Search Results

HCCI-combustion with direct injection of gasoline using a standard GDI-injector is investigated in this work. The test engine is a 6-cylinder heavy-duty diesel engine with one cylinder operating in HCCI-mode. Exhaust gases from one of the diesel cylinders serve as simulated EGR. Electric heaters are used to raise the inlet temperature when no EGR is applied. The piston bowl is modified to match the hollow-cone spray better than the original re-entrant piston. Spray imaging outside the engine shows the characteristics of the fuel spray. Injection timing sweeps show that a homogeneous charge is created when the injection is performed in the middle of the intake stroke for a moderate fuel/air-equivalence ratio of 0.29. This leads to low emissions of NOx and Smoke. Using a homogeneous mixture when the fuel/air-equivalence ratio is reduced to 0.20 leads to low combustion efficiency with associated high levels of CO and HC emissions.

Fundamental engine research is primarily conducted under steady-state conditions, in order to better describe boundary conditions which influence the studied phenomena. However, light-duty automobiles are operated, and tested, under heavily transient conditions. This mismatch between studied conditions and in-use conditions is deemed acceptable due to the fundamental knowledge gained from steady-state experiments. Nonetheless, it is useful to characterize the conditions encountered during transient operation and determine if the governing phenomena are unduly influenced by the differences between steady-state and transient operation, and further, whether transient behavior can be reasonably extrapolated from steady-state behavior. The transient operation mode used in this study consists of 20 fired cycles followed by 80 motored cycles, operating on a continuous basis.

Chemiluminescence imaging has been applied to investigate the naturally occurring charge stratification in an HCCI engine. This stratification slows the pressure-rise rate (PRR) during combustion, making it critical to the high-load operating limit of these engines. Experiments were conducted in a single-cylinder HCCI engine modified with windows in the combustion chamber for optical access. Using this engine, chemiluminescence images were obtained from three different view angles. These included both single-shot images with intensified CCD cameras and high-speed (20kHz) sequences with an intensified CMOS video camera. The engine was fueled with iso-octane, which has been shown to be a reasonable surrogate for gasoline and exhibits only single-stage ignition at these naturally aspirated conditions. The chemiluminescence images show that the HCCI combustion is not homogeneous but has a strong turbulent structure even when the fuel and air are fully premixed prior to intake.