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Recently, a potentiality of Dedicated EGR (D-EGR) concept SI engine has been studied. This concept engine had four cylinders and operated with exhaust gas supplied from the single cylinder to the intake manifold. Compared with conventional SI engines, it was able to increase thermal efficiency and decrease CO, HC, and NOx emission by the high D-EGR ratio 0.25. In this study, numerical analysis of a SI engine with D-EGR system with various D-EGR ratios was conducted for detailed understanding the potentiality of this concept in terms of thermal efficiency and NOx emission. #1 cylinder of assumed engine was used as D-EGR cylinder that equivalence ratio varied from 0.6 to 3.4. Entire exhaust gas from #1 cylinder was recirculated to the other cylinders. The other cylinders run with this exhaust gas and new premixed air and fuel with various equivalence ratios from 0.6-1.0.

This study computationally investigates the combined effects of EGR and boost pressure on HCCI autoignition using iso-octane, PRF50 and n-heptane. The computations were conducted using the single-zone model of CHEMKIN included in CHEMKIN-PRO with detailed chemical-kinetics mechanisms for iso-octane, PRF and n-heptane from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). To better reproduce the state of EGR addition in real engine, the EGR composition is determined after several combustion cycles under the constant amount of fuel. All data points were acquired with a CA50 of 5°CA aTDC by adjusting initial temperature to remove the effect of combustion phasing, which can influence on HCCI autoignition from any effect of the EGR and boost pressure themselves. The results show that EGR increases the burn duration and reduces the maximum pressure-rise rate with lower peak of maximum heat-release rates for all fuels even for a boost pressure, which accelerates a HCCI autoignition propensity.

This study has been computationally investigated how the DME autoignition reactivity is affected by EGR and intake-pressure boost over various engine speed. CHEMKIN-PRO was used as a solver and chemical-kinetics mechanism for DME was utilized from Curran's model. We examined first the influence of EGR addition on autoignition reactivity using contribution matrix. Investigations concentrate on the HCCI combustion of DME at wide ranges of engine speeds and intake-pressure boost with EGR rates and their effects on variations of autoignition timings, combustion durations in two-stage combustion process in-detail including reaction rates of dominant reactions involved in autoignition process. The results show that EGR addition increases the combustion duration by lowering reaction rates.

The HCCI engine could offer low NOx, PM emissions and high efficiency. However the operation region of the HCCI combustion is limited because of the knocking at high load and the misfire at low load. Moreover the HCCI principle lacks direct combustion control and needs a system to control the combustion phasing with high accuracy. Today there exists various ways to control the HCCI combustion, such as Variable Valve Train, Variable Compression Ratio, Inlet Air Heating and Dual Fuels. However such variable mechanisms and Inlet Air Heating tend to be heavy and complex. Dual Fuels method needs two types of fuels and has a challenge in infrastructure. In this study, in order to develop a small and light HCCI engine, a simple HCCI combustion control system is proposed. DME (Di-methyl Ether) is used as the fuel to keep the structure small and light. In this system, the mixing ratio of three gases: stoichiometric pre-mixture, hot EGR gas and cold EGR gas is changed by only throttles.

In this study, effects of nozzle hole diameter and EGR ratio on flame temperature (indication of NO formation) and KL value (indication of soot formation) were investigated. Combustion of a single diesel fuel spray in the cylinder of a rapid compression machine (RCM) was analyzed. Three nozzles with different hole diameter were used corresponding to present, near term and long term heavy duty diesel engine specifications. EGR was simulated through 2%vol. CO2 addition to the inlet air and by increase of in-cylinder surrounding gas temperature. Various types of fuels were used in this. The ignition and combustion processes of diesel fuel spray were observed by a high-speed direct photography and by indicated pressure diagrams. Flame temperature and KL factor were analyzed by a two-color method. With larger nozzle hole diameters there are larger high temperature areas. With smaller nozzle hole diameters there is more soot formed. Introduction of 2% vol.

The thermal efficiency of a spark-ignition (SI) engine must be improved to reduce both environmental load and fuel consumption. Although lean SI engine operation can strongly improve thermal efficiency relative to that of stoichiometric SI operation, the cycle-to-cycle variation (CCV) of combustion increases with the air dilution level. Combustion CCV is caused by CCVs of many factors, such as EGR, spark energy, air-fuel ratio, and in-cylinder flow structure related to engine speed. This study focuses on flow structures, especially the influence of a tumble structure on flow fluctuation intensity near ignition timing. We measured the flow field at the vertical center cross section of an optically accessible high-tumble flow engine using time-resolved particle image velocimetry. There are many factors considered to be sources of CCV, we analyzed three factors: the intake jet distribution, distribution of vortex core position and trajectory of the fluid particle near the spark plug.

This work has been investigated the potential of in-cylinder EGR stratification for reducing the pressure rise rate of DME HCCI engines, and the coupling of both thermal stratification and fuel stratification. The numerical analyses were done by using five-zone version of CHEMKIN-II kinetics rate code, and kinetic mechanics for DME. The effects of inert components were used for the presence of EGR in calculation. Three cases of EGR stratification were tested on both thermal stratification and fuel stratification at the fixed initial temperature, pressure and fueling rate at BDC. In order to explore the appropriate stratification of EGR, EGR width was employed from zero to thirty percent. Firstly, EGR homogeneity case which means EGR width zero was examined. Secondly, EGR is located densely in hotter zone for combining with thermal stratification or in richer zone for a combination with fuel stratification. Lastly, the case was judged inversely with the second case.

In order to clarify the reason why NOx emissions factor becomes higher at vehicle acceleration at intersections etc, two freight vehicles, that have EGR system for the reduction of NOx, were tested by an on-board NOx measurement system. Higher NOx emissions factor was observed in operations in lower-gear operation for each vehicle. Since the engine speed change was higher in the operation of lower gears, NOx emissions characteristics were analyzed in view of engine torque, NOx mass emissions and EGR rate, considering engine speed change. It was found that lower-gear operations made the engine speed change higher and the EGR rate lower. This seems to be one of the factors to engender the intensive NOx pollution at roadsides.

To approach realization of Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion without external combustion ignition trigger, it is necessary to construct HCCI engine control system. In this study, HCCI research engine equipped with the EGR passage for external EGR and the two-stage exhaust cam for exhaust rebreathed. This system can control the mixing ratio of four gases (air, fuel, rebreathed EGR gas, external EGR gas) of in-cylinder by operating four throttles and fuel injection duration while maintaining acceptable pressure rise rate (PRR) and cycle-to-cycle variation of Indicated Mean Effective Pressure (IMEP), closed-loop control system designed by applying feedback variables (equivalence ratio, combustion-phasing, IMEP) for feedback control. Those control inputs (four throttles and fuel injection) has correlation mutually, control inputs cause interference, response become low and hunching occurs.

The characteristics of cycle-to-cycle variations of indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) with combustion-phasing retard have been investigated experimentally and computationally in an homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine using dimethyl ether (DME). The experiments were conducted in a single-cylinder HCCI research engine equipped with an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) passage for external EGR and a two-stage exhaust cam for rebreathed EGR. To understand the chemical effects of rebreathed EGR, which is assumed to contribute to the autoignition enhancement, the computations were performed with a single-zone model of CHEMKIN using a chemical-kinetic mechanism developed by combining DME mechanism and NOx submechanism.

This study tried to find a potential of dedicated EGR (d-EGR) system added to the four-cylinder spark ignition (SI) engine to decrease heat loss (Qheatloss) and improve thermal efficiency (ηth). Test fuels were chosen by methane and propane. PREMIX code in CHEMKIN-PRO was employed to calculate laminar burning velocity (SL) and flame temperature (Tf). Wiebe function and Wocshni's heat transfer coefficient were considered to calculate ηth. The results show that the d-EGR system increased ηth and it was higher than that of stoichiometric combustion of conventional SI engines due to the low Tf and fast SL.

The dynamics model and model-based controller (LQG servo controller) have been constructed to improve performance of diesel engine in transient condition. The input parameters of the model are fuel quantity of main injection, timing of main injection, fuel quantity of pilot injection, timing of pilot injection, external EGR ratio and boost pressure. The parameters that are succeeded between cycles to express transient condition are residual gas temperature and of residual oxygen. In the model, one cycle is discretized into 10 representative points. The precision of the accuracy of the model and the responsiveness of the controller were confirmed.

To adhere to stringent environmental regulations, SI (spark ignition) engines are required to achieve higher thermal efficiency. In recent years, EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) systems and lean-burn operation has been recognized as key technologies. Under such operating conditions, reducing CCV (cycle-to-cycle variation) in combustion is critical to the enhancement of overall engine performance. Flow-field CCV is one of the considerable factors affecting combustion in engines. Conventionally, in research on flow fields in SI engines, the ensemble average is used to separate the measured velocity field into a mean component and a fluctuation component, the latter of which contains a CCV component and a turbulent component. To extract the CCV of the flow field, previous studies employed spatial filter, temporal filter, and POD (proper orthogonal decomposition) methods.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine attracts much attention because of its high thermal efficiency and low NOx, PM emissions. On the other hand, Di-Methyl Ether (DME) is expected as one of alternative fuel for the internal combustion engines. In this study, four-stroke HCCI engine running on DME is developed to make it realistic application in production engines. This paper shows construction of the control method using both internal EGR at high temperature and external EGR at low temperature and estimates the performance of developed HCCI engine. Besides combustion characteristics of DME and the effects of EGR are researched with experiment and numerical calculation with elementary reactions. As a result, developed HCCI engine got comparable high thermal efficiency to conventional diesel engine but much lower Indicated Mean Effective Pressure (IMEP) than that. Meanwhile it can be said that DME is suitable fuel for the HCCI engines in combustion characteristics.