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An optimization of thermal management system in a gasoline engine is considered to improve thermal efficiency by minimizing the cost increase without largely changing the configuration of engine system. In this study, the influence of water temperature and intake air temperature on thermal efficiency were investigated using an inline four-cylinder 1.2L gasoline engine. In addition, one-dimensional engine simulations were conducted by using a software of GT-SUITE. Brake thermal efficiency for different engine speeds and loads could be quantitatively predicted with changing the cooling water temperature in the cylinder head. Then, in order to predict the improvement of the fuel consumption in actual use, vehicle mode running simulation and general-purpose engine transient mode simulation were carried out by GT-SUITE. As a result, it was found that by controlling the temperatures of the cooling water and intake gas, thermal efficiency can be improved by several percent.

Effects of measurement method, coolant temperature and fuel composition on soot emissions were examined by engine experiments. By reducing the pressure fluctuation in the sampling line, the measured soot emissions with better stability and reproducibility could be obtained. With lower coolant temperatures, larger soot emissions were yielded at much advanced fuel injection timings. Compared to gasoline, soot emissions with a blend fuel of normal heptane, isooctane and toluene were significantly decreased, suggesting the amounts of aromatic components (toluene or others) should be increased to obtain a representative fuel for the predictive model of particulate matter in SIDI engines.

The objective of this study is to develop a practical technique to achieve HCCI operation with wide operation range. To attain this objective, the authors previously proposed the blowdown supercharge (BDSC) system and demonstrated the potential of the BDSC system to extend the high load HCCI operational limit. In this study, experimental works were conducted with focusing on improvement of combustion stability at low load operation and the reduction in cylinder to cylinder variation in ignition timing of multi-cylinder HCCI operation using the BDSC system. The experiments were conducted using a slightly modified production four-cylinder gasoline engine with compression ratio of about 12 at constant engine speed of 1500 rpm. The test fuel used was commercial gasoline which has RON of 91. To improve combustion stability at low load operation, the valve actuation strategy for the BDSC system was newly proposed and experimentally examined.

The purpose of this paper is to find a way to extend the high load limit of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion. A newly developed rapid compression and expansion machine (RCEM) was employed to reproduce the typical HCCI high load condition. The in-cylinder turbulence was created by the special piston which equipped with a flow guide plate. Meanwhile, the ambient temperature distribution in the cylinder was determined by the wall temperature controlling system which was controlled by the independent coolant passages. In addition, the numerical simulation by using large eddy method coupled with a detailed chemical reaction was conducted as well. The results show that HCCI mode is potential to be improved at high load condition in full consideration of in-cylinder temperature, flow, and turbulence.