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According to authors' previous research, high pressure hydrogen engines with direct injection right before TDC and spark ignition obtain high performance and eliminate almost. abnormal combustion. This study has clarified the mooted points in the flame propagation to adjacent jets and the control of the optimum spark timing and large NOx emissions even in leaner than excess air ratio of λ=2. Nitric oxides (NOx) is the only the pollutant in the exhaust gases emitted by hydrogen engines. It has been found that the NOx formation largely depends on the mixture formation method. In order to operate the engine in a small amount of NOx, an experimental study was carried out to investigate the reduction of NOx and the output power by using dual mixture formation method, external mixture formation and direct injection.

An unique measurement method was developed for measurement of the piston outer surface during the engine operation. The method was realized by embedding a gap sensor into a cylinder bore and by rotating the cylinder in the circumferential direction. By means of this method, interesting data of skirt deformation of a gasoline engine caused by temperature, pressure and the slap force were obtained.

In order to establish hydrogen engines for practical use, it is important to overcome difficulties caused by unique characteristics of hydrogen fuel. A hydrogen engine with direct injection right before top dead center(TDC) and spark ignition has advantages such as prevention of abnormal combustion and realization of high power output near the stoichiometric air-fuel ratio, in comparison with an engine with external mixture. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that ignition and combustion for this type of hydrogen engines should be improved and that further studies on mixture formation of air and injected hydrogen are necessary for the improvement. For the direct injection hydrogen engine, mixture is formed both by air flow inside the combustion chamber and by injected hydrogen jet.

Local heat flux from the flame to the combustion chamber wall, q̇, was measured the wall surfaces of a rapid compression-expansion machine which can simulate diesel combustion. Temperature of the flame zone, T1, was calculated by a thermodynamic two-zone model using measured values of cylinder pressure and flame volume. A local heat transfer coefficient was proposed which is defined as q̇/(T1-Tw). Experiments showed that the local heat transfer coefficient depends slightly on the temperature difference, T1-Tw, but depends significantly on the velocity of the flame which contacts the wall surface.

In this study, the cause of backfire concerning an external mixture formation type hydrogen engine was clarified. It has been known that the maximum output power of the external mixture formation type hydrogen engine should be kept significantly low, because of backfire. Generally, the backfire of this type of hydrogen engine is caused by pre-ignition. In this type of hydrogen engine, pre-ignition occurred for a range of lean mixture. Under this study, therefore, the relationship between the occurrence of backfire and the temperature at the tip of the spark plug electrode, and the detection of the luminescence spectrum of the flame near the spark plug were examined and studied in relation to the spark plug ignition theory which appeared to be promising. Then the pre-ignition timing and location were studied by detecting the flame luminescence spectrum.

This study has been aimed at the reduction of the intense piston skirt friction force that appears in the expansion stroke out of all piston friction forces generated in gasoline engines. The friction characteristics at the piston skirt have been analyzed according to the measured results at piston friction forces and the shapes of wears at the piston skirt in actual engine operations. It is found from the above that the majority of the side force working on each piston is supported by the oil film on the skirt, while only some of the side force is supported by the portion in metallic contact with the cylinder. It is also found through experiments that the metallic contact portion has a great effect on the friction force at the skirt. The effect of piston posture in expansion stroke on the friction force has been also analyzed based on the measured results of piston slap motions.

The aim of this research was to analyze the lubrication conditions of piston pin boss bearings used in the press-fit piston pins of automobile gasoline engines. An original pin boss friction measuring device was developed and used to successfully obtain measurements. It was revealed that the friction force peaks twice every cycle at high engine loads, and non-fluid lubrication characteristics are displayed. The friction forces for various differing piston pins and pin boss bearings were analyzed, and it was shown that reducing piston pin length or thickness to reduce piston weight, or reducing the pin boss bearing clearance to reduce noise worsen the friction characteristics and increase the possibility of abnormal bearing friction as well as seizure.

It is a well-known fact that the exhaust emission characteristics of hydrogen fueled engines are extremely good. The external mixture formation - a hydrogen fuel supply method - has the merit of practically zero NOx emission level in the lean mixture range with the excess air ratio λ set at 2.0 or greater as well as the merits of simple mechanism and easy operation. However, the practical use of such engines has been impeded partly due to the occurrence of backfire where the excess air ratio λ is 2 to 3. In order to allow the practical use of the hydrogen fueled engines with external mixture formation, it is vital to determine the causes of backfire and to establish proper countermeasures. It is found through a recent study conducted on the mechanism of backfire that the abnormal electric discharge in the intake stroke is one of the causes of backfire.

The objective was to rank piston friction and noise for three piston architectures at three cold clearance conditions. Piston secondary motion was measured using four gap sensors mounted on each piston skirt to better understand the friction and noise results. One noticeable difference in friction performance from conventional designs was as engine speed increased the friction force during the expansion stroke decreased. This was accompanied by relatively small increases in friction force during the other strokes so Friction Mean Effective Pressure (FMEP) for the whole cycle was reduced. Taguchi's Design of Experiment method was used to analyze the variances in friction and noise.

How much reduction in piston friction loss can be achieved by the piston design? Piston friction force measurements have been carried out using the measuring method developed by the authors to obtain the effects of piston clearance, surface roughness, lubricant and ring size and contact pressure on the piston friction forces. A particular emphasis is placed on the study of effects of the piston rings by the experimental and theoretical analyses, since friction forces of piston rings accounted for 3/4 or more of the total piston friction force.

Diesel engines make a shrill noise called “idle knock” under low temperature idling operation. This causes a serious noise pollution problem in automobile diesel engines. It was clarified by this study that one important source of this noise was piston slap impulse. Piston slap motion was measured under usual operating conditions and a condition with additional oil supplied into the piston clearance. The piston slap motion was calculated taking into account the frictional resistances of the crank mechanism and squeeze action of oil film. It was concluded that only a negligible amount of oil existed in the piston clearance for the squeeze action.

It is desired to minimize clearance between the piston and the cylinder to reduce noise and suppress vibration. Although significant effort has been made for this purpose, increased piston friction force and the occurrence of seizure still prevent the ideal clearance from being realized. In order to determine the lower limit of the piston clearance, it is crucial to clarify the following unknowns; which part of piston contributes to friction increase as the piston clearance is decreased, during which phase of the piston motion the friction increase occurs, and how the piston clearance affects lubrication phenomena. Measurements of piston friction force under operating conditions were made by applying the Floating Liner Method(1),(2)* to a single-cylinder test gasoline engine. The measurement revealed how the piston friction varied as the piston clearance decreased. Lateral motion of the piston was also measured.

The hydrogen combustion characteristics have been studied in a late-injection (near TDC) hot surface ignition engine. As a supplemental experiment, the mode of combustion was observed in a constant volume combustion chamber by the schlieren method. Consequently the combustion process, that was the flame propagation initiated by a hot surface through heterogeneous hydrogen jets, was not the same as that of a diesel engine. The experimental results in test engine showed the optimum number of injection holes and the effect of intake air swirl for better mixture formation. It was observed that the combustion was frequently accompanied by non-negligible combustion pressure vibrations at all engine operating conditions.

The authors developed the optimum thin film thermocouples in terms of materials, shape and dimensions to make instantaneous surface temperature and heat flux measurements of combustion chamber wall in internal combustion engines with accuracy by the computer analysis. And they succeeded to make thin film thermocouple in ceramic piston, by the application of the above technique. Then, the instantaneous surface temperature was measured to obtained the instantaneous heat flux on the ceramic plate fixed on top of the piston.

In high pressure hydrogen injection hot surface ignition engines under nearly all engine operating conditions combustion pressure vibration is generated just after ignition. As a result of many experimental investigations the true nature for the cause of this interesting phenomenon was found and are listed: (1) This phenomenon probably originates from the extremely high local rate of burning of the hydrogen-air mixture. (2) Accompaning the stronger combustion pressure vibration was an increase in engine vibration and noise with increase in NOx emission and higher piston temperature. (3) Longer ignition delay resulted in a steeper pressure-time diagram which resalted in a stronger combustion pressure vibration. (4) The phenomenon had negligible effect on engine performance. (5) The phenomenon can be prevented by premixing a ceratain quantity of hydrogen gas into the intake air stream. The result was a shortened ignition delay.

Considerable amount of research work on hydrogen fueled engines has been conducted for 17 years in Musashi Institute of Technology. The primary purpose of the research has been to develop a hydrogen powered autmobile, and in order to realized it, various innovations have been applied and tested. The newest outcome of this 17 years research was Musashi-7 Track, which demonstrated its performance in Innovation vehicle Design Competition held in Vancouver in July 1986. Musashi-7 Track was a modified medium duty truck, which was originally made by Hino Motors, and had a hydrogen powered engine. The track was equipped with 150 ℓ liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank and 8 MPa high pressure LH2 pump. The pump delivered 8 MPa high pressure hydrogen gas to the engine and the fuel was injected to a hot surface igniter in DI combustion chamber. This type of hydrogen enigne has following advantages. Firstly, fuel corrier weight and volume can be much smaller than those of metal-hydrides (MH).

A thin film thermocouple with a high accuracy was developed by means of computer analysis, which allowed measurements of instantaneous temperatures and heat fluxes on combustion chamber walls. Conventional Al-alloy and ceramic plates were compared in terms of the heat loss at the upper surface of each piston during combustion, using a gasoline engine and a diesel engine in the series of experiments. It was found by the comparison that the ceramic plates subjected to higher temperatures had greater heat losses in both the gasoline and diesel engines contrary to the anticipation.

Hybrid electric vehicle with internal combustion engine fueled with hydrogen can be a competitor to the fuel cell electric vehicle that is thought to be the ultimately clean and efficient vehicle. The objective in this research is to pursue higher thermal efficiency and lower exhaust emissions in a hydrogen-fueled engine for the series type hybrid vehicle system. Influences of compression ratio, surface / volume ratio of combustion chamber, and boost pressure on thermal efficiency and exhaust emissions were analyzed. Results showed that reduction of the surface / volume ratio by increased cylinder bore was effective to improve indicated thermal efficiency, and it was possible to achieve 44% of indicated thermal efficiency. However, brake thermal efficiency resulted in 35.5%. It is considered that an improved mechanical efficiency by an optimized engine design could increase the brake thermal efficiency largely.

Exhaust-gas recirculation (EGR) causes the piston ring and cylinder liners of a diesel engine to suffer abnormal wear. The present study aimed at making clear the mechanism of wear which is induced by soot in the EGR gas. The piston ring has been chrome plated and the cylinder was made of boron steadite cast iron. Detailed observations of the ring sliding surfaces and that of the wear debris contained in lubricating oil were carried out. As a result, it was found that the wear of the top ring sliding surfaces identify abrasive wear without respect to the presence of EGR by steadite on the cylinder liner sliding surface. In addition, it is confirmed in a cutting test that soot mixed lubricating oil improved in performance as cutting oil. Based on these results, we proposed the hypothesis in the present study that ring wear is accelerated at EGR because abrasive wear increases due to a lot of soot mixed into lubricating oil improving the performance of lubricating oil as cutting oil.

Offsetting the crankshaft axis with respect to the cylinder axis has been thought to be a method to reduce piston side force[1]. Hence the piston friction is expected to be reduced. An automotive manufacturer has already used the crankshaft offset for a production gasoline engine to improve fuel economy. The authors have conducted research into the effect of crankshaft offset on the piston friction. A single-cylinder engine was modified to have a crankshaft offset. Piston frictional force was measured in real-time by using a floating liner method. In addition, laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique was employed to measure oil film thickness on the piston skirt area, and a gap sensor was used to measure piston motion. As a result, the authors concluded that the effect of crankshaft offset on piston friction could not be explained only by its effect on the piston side force. In accordance with the measurement results, crankshaft offset changed piston slap motion.