Radial-Basis-Function-Network-Based Prediction of Performance and Emission Characteristics in a Bio Diesel Engine Run on WCO Ester

Abstract

Radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs), which is a relatively new class of neural networks, have been investigated for their applicability for prediction of performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine fuelled with waste cooking oil (WCO). The RBF networks were trained using the experimental data, where in load percentage, compression ratio, blend percentage, injection timing, and injection pressure were taken as the input parameters, and brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific energy consumption (BSEC), exhaust gas temperature (T[subscript exh]), and engine emissions were used as the output parameters. The number of RBF centers was selected randomly. The network was initially trained using variable width values for the RBF units using a heuristic and then was trained by using fixed width values. Studies showed that RBFNN predicted results matched well with the experimental results over a wide range of operating conditions. Prediction accuracy for all the output parameters was above 90% in case of performance parameters and above 70% in case of emission parameters.