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To satisfy the latest emission standards, the use of advanced technologies such as exhaust gas recirculation, diesel particulate filter, and complicated injection strategies are increasing in modern diesel engines. However, some of these complicated technologies may cause soot and diesel fuel to enter the engine oil during engine operation and ultimately affect oil performance. Once the soot and diesel fuel content is beyond a certain level, the engine oil should be changed to guarantee adequate lubrication. Thus, a proper method of monitoring oil condition is required. It is well known that soot and diesel fuel affect oil permittivity and viscosity significantly. Thus, in this study, a new method to monitor oil quality is proposed by measuring the dielectric constant and oil viscosity. Carbon black was used as the substitute for soot and was mixed with diesel fuel at different ratios. Both the dielectric constant and oil viscosity increase as soot content increases.

In order to meet increasingly stringent fuel consumption and emission regulations, more attentions are paid to improve engine efficiency. A large amount of energy-saving technologies have been applied in automotive field especially in gasoline engines. It is well known that lean burn and ultra-high compression ratio technologies are two basic and important methods to increase efficiency. In this paper, a rapid compression machine was employed to study combustion process of lean iso-octane mixture at ultra-high compression ratios (16 to 19:1). Regardless of flammability of the mixture, spark was triggered at the timing right after the end of compression, then, the flame propagation and/or auto-ignition can be recorded using high-speed photography simultaneously. The effects of equivalence ratio (φ), compression ratio (ε), dilution ratio, and effective temperature (Teff) on the combustion process was investigated.