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For the application of advanced clean combustion technologies, such as diesel HCCI/LTC, a compressor with high efficiency over a broad operation range is required to supply a high amount of EGR with minimum pumping loss. A compressor with high pitch of vaneless diffuser would substantially improve the flow range of the compressor, but it is at the cost of compressor efficiency, especially at low mass flow area where most of the city driving cycles resides. In present study, an ultra low solidity compressor vane diffuser was numerically investigated. It is well known that the flow leaving the impeller is highly distorted, unsteady and turbulent, especially at relative low mass flow rate and near the shroud side of the compressor. A conventional vaned diffuser with high stagger angle could help to improve the performance of the compressor at low end. However, adding diffuser vane to a compressor typically restricts the flow range at high end.

Experiments were conducted on a small SI engine with the objective to investigate the relationship between air/fuel-ratio and the ionic current signal measured across the spark plug electrodes. The propane-operated, single-cylinder engine has been equipped with sensors to monitor its operating conditions and a CDI ignition system with a built-in ionic current sensing circuit. More than 50 features of the ionic current signal have been examined in a preliminary analysis. Three features of the cycle-averaged signal (signal peak, signal integral in a crank angle window around the peak position, signal amplitude after a preset delay) were found to correlate reasonably well with air/fuel-ratio for the full range of operating conditions. After an evaluation of cycle-to-cycle variations of these features, simple algorithms for an application of the ionic current - mixture strength relationship are introduced.

The direct injection gasoline spray-wall interaction was characterized inside a heated pressurized chamber using various visualization techniques, including high-speed laser-sheet macroscopic and microscopic movies up to 25,000 frames per second, shadowgraph, and doublespark particle image velocimetry. Two hollow cone high-pressure swirl injectors having different cone angles were used to inject gasoline onto a heated plate at two different impingement angles. Based on the visualization results, the overall transient spray impingement structure, fuel film formation, and preliminary droplet size and velocity were analyzed. The results show that upward spray vortex inside the spray is more obvious at elevated temperature condition, particularly for the wide-cone-angle injector, due to the vaporization of small droplets and decreased air density. Film build-up on the surface is clearly observed at both ambient and elevated temperature, especially for narrow cone spray.