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Among the new combustion concepts envisaged to meet future regulations, the Dual Fuel (DF) concept is considered to be an attractive strategy due to its potential to reduce CO2 emissions and engine-out pollutant emissions levels. A small quantity of high-cetane fuel (Diesel) is injected in the combustion chamber in order to ignite a homogeneous mixture of air and a highly volatile fuel (gasoline in our study). The DF concept has been shown to achieve improved engine thermal efficiency and low engine-out NOx and soot emissions. However, the physical mechanisms controlling DF combustion and in particular, determination of the predominant combustion regime(s) are not yet well understood. In this study, numerical simulations (CFD) and optical engine measurements are used to investigate Dual Fuel combustion.

Among the existing concepts to help improve the efficiency of spark ignition engines on low load operating points, Controlled Auto-Ignition™ (CAI™) is an efficient way to lower both fuel consumption and pollutant emissions at part load without major modifications of the engine design. The CAI™ concept is founded on the auto-ignition of a highly diluted gasoline-based mixture in order to reach high indicated efficiency and low pollutant emissions through a low temperature combustion. The high dilution rates needed to successfully obtain CAI™ combustion imply the use of unconventional valve lift strategies. To correctly control this combustion mode, the rate of dilution has to be precisely known. From a numerical point of view, this induces the need for a CFD tool suited for air path computations, the most relevant one being a 1D simulation approach.