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Turbulent flows in a model engine having a square piston were analyzed in detail by using a numerical simulation method with higher-order accuracy to perform simulations on an orthogonal homogeneous grid without grid motions. Calculations were performed during several continuous engine cycles. A better understanding of the cycle-by-cycle differences, i.e., cyclic variations, in flow fields may lead to more effective ways of stabilizing combustion.

A new auto-ignition combustion model for performing multi-zone engine cycle simulations has been developed to investigate the characteristics of compression ignition combustion in gasoline engines. In this combustion model, the auto-ignition timing is predicted with a modified shell model and combustion speed is calculated with a three-region (burned, ignited and unburned) model. Engine cycle simulations performed with this model were used to analyze the effect of engine operating parameters, i.e., temperature and air-fuel distributions in the cylinder, on combustion characteristics. It was found that the air-fuel distribution in the cylinder has a large impact on combustion characteristics and knocking was prevented by creating a fuel-rich zone at the center of the cylinder under high load conditions. The fuel-rich zone works as an ignition source to ignite the surrounding fuel-lean zone. In this way, two-step combustion is accomplished through two separate auto-ignitions.

Experiments were conducted with 4-cylinder and single-cylinder direct injection diesel engines to examine the effects of combustion chamber insulation on heat rejection and thermal efficiency. The combustion chamber was insulated by using a silicon nitride piston cavity that was shrink-fitted into a titanium alloy crown. The effect of insulation on heat rejection was examined on the basis of heat release calculations made from cylinder pressure time histories. High-speed photography was used to investigate combustion phenomena. The results showed that heat rejection was influenced by the combustion chamber geometry and swirl ratio and that it was reduced by insulating the combustion chamber. However, because combustion deteriorated, it was not possible to obtain an improvement in thermal efficiency equivalent to the reduction in heat rejection.

An automatic matching method for engine control parameters is described which can aid efficient development of new engine control systems. In a spark-ignition engine, fuel is fed to a cylinder in proportion to the air mass induced in the cylinder. Air flow meter characteristics and fuel injector characteristics govern fuel control. The control parameters in the electronic controller should be tuned to the physical characteristics of the air flow meter and the fuel injectors during driving. Conventional development of the engine control system requires a lot of experiments for control parameter matching. The new matching method utilizes the deviation of feedback coefficients for stoichiometric combustion. The feedback coefficient reflects errors in control parameters of the air flow meter and fuel injectors. The relationship between the feedback coefficients and control parameters has been derived to provide a way to tune control parameters to their physical characteristics.

In recent years, the study of volumetric ignition using high-speed (nanosecond) pulsed low temperature plasma for gasoline engines was reported by authors [ 1 ]. However, the fundamental analysis of ignition characteristics of the low temperature plasma ignition and the analysis of combustion initiation mechanism of the low temperature plasma ignition was not enough in the previous paper. In this study, a low temperature plasma igniter of a barrier discharge (silent discharge) model was developed for trial purpose. A fundamental analysis of ignition characteristics was carried out when the low temperature plasma ignition was applied as the ignition system for gasoline engine using single-cylinder. The difference between the ignition characteristics of the low temperature plasma and the thermal plasma of a conventional spark plug was investigated by comparing a combustion characteristic of both in various driving conditions.

The effects of lubricant oil and fuel properties on low speed pre-ignition (LSPI) occurrence in boosted S.I. engines were experimentally evaluated with multi-cylinder engine and de-correlated oil and fuel matrices. Further, the auto-ignitability of fuel spray droplets and evaporated homogeneous fuel/oil mixtures were evaluated in a combustion bomb and pressure differential scanning calorimetry (PDSC) tests to analyze the fundamental ignition process. The work investigated the effect of engine conditions, fuel volatility and various lubricant additives on LSPI occurrence. The results support the validity of aspects of the LSPI mechanism hypothesis based on the phenomenon of droplets of lubricant oil/fuel mixture (caused by adhesion of fuel spray on the liner wall) flying into the chamber and autoigniting before spark ignition.

An electric vehicle (EV) has less powertrain energy loss than an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE), so its aerodynamic accounts have a larger portion of drag contribution of the total energy loss. This means that EV aerodynamic performance has a larger impact on the all-electric range (AER). Therefore, the target set for the aerodynamics development for a new EV hatchback was to improving AER for the customer’s benefit. To achieve lower aerodynamic drag than the previous model’s good aerodynamic performance, an ideal airflow wake structure was initially defined for the new EV hatchback that has a flat underbody with no exhaust system. Several important parameters were specified and proper numerical values for the ideal airflow were defined for them. As a result, the new EV hatchback achieves a 4% reduction in drag coefficient (CD) from the previous model.

This paper presents a measurement technique to visualize the distribution of the in-cylinder mixture temperature and an experimental approach for analyzing the effect of the temperature distribution prior to ignition on homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion. First, a visualization technique for mixture temperature distribution based on the temperature dependence of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) was developed. As the next step, measurement of the temperature distribution was applied to an analysis of HCCI combustion. Controlled non-uniform temperature distributions in the mixture prior to ignition were generated by a special intake system with a completely divided intake port having separate electrical heaters.

One advantage of a direct-injection S.I. engine is lower fuel consumption due to the use of lean stratified charge combustion. Another advantage is greater power output resulting from evaporation of the fuel in the cylinder. A critical factor in making the most of these advantages is to achieve optimum mixture formation for both stratified and homogeneous charge combustion. To achieve the optimum mixture, the new direct-injection S.I. V-6 engine adopts a piston with a shallow bowl, a valve that changes in-cylinder air motion between swirl and tumble by opening and closing one side of separated air intake port, an air intake port that has optimized inward and port angle to induces swirl in the piston bowl, and a CASTING NET injector that injects the hollow cone spray in a deflected pattern toward the spark plug.

In order to clarify the effect of each gasoline component on engine performance during warm-up, changes in the air-fuel ratio and quantity of wall flow (liquid gasoline on the induction port) were measured using ordinary gasolines and model gasolines consisting of a blend of several hydrocarbons and MTBE (methyl-tertiary-butyl-ether). The unburned air-fuel mixture in a combustion chamber was sampled via a solenoid valve and analyzed by gas chromatography to investigate the vaporization rate of each component. The results show that MTBE has an important effect on driveability because it contains oxygen and easily vaporizes, resulting in a lean mixture in the transient state. The popular driveability index, T50 (50% distillation temperature), does not provide an adequate means of evaluating MTBE-blended gasoline.

An analysis was made of wear factors by investigating the effect of engine operating conditions on valve train wear. It was found that cam nose wear increased as larger amounts of combustion products, including nitrogen oxides and unburned gasoline, became intermixed with the engine oil. Based on these results, a valve train wear test procedure has been developed for evaluating cam nose and rocker arm wear under engine firing conditions. It has been confirmed that this test procedure correlates will with ASTM Sequence VE test and CCMC TU-3 test.

In 1994, the California Air Resources Board implemented low-emission vehicle (LEV) standards with the aim of improving urban air quality. One feature of the LEV standards is the increasingly tighter regulation of non-methane organic gases (NMOG), taking into account ozone formation, in addition to the existing control of non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC). Hydrocarbons and other organic gases emitted by S.I. engines have been identified as a cause of atmospheric ozone formation. Since the reactivity of each chemical species in exhaust emissions differs, the effect on ozone formation varies depending on the composition of the exhaust gas components. This study examined the effect of different engine types, fuel atomization conditions, turbulence and emission control systems on emission species and specific reactivity. This was done using gas chromatographs and a high-performance liquid chromatograph to analyze exhaust emission species that affect ozone formation.

Combinations of swirl flow and tumble flow generated by 13 types of swirl control valve were tested by using both impulse steady flow rig and LDV. Comparison between the steady flow characteristics and the result of LDV measurement under motoring condition shows that tumble flow generates turbulence in combustion chamber more effectively than swirl flow does, and that swirling motion reduces the cycle by cycle variation of mean velocity in combustion chamber which tends to be generated by tumbling motion. Performance tests are also carried out under the condition of homogeneous charge. Tumble flow promotes the combustion speed more strongly than expected from its turbulence intensity measured by LDV. It is also shown that lean limit air fuel ratio does not have a strong relation with cycle variation of mean velocity but with turbulence intensity.

Laser induced fluorescence (LIF) is a useful method for visualizing the distribution of the air-fuel ratio in the combustion chamber. The way this method is applied mainly depends on the fluorescent tracer used, such as biacetyl, toluene, various aldehydes, fluoranthene or diethylketone, among others. Gasoline strongly absorbs light in the UV region, for example, at the 248-nm wavelength of broadband KrF excimer laser radiation. Therefore, when using this type of laser, iso-octane is employed as the fuel because it is transparent to 248-nm UV light. However, since the distillation curves of iso-octane and gasoline are different, it can be expected that their vaporization characteristics in the intake port and cylinder would also be different. The aim of this study was to find a better fuel for use with LIF at a broadband wavelength of 248 nm. Three tasks were undertaken in this study.

Flow measurement by laser Doppler velocimetry and visualization of in-cylinder fuel vapor motion by laser induced fluorescence were performed for various types of intake systems that generated several different combinations of swirl and tumble ratios. The measured results indicate that certain swirl and tumble ratios are needed to achieve charge stratification in the cylinder. Performance tests were also carried out to determine the combustion characteristics of each intake system. Then, the features of combustion when the charge stratification was realized was analyzed.

The geometry and area of the notch in the swirl control valve installed in the intake port were varied to analyze the effects on HC emissions. A swirl control valve functions to promote the formation of a homogeneous mixture, enabling the amount of liquid fuel supplied to the cylinder to be reduced. For this reason, it is difficult to obtain an added effect through the combined use of a swirl control valve and an auxiliary-air type of injector for assisting fuel atomization. Tumble (vertical swirl) flow fields are effective in shortening the combustion period. This results in a higher exhaust gas temperature at an equivalent level of combustion stability. It was thought that swirl flow fields produce residual gas flow in the cylinder after the completion of the main combustion period. It is surmised that the residual gas flow functions to diffuse and promote after-burning of the unburned HC layer.

Three-dimensional computation has been applied to analyze combustion and emission characteristics in direct-injection diesel engines. A computational code called TurboKIVA was used to investigate the effects of the swirl ratio, one of the fundamental factors related to combustion control, on combustion characteristics and NOx and soot emissions. The code was first modified to calculate soot formation and oxidation and the precise behavior of fuel drops on the combustion chamber wall. As a result of improving calculation accuracy, good agreement was obtained between the measured and predicted pressure, heat release rate and NOx and soot emissions. Using this modified version of TurboKIVA, the effects of the swirl ratio on NOx and soot emissions were investigated. The computational results showed that soot emissions were reduced with a higher swirl ratio. However, a further increase in the swirl ratio produced greater soot emissions.

Being able to plan each powertrain performance parameter with improved accuracy is an important factor for shortening the development period. In this regard, advance temperature predictions are particularly important because of the strong correlation between the thermal design and the vehicle layout, engine proper and other related parts. At present, it is still difficult to make thermal performance predictions for the engine oil temperature. There are many examples of studies in which the oil temperature was predicted in a one-dimensional circuit. In those studies, either experimental data were used for the heat release from engine components to the oil or calculations were made with a model that was converted empirically from three-dimensions to one-dimension. Because the mechanisms of oil temperature changes inside the engine are not well understood in detail, it is not possible to examine how modifications of the engine structure might affect the oil temperature.

Vehicle manufacturers developed two mixture formation concepts for the first generation of gasoline direct-injection (GDI) engines. Both the wall-guided concept with reverse tumble air motion or swirl air motion and the air-guided concept with tumble air motion have the fuel injector located at the side of the combustion chamber between the two intake ports. This paper proposes a new GDI concept. It has the fuel injector located at almost the center of the combustion chamber and with the spark plug positioned nearby. An oval bowl is provided in the piston crown. The fuel spray is injected at high fuel pressures of up to 100 MPa. The spray creates strong air motion in the combustion chamber and reaches the piston bowl. The wall of the piston bowl changes the direction of the spray and air motion, producing an upward flow. The spray and air flow rise and reach the spark plug.

In order to demonstrate the generation mechanism of “combustion noise” separately from “mechanical noise,” the process of transfer in which vibration travels to each engine portion was analyzed through single-shot combustion of a propane-air mixture in the combustion chamber with the crankshaft fixed at a given angle. The effect of the natural frequency of each portion of the engine on the vibration transfer characteristics is discussed by introducing a vibration transfer function. The transfer paths of exciting forces which are caused by the combustion are quantitatively clarified.