquid fuels particularly ethanol/
bioethanol in transportation vehicles has been greatly focused for
several years, as ethanol can be produced from a variety of biomass
sources, oxygenative, and renewable fuel. In the last two decades,
ethanol has been used as an alternative fuel in the form of blends
(up to E85) with gasoline in SI engines. Use of ethanol in CI engines
has been successful to some extent only, and complete utilization
requires engine modification [6]. A primary study on the ethanol-
fueled HCCI engines was carried out by Christensen et al. [7]. They
used water injection for reducing the NOX emissions [8].
The auto-ignition process in HCCI engine is very sensitive to
the minor changes in the intake air temperature of 5–10 °C [9].
The start of HCCI combustion is advanced with an increase in the
intake temperature (from 24 to 82 °C) due to increased peak cylin-
der temperature [10]. Christensen et al. [11] have demonstrated
the fuel flexibility of the HCCI engine using port fuel injection
(PFI) technique by varying compression ratio and intake air tem-
perature with the blends of primary reference fuels (iso-octane
and n-heptane). They reported that port injection improved the
air/fuel mixture quality by proper atomization, and almost any

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2016.05.061
0196-8904/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
166 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173
liquid fuel could be used as a fuel in the HCCI engine. The induction
of diesel fuel vapor by port injection in the intake manifold for
homogeneous charge preparation and the exhaust gas recircula-
tion (EGR) for controlling the combustion were carried out by some
researchers [12–15]. They have reported that, the combustion was
too noisy at high loads, the emissions of NOX and smoke were
found to be lower, while the UHC and CO emissions were higher.
The HCCI combustion of low cetane fuels can be achieved either
by increasing the compression ratio or intake air temperature.
Maurya and Agarwal [16] reported that increasing the charge tem-
perature permitted the HCCI engine to run on a richer mixture led
to knocking with a high-pressure rise rate. But, the ignition of the
leaner mixture in the HCCI mode is possible only with elevated
intake air temperatures. The high latent heat of vaporization of
ethanol caused a higher intake charge density [17]. The alcohols
have the tendency to produce minor emissions, and auto-ignite rel-
atively earlier than gasoline [18]. The image diagnostics [19] of port
injected ethanol, the number of droplets formed and their mean
diameter were found to be smaller, for the short injection sprays.
Saxena et al. [2] have used a heat recovery device that recovered
waste heat from the exhaust gasses for preheating the intake charge
with the help of a heat exchanger. This heat exchanger preheats the
intake air in the HCCI combustion without electrical air heating.
Validating experimental results using artificial neural networks
(ANN) is an evolutionary approach which does not use any com-
plex mathematical equations for explaining the non-linear and
multi-dimensional systems. During training, the ANN predicts
the experimental data and validates with an independent set of
data. For any new data, the ANN has the ability to improve the
engine performance [20,21]. ANN models have been extensively
used to predict the performance and emission characteristics of
conventional engines [22–24]. Rezaei et al. [25] developed two dif-
ferent ANN models namely radial basis function (RBF) and feed for-
ward (FF) to predict the engine performance metrics. The
validation results indicated that there was less than 4% error for
butanol and ethanol-fueled engines. Zurita and Peña [26] used gen-
eralized regression neural network (GRNN) to control the diesel
engine vibration based on the cylinder pressure. Soufi et al. [27]
developed back-propagation neural network (BPNN) for predicting
the performance and emissions of a 200 cc two stroke engine. They
related the input and output parameters and the ANN application
would be useful for prediction. The HCCI auto-ignition using ANN
was developed using a multi-input single-output (MISO) model
for the prediction of the start of combustion [28]. The MISO ANN
model was used for misfire detection in the HCCI engines [29].
Piloto-Rodríguez et al. [30] predicted the cetane number of biodie-
sel using ANN with an accuracy of 92%.
The popular prediction tools existed are genetic programing
(GP), fuzzy regression and neural networks. The genetic program
involves mutation, crossover and cut-paste operations. Hence it
takes more search time to obtain the relation. Moreover, the GP
requires a prior information about the mathematical operations
that are used for prediction [31]. Whereas fuzzy regression net-
work is a rule based prediction approach in which the accuracy
is dependent on the user defined instructions [32,33]. ANN is com-
posed of simple processors those are extremely interconnected
with parallel operating system, mainly learnt from the previous
experience. Unlike the other prediction tools like genetic program-
ing and fuzzy regression, ANN does not use any complex mathe-
matical equations/operators for explaining the non-linear and
multi-dimensional systems. In HCCI engines, the auto-ignition is
purely dependent on time-temperature history of the homoge-
neous air/fuel mixture. Moreover, HCCI combustion is more sensi-
tive to the intake air temperature. To predict the non-linear nature
between input and output parameters of HCCI engine, ANN has
been implemented.
Back propagation neural networks (BPNN) may face local min-
ima problem instead of finding the global minima surface error.
Moreover, BPNN requires long training time to find optimal solu-
tion [34]. If the results obtained by BPNN is not comparable with
the actual results, the adaptive nature of BPNN should be restarted
with different initial conditions till it achieves the accuracy within
threshold limit. To overcome this problem, the linear combination
of exponential terms are used to reduce the error at the sample
points as in the case of radial basis functions (RBF). But, these
RBF neurons are not identical and require global computations to
determine their parameters. In GRNN, the estimated output is
bounded to the observed data points since the estimation is the
weighted average of actual sample points. Moreover, the adaptive
parameter r may be tuned to smooth out any noisy data and
approximate closely the actual observed values.
In this study, a GRNN based prediction tool was developed to
measure the HCCI engine performance and emission parameters,
i.e., approximate the relationship between the engine input param-
eters and output parameters. This model considered two input
parameters: intake air temperature and engine load; and six out-
put parameters: four emission parameters (UHC, CO, NO, smoke)
and two performance parameters (brake thermal efficiency (BTE)
and exhaust gas temperature (EGT)). For experimentation, ethanol
was injected by PFI during suction stroke, and the intake air tem-
perature was varied from 130 to 170 °C in steps of 10 °C. The
ethanol-fueled HCCI engine behavior in terms of the performance
and emission parameters was analyzed. A total of 45 HCCI experi-
mental data sets were considered to develop the smart prediction
tool. During the process of the GRNN training, the percentage
change of error for the training, validation and test data sets
were evaluated. The prediction results of the GRNN analysis are
presented in this paper.
2. Materials and methods
This section describes the HCCI engine test rig for collecting the
experimental data, followed by the GRNN description and proce-
dure for the development of the ANN-based HCCI model.
2.1. Experimental setup
For obtaining the experimental data of the ethanol-fueled HCCI
operation, experiments were conducted in a single-cylinder, air-
cooled, four-stroke naturally aspirated direct injection (DI) diesel
engine modified to operate in HCCI mode. The schematic diagram
of the experimental test setup is shown in Fig. 1. The technical
specifications of the test engine are given in Table 1. The important
properties of ethanol are listed in Table 2.
An electrical dynamometer was coupled to the engine, which
provided a necessary load to the engine. The fresh intake air was
metered with a digital anemometer (make: Lutron, model:
AM-4200). A large surge tank (60 times displacement volume)
was used to minimize the damping in the pressure pulse during
the suction stroke. The fuel was injected into the custom intake
manifold with a port fuel injector (PFI). The injector was controlled
by an electronic control unit that in turn synchronized with a crank
angle sensor. The intake air was preheated to achieve auto-ignition
temperature of the ethanol. The intake air temperature was varied
from 130 to 170 °C and admitted into the test engine. A tempera-
ture sensor and a temperature controller were used to monitor
and control the electrical heating.
An air-cooled piezoelectric quartz transducer (make: KISTLER,
model: 5395A) was mounted on the cylinder head used to measure
the in-cylinder pressure with a resolution of 0.5 crank angle degree
(CAD) interval with the signal triggered by the crankshaft encoder.
 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173 167

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup. 1. engine, 2. flywheel, 3. AC dynamometer, 4. resistive load cell, 5. EGT sensor, 6. exhaust manifold, 7. exhaust gas
analyzer, 8. smoke meter, 9. pressure transducer, 10. charge amplifier, 11. data acquisition system, 12. computer, 13. intake plenum, 14. air heater, 15. port fuel injector, 16.
pressure regulator, 17. fuel pump, 18. fuel tank, 19. crank position sensor.

Table 1 Table 3
Test engine specifications. Range, accuracy, and uncertainty of the instruments used.

Engine parameters Instrument used Range Accuracy % uncertainties

Maximum power 4.4 kW Gas analyzer CO 0–10% ±0.03% ±1
Rated speed 1500 rpm UHC 0–20,000 ppm ±10 ppm ±0.5
Bore
stroke 87.5 mm
110 mm NO 0–5000 ppm ±50 ppm ±1
Piston type Bowl-in-piston Smoke meter 0–100% opacity ±1 ±1
Compression ratio 17.5:1 EGT indicator (K-type 0–900 °C ±1 °C ±0.15
Cooling system Air cooling chromel – alumel
Intake valve opening/closing 4.5° bTDC/35.5° aBDC thermocouples)
Exhaust valve opening/closing 35.5° bBDC/4.5° aTDC Pressure transducer 0–110 bar ±0.1 ±0.1
Speed sensor 0–10,000 rpm ±10 rpm ±1
Crank angle encoder 0–720 °CA ±0.5° ±0.01
Charge amplifier ±1 ±0.1
Table 2 Load indicator 250–6000 W ±10 ±0.2
Important properties of ethanol.

Chemical and physical properties of ethanol

Formula
Molecular weight
Oxygen content (w %)
RON
Density (at 15 °C) kg/m3
Stoichiometric A/F ratio
Normal boiling point °C
Lower heating value (MJ/kg)
Latent heat (kJ/kg)
Boiling point (at 1 atm) °C
A total of 200 consecutive engine cycles were recorded to avoid the
occurrence of cycle-to-cycle variations. These recorded pressure
traces were then averaged, and post processed using a combustion
diagnostic software. A k-type thermocouple was used to measure
the exhaust gas temperature (EGT).
The exhaust emissions from the HCCI engine tailpipe were sam-
pled using an AVL 444 Digas analyzer and followed ASTM D6522
for measurement. The CO, CO2, O2 gases were measured on volume
percentages. The UHC emission was measured in ppm (vol.) of
n-hexane equivalent, and the NO emission was measured in ppm
(vol.). The gas analyzer recorded emissions over a period of 120 s
in 20 s consecutive intervals; that was more than the instrument
response time of 15 s. The Non-Dispersive-Infrared (NDIR) detec-
tion principle was used to measure the CO, CO2, and UHC emis-
sions, while electrochemical sensors were used for the
measurement of O2 and NO emissions. Before experimentation,
the gas analyzer was calibrated with the known gas mixture. The
smoke opacity was measured by an AVL 437 diesel smoke meter.
The smoke measurement chamber was maintained at 100 ± 5 °C
C2H5OH to avoid condensation in the instrument. The observations were
46.07
recorded over a span of 120 s in 20 s that was more than the instru-
34.73
107 ment resolution time of 10 s. Table 3 lists the instruments used in
780 the present study and their uncertainties.
9.00
78
26.9 2.2. Experimentation
840
78.4 In this investigation, performance and emission characteristics
of the port injected ethanol HCCI engine were carried out by vary-
ing the intake air temperature from 130 to 170 °C in steps of 10 °C.
The load on the engine was represented by the percentage of the
rated load (4.4 kW) on the engine. A total of 45 successful HCCI
experimental data sets were considered to find the non-linear nat-
ure among the input and output parameters. The current study
uses the GRNN technique to obtain the relationship between the
input and output parameters of the engine. Initially, the neural net-
work was trained with 27 data sets (60%) from the available exper-
imental results. The grid search method was used to determine the
optimal kernel bandwidth (r) to minimize the cross-validation
error. The developed tool was validated with 9 data sets (20%)
and tested with the remaining 9 data sets (20%) to improve the
generalization of the network.
2.3. General regression neural network (GRNN) modeling
A mathematical model based on the biological neural networks
is ANN model, which was trained from the previously recorded data
[35]. ANN finds the relationship between the input and output
168 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173

variables using a non-linear regression analysis. GRNN algorithm Input Radial Regression Output
was used in this study as it uses one-pass learning algorithm for layer layer layer layer
sparse data with an extremely parallel structure for prediction or f1(X)
control. An important step in GRNN prediction process is to prepro- 1 3 UHC
cess the data set [36]. The dataset pre-processing involves smooth- Y1
ing, omitting outliers, recognizing the missing data, etc. [37]. Charge f2(X)
GRNN is the probabilistic-based network performs regression temperature
2
X1
[38,39]. A GRNN consists of exactly four layers. They are (i) input Y2
CO
layer, (ii) radial layer, (iii) regression layer, and a (iv) output layer. f3(X)
The clustering of the input training data is performed in the radial
3
layer. Hence, the number of neurons in the radial layer is exactly NO
Engine Y3
equal to the number of data sets used for the training. The regres- .
load . f4(X)
sion layer always consists of an extra neuron compared to the out- X2
.
put layer. This additional neuron calculates the probability density . Smoke
. Y4
function, whereas remaining neurons are used for calculation of f5(X)
outputs. The GRNN chooses an approximate function which relates
45
the input and the output parameters directly based on the training
data. Thus, the GRNN is less time-consuming than other iterative
Fig. 4. GRNN architecture used for the emission study.
training networks. The model description is shown in Fig. 2.
The GRNN model was prepared with the help of existing exper- performance and emission parameters for any combination of
imental data. The charge temperature and engine load were used charge temperature and engine load.
as input parameters, whereas the emission and performance val-
ues were considered as output parameters. The engine perfor-
mance parameters were BTE and EGT; and the exhaust emission 3. Results and discussions
parameters were NO, smoke, UHC, and CO considered as output
parameters. Figs. 3 and 4 show the GRNN architecture used for 3.1. Engine performance analysis
the performance and emission studies. The GRNN estimated the
The performance of an internal combustion engine was tested
based on its BTE and EGT. The BTE is vital as it considers both fuel
UHC Emission (ppm) consumption and power. The EGT indicates the amount of input
heat energy carried by the exhaust gasses. For an efficient engine
operation, high BTE and low EGT were desired. Fig. 5 shows the
CO emission (%V) variations of BTE and EGT as a function of intake air temperature
for the ethanol HCCI operation in a single plot.
It can be observed from the figure that, the BTE increases with
Charge temperature (°C) NO Emission (ppm)
GRNN increase in the load due to the increase in the maximum gas tem-
perature with the engine load. Similarly, the BTE increases with the
Model increase in the intake air temperature. This is because of the
Engine Load Smoke opacity (%)
advanced start of combustion relative to top dead center (TDC)
as a result of higher intake air temperature. In the port injected
Thermal Efficiency (%) HCCI, the advanced start of combustion leads to an increase in
the overall gas temperature. The maximum BTE is found to be
43% at 170 °C for the ethanol HCCI operation. The increase in the
Exhaust gas temperature BTE with the increase in the engine load and intake air tempera-
ture is probably due to the higher combustion efficiency.
It can also be observed from the figure that, the exhaust gas
Fig. 2. Description of GRNN model.
temperature increases with the increase in the engine load as
expected. At full load, the maximum EGT of 326 °C is noticed for
130 °C charge temperature. However, the EGT decreases with the
Input Radial Regression Output increase in the intake air temperature for the entire engine
layer layer layer layer operation. The increase in the intake air temperature advances
the start of combustion caused by faster reaction rates and chem-
1 ical kinetics of combustion. Additionally, the advanced start of
f1(X) combustion increases the convective heat transfer losses due to
Charge an increase in the residence time of burned hot gasses in the cylin-
temperature 2 der. This, in turn, reduces the exhaust gas temperature.
X1 EGT
f2(X) Y1
3.2. Engine emission analysis
Engine 3 BTE
load f3(X) Y2 The controlling of the exhaust emissions from the engine tail-
X2 .
. pipe is also an important parameter for better environmental and
. atmospheric conditions without any excess air pollution. Fig. 6
.
depicts the effects of intake air temperature on UHC, CO, NO and
45 smoke emissions in a single plot.
The UHC emission decreases with the increase in the engine
Fig. 3. GRNN architecture used for the performance study. load due to an increase in the equivalence ratio of the air/fuel
 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173 169

N = 1500 rpm
N = 1500 rpm

Fig. 5. Variation of brake thermal efficiency and exhaust gas temperature with
engine load.

mixture with the load. Similarly, the UHC emission decreases with
the increase in the intake air temperature. This is due to the early
start of combustion relative to TDC [40]. In an HCCI engine, the
UHC emission is formed due to low-temperature combustion.
Large portions of UHC emission from the HCCI engine originates
from the combustion chamber wall regions [8]. In an HCCI engine,
the whole cylinder volume is occupied with homogeneous air/fuel
mixture, the combustion temperature is lower, and hence high
UHC emissions produced [13]. For 130 °C intake air temperature,
the UHC emission of 79 ppm is found to be maximum at 20%
engine load. Whereas, at full load lower UHC emission of 18 ppm
for 170 °C charge temperature is observed. An overall decrease in
the range from 55% to 57% is noticed in the entire engine operation
from 20% load to full load in this study.
The formation of the CO emission in the HCCI engines is due to
the lack of oxidation temperature caused by the low-temperature
combustion. The CO emission decreases with the increase in the
engine load due to an increase in the overall cylinder temperature
with the load. The early start of combustion phase causes a lower
CO emission, while late combustion phasing causes a high CO
emission. At 20% load exhibited highest CO emission of 0.9% for
Fig. 6. Effects of intake air temperature on exhaust gas emissions.
130 °C charge temperature. While at full load, lower CO emission
of 0.025% for 170 °C is noticed. An overall decrease in the range
from 50% to 37.5% is noticed in the entire engine operation from due to the increase in the residence time caused by the early start
20% load to full load in this study. of combustion. An overall increase in the range from 77% to 54%
The NO emission increases with the increase in the engine load is noticed in the entire engine operation from 20% load to full load
due to the increase in the maximum cylinder gas temperature of the in this study.
burned gasses [41]. The temperature of combustion has to be It is evident from the figure that, the smoke opacity decreases
reduced in order to suppress nitric oxides formation [42]. The low- with the increase in the intake air temperature for all engine loads.
est NO of 2 ppm is observed at 130 °C intake temperature and 20% At full load, almost negligible smoke emission is observed for the
load. At full load, the maximum NO emission is noticed. For 170 °C ethanol HCCI operation. This may be due to the homogeneous
charge temperature, the highest NO emission of 11 ppm is found for charge prepared with the increased ignition delay. Also, the smoke
the ethanol-fueled HCCI operation at full load condition. The NO emission decreases with the engine load. At 170 °C, the least
emission increases with the increase in the intake temperature value of smoke emissions recorded is about 0.1% at full load. This
170 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173

350 parameters. In order to obtain a relationship among input and out-

put parameters, GRNN has been implemented.
300
3.3. GRNN model implementation for HCCI engine
CV Error

250
3.73 The experimental data is used for the training, validation and
200 testing of the neural network. A total of 45 HCCI engine experi-
ments are conducted. Among which 27 data sets (60%) are used
150 for training the neural network, 9 data sets (20%) are used for val-
idation and the rest for the network testing.
100  
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 D2 Pn i
exp  2ri 2 i¼1 Y
Sigma b ðXÞ ¼
Y   ð1Þ
Pn D2i
Fig. 7. Cross-validation curve for GRNN model. Optimal r = 3.73. i¼1 exp  2r2

where (Xi, Yi) is a sample of (X, Y), D2i is the scalar function, and r2 is
the squared bandwidth of the Gaussian RBF kernel [44].
may be due to the increase in oxidation temperature, and the res-
idence time of burned gasses with an increase in the temperature
D2i ¼ ðX  X i ÞT ðX  X i Þ ð2Þ
[43]. An overall reduction in the range from 42% to 54% is noticed The GRNN is implemented for the considered HCCI engine is
in the entire engine operation from 20% load to full load. The explained in the following steps.
smoke emissions are less than 0.7% throughout this investigation.
It is evident from Figs. 5 and 6 that the input parameters Step 1: Initialize the 45 number of experimental data sets.
(engine load and intake temperature) are not maintaining Step 2: Among the 45 data points, consider first 60% (27
linear relationships with the output performance and emission number) of datasets for training the model.

(a) (b)
360 40

35
EGT (GRNN) [°C]

BTE (GRNN) [%]

300
30
240
25
180
20

120 15
120 180 240 300 360 15 20 25 30 35 40
EGT (EXP) [°C] BTE (EXP) [%]

Fig. 8. GRNN trained versus experimental (EXP) values for the engine performance data.

(a) (b)
12 0.7
Smoke (GRNN) [%]
NO (GRNN) [ppm]

0.6
8
0.5

0.4
4
0.3
0 0.2
0 4 8 12 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
NO (EXP) [ppm] Smoke (EXP) [%]

(c) (d)
90 0.1
UHC (GRNN) [ppm]

75
CO (GRNN) [%]

0.08
60
0.06
45
0.04
30

15 0.02
15 30 45 60 75 90 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
UHC (EXP) [ppm] CO (EXP) [%]

Fig. 9. GRNN trained versus experimental (EXP) values for the engine emission data.
 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173 171

Step 3: Obtain the smoothening parameter through cross-
validation procedure. In this analysis, grid search method is
used to find the optimal adaptive parameter r with minimum
cross-validation error.
Step 4: Determine the scalar function D2i (for i = 1–27) for ith
node and determine the coefficient (exponential term) of
Eq. (1) by substituting D2i and r2.
Step 5: Multiply the calculated exponential term with the cor-
responding actual output data point Yi. This step is processed
in radial layer of the GRNN.
Step 6: For the obtained outputs of radial units, regression layer
is used. The regression layer contains an extra neuron that
calculates the probability density function of the output
optimal Kernel bandwidth (r value) is considered as [1; 10], and
search iterations equal to 10. The cross-validation curve for the
kernel bandwidth search is shown in Fig. 7. The curve has a well-
defined minima, with an optimal value of r at 3.73.
Fig. 8 shows the experimentally measured EGT and BTE values
versus GRNN training data. Fig. 9 shows the experimentally
measured NO, smoke, UHC and CO values versus GRNN training
data. The linear approximation is observed between the trained
GRNN and experimental data with a minimal error. The graphical
BTE EGT
(a) 2
1.5
1

% of Error
parameters. 0.5
Step 7: The weighted average of the GRNN output parameters 0
are predicted in the observed range. -0.5
-1
Step 8: To check the efficiency of the proposed method, the
-1.5
remaining 40% data sets are used for validating and testing. -2
-2.5
0 2 4 6 8 10
3.3.1. GRNN trainee using cross validation
Scenario
By observing Eq. (1) the only adaptive parameter in the GRNN
model is Kernel width (r). Higher values of r leads to over
smoothening of the data while smaller values of r leads to over fit- NO Smoke UHC CO
ting of the data. In order to find the optimal Kernel width, a grid (b) 2.5
search method is used in this investigation. Hence it is required 2
to define a range for r values [rlow, rhigh] with ‘N’ number of iter- 1.5
% of Error

1
ations. Therefore, the implementation of the cross-validation for
0.5
the obtained ‘N’ values of Kernel width is performed using Eq. (3). 0
rhigh  rlow -0.5
r ¼ rlow þ ði  1Þ I ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; M ð3Þ -1
N -1.5
The optimal value of the Kernel width (r) corresponds to the -2
0 2 4 6 8 10
model with a lowest cross-validation error. For the optimal/
minimum value of the error, the interval and the number of Scenario
iterations need to be consistent (i.e., the effective interval is much Fig. 11. Graphical representation of error percentage for validation data. (a)
smaller). In the current study, the initial search interval for the Performance parameters, (b) emission parameters.

BTE EGT
(a) 3
BTE EGT
2 (a) 2
1.5
1 1
% of Error

% of Error

0 0.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0
-1 -0.5
-1
-2
-1.5
-3 -2
Scenario 0 2 4 6 8 10
Scenario

NO Smoke UHC CO NO Smoke UHC CO

(b) 3 (b) 2.5
2
2 1.5
1
% of Error

1
% of Error

0.5
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 -0.5
-1 -1
-1.5
-2
-2
0 2 4 6 8 10
-3
Scenario Scenario

Fig. 10. Graphical representation of error percentage for trainee data. (a) Perfor- Fig. 12. Graphical representation of error percentage for test data. (a) Performance
mance parameters, (b) emission parameters. parameters, (b) emission parameters.
172 H. Bendu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 122 (2016) 165–173

Table 4
Comparison of results obtained by different researchers using ANN models.

Reference Fuel used Engine emission parameters Performance

parameters
NOX Smoke UHC CO EGT BTE
p p p
Rezaei et al. [25] Ethanol and butanol X X X
p p
Taghavifar et al. [45] n-heptane X X X X
p p p
Soufi et al. [27] Biolubricants X X X
p p
Haghighi et al. [46] Diesel and biodiesel blend X X X X
p p p p
Özener et al. [20] Diesel X X
p p p p
Yusaf et al. [24] CNG-diesel X X
p p p p
Najafi et al. [23] Ethanol and gasoline blends X X
p p p p
Sayin et al. [47] Gasoline X X
p p p
Soukht Saraee et al. [48] Diesel X X X
p p p
Roy et al. [49] Diesel X X X
p
Çay et al. [50] Methanol X X X X X
p p p
Mohamed Ismail et al. [51] Diesel and biodiesel blends X X X
p p
Çay et al. [52] Methanol and gasoline X X X X
p p p
Deh Kiani et al. [22] Ethanol and gasoline blends X X X
p p p p p
Hosoz et al. [53] Diesel and biodiesel blends X
p p p p p p
This work Ethanol
p
specific parameter considered in the past research work.
X specific parameter not considered in the past research work.

representation of the percentage error during GRNN training is
depicted in Fig. 10. A maximum of 2.5% error during GRNN training
is found from Fig. 10.
The developed GRNN prediction tool was validated and tested,
and compared with the experimental data sets. The graphical rep-
resentation of the percentage error during GRNN validation is
shown in Fig. 11. It is evident from the figure that, a maximum
of 2% error found during GRNN validation. Also, the proposed
methodology is in good agreement with the GRNN predicted and
experimentally measured performance and emission parameters.
The graphical representation of the percentage error during GRNN
testing is shown in Fig. 12. It is evident from the figure that, a max-
imum of 2% error found during GRNN network testing. The GRNN
requires a less training data compared with other ANN models. The
proposed GRNN approach can be used to predict/calibrate the per-
formance and emission parameters of the HCCI engine within ±2%
accuracy.
3.4. Comparison with the past research work
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first of
its kind to develop GRNN prediction tool for performance and
emission metrics of HCCI engine. Many researchers predicted the
performance and emissions using various ANN models other than
GRNN, which is currently used in this study. Table 4 compares
the results obtained by different researchers using ANN models.
4. Conclusions
An experimental investigation was performed to study the per-
formance and emission of the ethanol-fueled HCCI engine. The
experimental results were also validated through GRNN prediction.
The outcomes/findings from this study are as follows:
 The BTE increased with increase in the charge temperature, and
at 170 °C, a maximum BTE of 43% was found. While the exhaust
gas temperature decreased with the increase in the intake air
temperature.
 The NO emissions were found to be 11 ppm and smoke opacity
below 0.1%. While the UHC and CO emissions were found to be
higher.
 The developed GRNN tool could predict the performance
parameters of BTE and EGT within ±2% error. Similarly, predic-
tion of the emission parameters including NO, smoke, UHC and
CO within ±2% error. The developed new tool efficiently predicts
the relation between the input and output parameters.
The new GRNN model can also be used for the HCCI engine con-
trol and testing.
As a future work, the proposed GRNN model is to be imple-
mented for a dual fuel engine to estimate the engine performance
and emission parameters.
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