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Due to the advantages of low weight, low emissions and good fuel economy, downsized turbocharged gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines are widely-applied nowadays. However, Low-Speed Pre-Ignition (LSPI) phenomenon observed in these engines restricts their improvement of performance. Some researchers have shown that auto-ignition of lubricant in the combustion chamber has a great effect on the LSPI frequency. To study the auto-ignition characteristics of lubricant, an innovative single droplet auto-ignition test system for lubricant and its mixture is designed and developed, with better accuracy and effectiveness. The experiments are carried out by hanging lubricant droplets on the thermocouple node under active thermo-atmosphere provided by a small “Dibble burner”. The auto-ignition process of lubricant droplets is recorded by a high-speed camera.

The present work proposed to implement oxy-fuel combustion mode into a homogeneous charge compression ignition engine to reduce complexity in engine emissions after-treatment and lower carbon dioxide emission. The combination of oxy-fuel combustion mode with homogeneous charge compression ignition engine can be further optimized by the utilization of direct high temperature and pressure water injection to improve cycle performance. A retrofitted conventional diesel engine coupled with port fuel injection and direct water injection is utilized in this study. A self-designed oxygen and carbon dioxide mixture intake system with flexible oxygen fraction adjustment ability is implemented in the test bench to simulate the adoption of exhaust gas recirculation. Water injection system is directly installed in the combustion chamber with a modified high speed solenoid diesel injector.

The active components, such as OH and their concentrations in the coflow, have a strong effect on the combustion process of diesel fuel spray flames in the Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere (CATA), which then will affect the soot incandescence of the spray flames. CO2 and H2O2, the additives which have contrary effect on the concentration of the active components, were mixed separately into the thermo-atmosphere before the jet spray were issued into the coflow, which changed the boundary condition around the central jet and influenced the combustion characteristics and soot incandescence. The combustion characteristics such as ignition delay and flame liftoff height of the central spray flames are measured and the linkage between these two parameters is investigated at different coflow temperatures.

This paper presents the simulation of in-cylinder stratified mixture formation, spray motion, combustion and emissions in a four-stroke and four valves direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine with a pent-roof combustion chamber by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The Extended Coherent Flame Combustion Model (ECFM), implemented in the AVL-Fire codes, was employed. The key parameters of spray characteristics related to computing settings, such as skew angle, cone angle and flow per pulse width with experimental measurements were compared. The numerical analysis is mainly focused on how the tumble flow ratio and geometry of piston bowls affect the motion of charge/spray in-cylinder, the formation of stratified mixture and the combustion and emissions (NO and CO₂) for the wall-guided stratified-charge spark-ignition DISI engine.

To develop a free-piston engine-alternator integrative power system for Hybrid Electric Vehicles, the key design parameters, such as reciprocating mass of the piston assembly, compression ratio, the ignition timing, the engine fuel consumption rate and power output, are studied based on the simulation. The results show that, the system simulation model of the free piston engine can predict the in-cylinder pressure vs. the piston's displacement being accurate enough as the test results from reported reference. The model can be employed to optimize the design parameters and to predict the fuel economy and power output. It provides the methods and bases for the free piston engine design and predicting the main performance parameters' values.

Biodiesel has been paid more and more attention as a renewable fuel due to some excellent properties such as renewable, high cetane number, ultralow sulfur content, no aromatic hydrocarbon, high flash point, low CO2 emission when compared with diesel. While others physical properties like high viscosity, high surface tension, big density and bad volatility would spoil the spray characteristics of biodiesel fuel, which will affect the thermal efficiency when running in diesel engine. Accompanied with constant volume vessel and high speed video camera system, a high pressure common rail system, which could provide an injection pressure of 180 MPa, is used to investigate the characteristics of jatropha curcas biodiesel, palm oil biodiesel and diesel fuel. The effects of injection pressures and ambient densities on spray characteristics of these fuels are studied.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) provide significantly improvement in fuel economy over conventional vehicles as well as reductions in greenhouse gas and petroleum. Numerous recent reports regarding control strategy, power train configuration, driving pattern, all electric range (AER) and their effects on fuel consumption and electric energy consumption of PHEVs are reported. Meanwhile, the control strategy for engine start-stop and mileage between recharging events from the electricity grid also has an important influence on the petroleum displacement potential of PHEVs, but few reports are published. In this paper, a detailed simulation model is set up for a plug-in series hybrid electric vehicle (PSHEV) employing the AVL CRUISE. The model was employed to predict the AER of the baseline PSHEV using rule-based logical threshold switching control strategy.

In this paper comparisons were made between the fuel economy improvement between a High Pressure loop (HP) water-cooled Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system and a Low Pressure loop (LP) water-cooled EGR system. Experiments were implemented on a 1.3-Litre turbocharged PFI gasoline engine in two pars. One was EGR rate as single operating point to compare the different effect of HP- and LP-EGR. The other was mini map from 1500rpm to 3000rpm and BMEP from 2bar to 14bar because of the relative narrow available range of HP-EGR system. In consideration of practical application of EGR system, the coolant used in this experiment was kept almost the same temperature as in real vehicles (88±3°C) instead of underground water temperature, besides a model was built to calculate constant volume ratio (CVR). The results indicated that the effect of HP-EGR was weaker than that of LP-EGR under the same EGR rate, which could be seen from change of combustion parameters.

The present work aims at optimizing diesel engine combustion efficiency with optimized water injection strategy. The engine had been modified based on a two-cylinder mechanical pump diesel engine into common rail diesel engine with capability of direct water injection. The direct water injection system was designed and manufactured independently. An air-fluid booster was utilized to establish the water injection pressure up to 40MPa. Customized diesel injector was selected to be used as water injector in this study. Water injection strategy was optimized in detail with injection timing around TDC which ranges from 12°CA BTDC to -5°CA BTDC under 10 bar IMEP. The engine efficiency can be improved under selected water injection strategy due to the increment of work fluid in the combustion chamber. Moreover, the nitric oxides emissions show decrement around 10%.

This research was concerned with the use of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) improving the fuel economy over a wide operating range in a downsized boosted gasoline engine. The experiments were performed in a 1.3-Litre turbocharged PFI gasoline engine, equipped with a Low Pressure (LP) water-cooled EGR system. The operating conditions varied from 1500rpm to 4000rpm and BMEP from 2bar to 17bar. Meanwhile, the engine’s typical operating points in NEDC cycle were tested separately. The compression ratio was also changed from 9.5 to 10.5 to pursue a higher thermal efficiency. A pre-compressor throttle was used in the experiment working together with the EGR loop to keep enough EGR rate over a large area of the engine speed and load map. The results indicated that, combined with a higher compression ratio, the LP-EGR could help to reduce the BSFC by 9∼12% at high-load region and 3∼5% at low-load region.

Idle stopping is one of the most important fuel saving methods for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV). While the enriched injection strategy which was employed to ensure reliable ignition of first cycle will leads to even more fuel film stayed in the intake port, all of the liquid film will evaporate randomly and interfere the mixture air-fuel ratio of the followed cycles. The fuel transport of the first cycle should be enhanced to reduce the residual fuel film, and then the control of the cycle-by-cycle air-fuel ratio will become easier and the combustion and HC emissions will also be better. In this paper the mixture preparation characteristics of the unfired first cycle, as well as the combustion and HC emissions characteristics of the fired first cycle under various injection timing strategies such as close-valve injection, mid-valve injection, and open-valve injection were investigated.

Spray characteristics and spray wall-impingement events are the key factors for the direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engines, affecting fuel/air mixture preparation and its combustion process. Thus, the spray characteristics of a multi-hole injector for DISI engines, such as spray tip penetration and spray cone angle were investigated in an optical chamber employing the high-speed shadow photography. Furthermore, the effects of the injection pressure, ambient pressure and piston top shape on the impinging spray development were studied in the optical chamber, when the impinging distance is 26.1 mm, corresponding to about 60 CAD ATDC. In addition, the SMD and wall film thickness of the spray impinging on the piston top were studied by means of CFD technique. The results showed that the ambient pressure had the greater effect on the changes of the spray penetration and spray cone angle than the injection pressure.

A cycle-resolved test system was designed in a Two Stage Direct Injection (TSDI) Gasoline engine to simulate the engine quick start process in an Integrated Start and Generator (ISG) Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) system. Based on the test system, measurement of the in cylinder HC concentrations near the spark plug under different engine coolant temperature and cranking speed conditions were conducted using a Fast Response Flame Ionization Detector (FFID) with Sampling Spark Plug (SSP) fits, then the in-cylinder equivalence ratio near the spark plug was estimated from the measured HC concentrations. In addition, the effects of the 1st injection timing, 2nd injection timing, and total equivalence ratio on the mixture formation near the spark plug were analyzed by means of experiments.

In this paper, the spray and combustion characteristics of biodiesel and diesel were investigated. The spray pictures of single injection, by means of a diesel pump test-bed, were taken by a high-speed camera video system in an atmospheric condition, and the effects of the pump speed, nozzle orifice diameter and nozzle opening pressure on the fuel spray structure and characteristics were studied under atmosphere condition. The results showed that the general law of biodiesel spray characteristics was similar to that of diesel. However, the spray penetration of biodiesel was longer than that of diesel, and the spray angles of biodiesel were only half angle of diesel. The experiment of combustion characteristics was conducted in a vitiated coflow combustor with the same diesel pump test-bed. The images of combustion flame were recorded by the high-speed camera system. Then the ignition characteristics were evaluated from the digital pictures by computer.

It has been revealed by researches that lubricant properties have a great effect on the low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI) frequency in downsizing turbocharged direct-injection engines which are developed for better fuel economy. Droplets of lubricant or lubricant-gasoline mixture are considered to be the potential pre-ignition sources. Those droplets fly into the combustion chamber and ignite the gasoline-air mixture. To study lubricant droplets fundamentally, a novel set of droplet auto-ignition system is designed based on a Dibble Burner for this experiment. Influences of metallic additive contents, viscosities, lubricant diluted with gasoline and waste lubricant on the ignition delay of droplets are investigated by testing 12 groups of lubricants or lubricant-gasoline mixture. The equivalent diameter of each droplet generated by micro-syringes is around 2.1 mm. The co-flow temperature varies from 1123 K to 1223 K, and the experiments are carried out at atmospheric pressure.

The CO2 reduction request for automotive industry promotes the efforts on the engine thermal efficiency improvement. The goal of this research is to improve the thermal efficiency on an extremely downsized 3-cylinder 1.0 L turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine. Effects of compression ratio, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), valve timing and viscosity of oil on fuel economy were studied. The results show that increasing compression ratio, from 9.6 to 12, can improve fuel economy at relative low load (below 12 bar BMEP), but has a negative effect at high load due to increased knock intensity. EGR can significantly reduce the pumping loss at low load, optimize combustion phase and reduce exhaust gas temperature. Therefore, the fuel consumption is reduced at all test points. The average brake thermal efficiency (BTE) benefit percentage is 3.47% with 9.6 compression ratio and 5.33 % with 12 compression ratio.

The argon power cycle engine, which uses hydrogen as fuel, oxygen as oxidant, and argon other than nitrogen as the working fluid, is considered as a novel concept of zero-emission and high-efficiency system. Due to the extremely high in-cylinder temperature caused by the lower specific heat capacity of argon, the compression ratio of spark-ignition argon power cycle engine is limited by preignition or super-knock. Compression-ignition with direct-injection is one of the potential methods to overcome this challenge. Therefore, a detailed flammability limit of H2 under Ar-O2 atmosphere is essential for better understanding of stable autoignition in compression-ignition argon power cycle engines.

Reducing the pumping loss, and thus, the fuel consumption of gasoline engine at part load, a two-stage intake valve lift system was implanted into a PFI engine. A corresponding engine model was set up with GT-power as well, which can simulate the effect of two-stage intake valve lift and different EGR rates on fuel economy performance and on combustion condition of a gasoline engine. Based on simulation results, the valve lift control strategy and EGR control strategy was studied in this paper. Results showed that at low engine speed, when SMALL LIFT was used, the tumble flow and the combustion process in cylinder was improved and burn time duration became shorter, resulting in higher indicated efficiency and lower fuel consumption than by LARGE LIFT. With the introduction of the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), lower fuel consumption was acquired.

Gasoline direct injection (GDI) technology is admitted to be one of the most effective measures to improve the fuel economy for the spark ignition (SI) engines. Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion has advantages of low fuel consumption and ultra low NOx emissions. But the difficulty in the autoignition control and the narrow operation region inhibit the practical application of this technology. A hybrid combustion mode which combines SI mode and HCCI mode in separated working regions was regarded as a promising technology for HCCI engines. In addition, monitoring and providing feedback to the in-cylinder combustion characteristics is generally considered to be an effective method to improve and to optimize the combustion process. A lot of combustion information is included in the ion current generated by the in-cylinder combustion, and hence the ion current detection technique is considered to be a potential combustion feedback method.

Hydrogen-fueled Argon Power Cycle engine is a novel concept for high efficiency and zero emissions, which replaces air with argon/oxygen mixtures as working fluid. However, one major challenge is severe knock caused by elevated in-cylinder temperature resulting from high specific heat ratio of Argon. A typical knock-limited compression ratio is around 5.5:1, which limits the thermal efficiency of Argon Power Cycle engines. In this article, preliminary experimental research on the effect of water direct injection at late exhaust stroke is presented at 1000 r/min with IMEP ranging from 0.3~0.6 MPa. Results show that, with temperature-reducing effect of water evaporation, knock is greatly inhibited and the engine can run normally at a higher compression ratio of 9.6:1. Water injected at the exhaust stroke minimizes its reducing effect on the specific heat ratio of the working fluid during the compression and expansion strokes.