EFI Tuning Fundamentals: Mass Flow vs Air Flow
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Mass Flow vs Air Flow
02.47
| 00:00 | - When it comes to the operation of the engine management system and its ability to achieve and maintain an accurate air-fuel ratio, it's essential for the ECU to accurately know the mass of air entering the engine at any time. |
| 00:12 | There are two ways the ECU can go about obtaining this information, and I want to talk briefly about both methods here. |
| 00:19 | In the vast majority of modern factory engines, the mass air flow is directly measured by way of a mass air flow meter. |
| 00:26 | I'm going to discuss these in more depth later in the course, so for now, it's sufficient just to know that they exist, and what they do. |
| 00:33 | If you're reflashing a factory ECU, then often you'll be using an ECU that bases its load input off the reading from the mass air flow meter. |
| 00:41 | The other option, which is much more common in the standalone ECU market, is to calculate the mass air flow, using what's known as the speed density principle. |
| 00:50 | In this case we aren't actually measuring the mass air flow directly, but rather we're calculating it based on the volume flow and air density. |
| 00:58 | Let's move on with this module, and look at how we can make this calculation. |
| 01:03 | Once we know the air density, it becomes a simple process to calculate the actual mass of air flowing through the engine. |
| 01:09 | Mass flow, is just equal to the volume flow, multiplied by the air density. |
| 01:15 | The equation is V multiplied by D, where V is the volume flow in cubic feet per minute, and D is the air density in pounds per cubic foot. |
| 01:24 | Notice here that we're measuring mass flow in pounds per minute, the metric equivalent would be grams per second. |
| 01:31 | V is equal to the volume flow, which we calculated earlier, and D is equal to the air density, which we've just learnt about. |
| 01:39 | Let's continue our earlier example, where we measured the actual volume flow of our engine at 572 cubic feet per minute. |
| 01:47 | If we assume that we are operating at a standard air density of 0.076 pounds per cubic foot, we can now put these numbers into the equation, and calculate the mass flow through the engine. |
| 01:59 | Running through this equation and solving it, we find that the mass flow is 572 multiplied by 0.076, which equals 43.47 pounds per minute. |
| 02:12 | So we now know that we have 43.47 pounds per minute of air, passing through our engine. |
| 02:19 | The key point to remember from this module, is that it's the mass air flow that's important to the ECU in order to be able to accurately achieve a consistent air-fuel ratio, and calculating mass air flow, can be done by multiplying the volume air flow by the air density. |
| 02:35 | Remember that many factory engine management systems use a mass air flow meter, to directly measure the mass air flow, rather than calculating it like we've just done. |
