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Reduction of smoke emission from diesel engines is important in order to meet upcoming stringent exhaust gas regulations and also for improving fuel economy. In this paper, the reduction of smoke from DI diesel engines for heavy duty vehicles is discussed. A single cylinder engine test and three dimensional numerical analysis were carried out in order to obtain necessary and useful information for designing a combustion chamber and a fuel injection nozzle that could realize reduced smoke emission. This study is focused particularly on the behavior of the fuel spray which impinges on the piston cavity wall in the case of a reentrant type combustion bowl. As a result, it was found that the spray wall-impingement angle performs an important role in promoting fuel-air mixing. It is thus an important parameter which controls the main combustion region.

To reduce exhaust emissions and fuel consumption, the effect of high pressure fuel injection was investigated with in-cylinder fuel spray observation and single cylinder engines. Spray impingement on the cavity wall promotes mixing with air and reduction in the nozzle area extends this wall impingement as a result of increasing both fuel injection pressure and injection period. There exists an optimum range for the injection period. Increased injection pressure by modifying injection rate of fuel pump and nozzle area, improves smoke and fuel consumption at low and medium speeds in particular. To extend these effects of high pressure injection, more optimized combustion system and minimized injection equipment drive torque must be required. To resolve the problem of high pressure injection such as higher combustion noise and increase in NOx emissions, the combination with pilot injection must be one of the most effective ways.

A premixed compression-ignited (PCI) combustion system, which realizes lean combustion with high efficiency and low emissions, was investigated and its effects and problems were ascertained. With PCI combustion, fuel was injected early on the compression stroke and a premixed lean mixture was formed over a long mixing period. The test engine was operated with self-ignition of this premixed lean mixture. From the results of combustion observation and numerical simulation, a need to prevent the fuel spray from adhering to the cylinder liner and combustion-chamber wall was identified. Consequently, an impinged-spray nozzle with low penetration was made and tested. As a result, an extremely low nitrogen-oxide (NOx) emission level was realized but fuel efficiency was detracted slightly. Also, the engine operating range possible with PCI combustion was found to be limited to partial-load conditions and PCI combustion was found to cause an increase in hydrocarbon (HC) emission.