Will Ricardo provide valuable engineering support to help
JaguarLandRover (JLR) integrate its new Hotfire four-cylinder gasoline and
diesel engines into the car maker’s products when then engines appear in
2014/2015?
A clue to the answer perhaps can be found in the latest
issue of Ricardo’s house magazine RQ. The concluding sentence in an
article describing Ricardo’s role in the integration of Land Rover’s I4
gasoline engine into the latest XF and XJ products states: ‘For Ricardo it is
another box ticked and an already successful relationship is moving from
strength to further strength’.
Without doubt, the
joint work by engineers from JLR and Ricardo to integrate the four-cylinder
gasoline engines into cars initially engineered for vee-engines is a
substantial task if the same essential vehicle attributes are to be retained.
That joint work no doubt will be of direct benefit in the future when JLR comes
to integrate the new Hotfire I4 gasoline and diesel engines into a range of
vehicles. Hotfire will be manufactured at site i54 near the M54, Wolverhampton.
Ricardo is an important
resource, the only substantive automotive engineering consultancy with bases in
the UK. Its close work with JLR puts it in an ideal position to continue its
relationship further, bearing in mind the vehicle maker’s extensive forthcoming
new model programme which will place a huge burden on its own engineering
staff.
So great is the burden
that JLR will certainly need some assistance if it is to meet all its
challenging targets involving not only new vehicles but new engines. To support
its new engine work, JLR is investing heavily in new engine test equipment –
and Ricardo too is investing millions.
As part of their joint
efforts of undertaking the work of integrating the new I4 Ti 240 four-cylinder
Jaguar gasoline engine in the XF and XJ (the engine replaces the AJ-V6) for
2013 MY, Ricardo engineers were briefed on how JLR's Gateway process works. For
it is through this Gateway that the separate elements of JLR all understand
what they will receive from the other groups of purchase and finance, internal
programme management and manufacturing.
By understanding what
makes JLR ‘tick’ to bring its products out on time, Ricardo is in an ideal
position to undertake future work for the company having effectively learnt the
‘nuts and bolts’ through the I4 Ti 240 programme for XF and XJ.
The Ti 240 engine is
important as JLR downsizes powertrains in its vehicles. (Note how Ford has just
announced a new all-aluminium 1.5-litre EcoBoost engine from Craiova, Romania
for its Mondeo cars.) China, for example, has a capacity-based taxation system
which placed Jaguar at a disadvantage. Introducing its new 2-litre I4 Ti 240
engine allows Jaguar to move down two or three levels of taxation, making it
much more competitive in the marketplace. Jaguar therefore argues the I4 Ti 240 engine from the Range Rover Evoque is mainly for the Chinese market. The engine gives 237bhp and 340Nm torque.
This is the first time
a four-cylinder gasoline engine has been fitted to either the XF or the XJ and
as the I4 Ti 240 has been used previously only in transverse applications, it
had to be rotated to fit Jaguar’s north-south configuration. XJ has been
equipped with V6 and V8 engines while the XF has been fitted with the 2.2-litre
diesel. The base of the nsew engine, however, remains essentially unchanged
from the Land Rover applications. The customised engines are sourced from Ford's Valencia plant. Jaguar's new F Type, being tested by motoring journalists in Pamplona, carries the V8 and the V6, the latter with two power ratings.
NVH is a particular
challenge because cars built for high performance tend to have a stiff front
structure and as such there can be sensitivity to vibration at idle. This
explains why integrating an I4 into cars designed for a vee configuration can
be a huge challenge.
Even though the I4 Ti
240 is extremely refined, it has completely different characteristics to
vee-configuration engines and care had to be taken to ensure Jaguar’s
scrupulous levels of refinement were not compromised.
NVH
important
Ricardo's NVH team was charged with delivering the
requested level of refinement, not just on a measured technical level, but
subjectively to deliver the defining character of the brand – what Jaguar
engineers call ‘Jaguarness’.
In particular, the
intake and exhaust noise was a particularly important area and was developed by
the NVH team at Ricardo to Jaguar specifications.
Delivering NVH
attributes required switching to inclined engine mounts and changing the
damping characteristics between the idle and dynamic modes. The particular
focus here was to ensure the idle was sufficiently refined for a premium
product.
The use of a smaller
engine could not be allowed to compromise the premium quality of the product
and the resulting NVH would have to match that of the vee-engine gasoline cars
in both front and rear seats. Cabin boom and vibrations are not acceptable in
Jaguar cars.
These and other areas
of work could be especially important in any future work that Ricardo might
undertake with the Hotfire engine family.
With the Ti 240
project, Ricardo was assigned a wide range of responsibilities, from component
design, development and validation, vehicle package management, CAE simulation,
to validating robustness and attribute performance, management of thermal
validation testing and calibration test trips, and management of the prototype
test fleet.
Ricardo was also
granted access to Jaguar’s engineering computer network to allow design
releases to be made directly into the system.
Ricardo started its
work on the project three years ago in July 2010, with engineering sign-off for
XJ scheduled 19 months later in February 2012 and SOP (start of production) a
few months after in July. Production of the new XF would follow in September.
As part of its work,
Ricardo had to deal with everything required to integrate a powertrain into a
new vehicle, including intake and exhaust, cooling and fuel systems. Engine
calibration was included in the remit, with its impacts on vehicles emissions,
as was drivability and the on-board diagnostics.
The base engine remains
unchanged from the Land Rover applications, but this was the first use in a
north-south configuration and that oimpacted on several of the ancillaries and
the inlet and exhaust systems.
Benchmark
For example, although the core engine was narrower, the
turbocharger mounted on the exhaust
manifold made the overall engine wide. The exhaust packaging formed a key element of the project, as did
the charge air cooler which is not existing on the present gasoline engine
cars.
Although XF has been
fitted with a 2.2-litre diesel engine, a diesel turbocharger runs cooler than a
gasoline engine. As the package space around the exhaust system is confined and
as the steering column runs alongside, careful thermal management was required
of the higher temperature gasoline turbocharger. The design of the thermal heat
shield was therefore critical.
Another aspect involved
the transmission. The engine is connected physically to the ZF eight-speed electronic automatic transmission through an adaptor plate engineered by Jaguar; the specification
of the torque convertor was changed to match the characteristics of the I4
engine.
The project did not end
with engineering development work. Ricardo went on to provide support for
prototype and production builds, with a separate team of launch engineers to
help with the prototype pilot line at the JLR Engineering Centre and the production
line at Castle Bromwich.
With the Ti 240 job,
Ricardo has effectively ticked three boxes: it has set a benchmark; it created
a useful precedent and finally it has established the necessary expertise to
handle this type of work in the future.
And Ricardo can rightly
claim it has contributed to the success of JaguarLandRover as it transforms
itself into one of the world’s fastest expanding manufacturers of luxury cars
by imparting ‘crucial’ engineering support for an important project that
provides an ‘entry ticket’ to an entirely new sector of the passenger car
market. ∎
