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The large-scale rotating flow structure in an engine cylinder exhibits features that can be described in generic terms of tumble and swirl. The structural details, nevertheless, vary from cycle to cycle due to fluctuating initial and boundary conditions of the flow. Typical analysis of the flow field cyclic variability - by simple root-mean-square, or additional spatial or temporal filtering, or proper orthogonal decomposition - is based on pointwise deviation of the instantaneous velocity from the ensemble mean. However, that analysis approach is not amenable to the evaluation of spatial variation of the flow structure, in position and orientation, within the flow field. To this end, other studies in the past focused instead on quantifying the variation of the vortex center for the dominant tumble or swirl pattern within the flow field.

The cycle-to-cycle variations of in-cylinder flow field represent a significant challenge which influence the stability, fuel economy, and emissions of engine performance. In this experimental investigation, the high-speed time-resolved particle image velocimetry (PIV) is applied to reveal the flow field variations of a specific swirl plane in a spark-ignition direct-injection engine running under two different swirl air flow conditions. The swirl flow is created by controlling the opening of a control valve mounted in one of the two intake ports. The objective is to quantify the cycle-to-cycle variation of in-cylinder flow field at different crank angles of the engine cycle. Four zones along the measured swirl plane are divided according to the positions of four valves in the cylinder head. The relevance index is used to evaluate the cycle-to-cycle variation of the velocity flow field for each zone.