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Low speed pre-ignition (LSPI) is a limiting phenomenon for several of the technologies being pursued as part of the low carbon agenda. To achieve maximum power density and efficiency engines are being downsized and turbocharged, while Direct- injection technologies are becoming ever more prominent. All changes that increase the propensity of LSPI. The low speed-high load operation envelope is limited due to LSPI. Hydrogen engines are also being explored, however, with such a low minimum enthalpy of ignition, LSPI is a major limitation to thermal efficiency. Several techniques are utilized in this study to investigate physical and physio-chemical aspects of lubricant initiated LSPI. Where possible attempts have been to validate methodologies or directional alignment with published data. The basis of the methodologies used is a validated 1D predictive combustion model of a single cylinder GTDI engine, that was used to provide simulation boundary conditions.

Injection pressure oscillations are proven to determine considerable deviations from the expected mass flow rate, leading to the jet velocities non-uniformity, which in turn implies the uneven spatial distribution of A/F ratio. Furthermore, once the injector is triggered, these oscillations might lead the rail pressure to experience a decreasing stage, to the detriment of spray penetration length, radial propagation and jet break-up timing. This has urged the research community to develop models predicting injection-induced pressure fluctuations within the rail. Additionally, several devices have been designed to minimize and eliminate such fluctuations. However, despite the wide literature dealing with the injection-induced pressure oscillations, many aspects remain still unclear. Moreover, the compulsory compliance with environmental regulations has shifted focus onto alternative fuels, which represent a promising pathway for sustainable vehicle mobility.

Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) vehicles now make up the majority of European new car sales and a significant share of the existing car parc. Despite delivering measurable engine efficiency benefits, GDI fuel systems are not without issues. Fuel injectors are susceptible to the formation of deposits in and around the injector nozzles holes. It is widely reported that these deposits can affect engine performance and that different fuels can alleviate the buildup of those deposits. This project aims to understand the underlying mechanisms of how deposit formation ultimately leads to a reduction in vehicle performance. Ten GDI fuel injectors, with differing levels of coking were taken from engine testing and consumer vehicles and compared using a range of imaging and engine tests. At the time of writing, a new GDI engine test is being developed by the Co-ordinating European Council (CEC) to be used by the fuel and fuel additive industry.

A significant amount of harmful emissions pass unreacted through catalytic after-treatment devices for IC engines before the light-off temperature is reached, despite the high conversion efficiency of these systems in fully warm conditions. Further tightening of fleet targets and worldwide emission regulations will make a faster catalyst light-off to meet legislated standards hence reduce the impact of road transport on air quality even more critical. This work investigates the effect of adding hydrogen (H2) at levels up to 2500 ppm into the exhaust gases produced by combustion of various oxygenated C2-, C4- and renewable fuel molecules blended at 20 % wt/wt with gasoline on the light-off performance of a commercially available three-way catalyst (TWC) (0.61 L, Pd/Rh/Pt - 19/5/1, 15g). The study was conducted on a modified naturally aspirated, 1.4 L, four-cylinder, direct-injected, spark-ignition engine.

Nowadays, rolling resistance sits at the core of tyre development goals because of its considerable effect on the car’s fuel economy. In contrast to the experimental method, the finite element (FE) method offers an inexpensive and efficient estimation technique. However, the FE technique is yet to be a fully developed product particularly for rolling-resistance estimation. An assessment is conducted to study the role of material viscoelasticity representation in FE, in linear and non-linear forms, through the use of Prony series and parallel rheological framework (PRF) models, respectively, on the tyre’s rolling-resistance calculation and its accuracy. A unique approach was introduced to estimate the rolling resistance according to the tyre’s hysteresis energy coefficient.

The demand for more efficient and clean engines have prompted the research and development of new engine technologies. Automotive engines expected to run with leaner mixtures and higher compression ratios. Lean burn is effective to increase fuel economy whilst reducing emissions but unreliable ignition of the lean mixtures by the conventional spark plug is one of the problems which causes concerns to the engine designers. Laser ignition is a promising technology and holds many benefits over the spark ignition because it can extend the ignitability of lean mixtures with flexibility of the ignition location and absence of electrode degradation for improved engine performance with lean burn. In this study, high-speed photography is used to investigate the flame kernel growth and propagation in an optical direct injection engine using laser ignition by an Nd:YAG laser.

The conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to liquid fuels presents an alternative to the current production of renewable fuels for IC engines from food crops. However, realising the potential for reductions in net CO2 emissions through the utilisation of, for example, waste biomass for sustainable fuel production requires that energy and resource inputs into such processes be minimised. This work therefore investigates the combustion and emission characteristics of five intermediate platform molecules potentially derived from lignocellulosic biomass: gamma-valerolactone (GVL), methyl valerate, furfuryl alcohol, furfural and 2-methyltetrahydrofuran (MTHF). The study was conducted on a naturally aspirated, water cooled, single cylinder spark-ignition engine. Each of the platform molecules were blended with reference fossil gasoline at 20 % wt/wt.

With increasingly stringent requirements and regulations related to particulate matter(PM) emissions, manufacturers are paying more and more attention to emissions from gasoline direct injection(GDI) engines. The present paper proposes an improved two-step soot model. The model is applied in the Kiva-Chemkin program to simulate the processes of spray impinging, fuel mixture preparation, combustion and soot formation in a typical turbocharged downsized GDI engine. The simulation results show that soot formation in the GDI engine is attributed to non-uniform distribution of the air-fuel mixture and pool fire of wall film in the cylinder. Under homogeneous mode, increasing the injection advance angle can optimize fuel atomization and improve air-fuel mixing, thus reducing soot formation. However, an excessive injection advance angle may cause spray to impinge on the cylinder wall and this will sharply increase the soot emission.

Particle Number (PN) have already been a big issue for developing high efficiency internal combustion engines (ICEs). In this study, controlled spark-assisted stratified compression ignition (SSCI) with moderate end-gas auto-ignition was used for reducing PN in a high compression ratio gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine. Under wide open throttle (WOT) and Maximum Brake Torque timing (MBT) condition, high external cooled exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) was filled in the cylinder, while two-stage direct injection was used to form desired stoichiometric but stratified mixture. SSCI combustion mode exhibits two-stage heat release, where the first stage is associated with flame propagation induced by spark ignition and the second stage is the result of moderate end-gas auto-ignition without pressure oscillation at the middle or late stage of the combustion process.

Ambient temperature has significant impact on engine start ability and cold start emissions from diesel engines. These cold start emissions are accounted for substantial amount of the overall regulatory driving cycle emissions like NEDC or FTP. It is likely to implement the low temperature emissions tests for diesel vehicles, which is currently applicable only for gasoline vehicles. This paper investigates the potential of the intake heating strategy on reducing the driving cycle emissions from the latest generation of turbocharged common rail direct injection diesel engines at low ambient temperature conditions. For this investigation an air heater was installed upstream of the intake manifold and New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) tests were conducted at -7°C ambient temperature conditions for the different intake air temperatures. Intake air heating reduced the cranking time and improved the fuel economy at low ambient temperatures.

Diesel engines are the versatile power source and is widely used in passenger car and commercial vehicle applications. Environmental temperature conditions, fuel quality, fuel injection strategies and lubricant have influence on cold start performance of the diesel engines. Strategies to overcome the cold start problem at very low ambient temperature include preheating of intake air, coolant, cylinder block. The present research work investigates the effect of coolant temperatures on passenger car diesel engine’s performance and exhaust emission characteristics during the cold start at cold ambient temperature conditions. The engine is soaked in the -7°C environment for 6 hours. The engine coolant is preheated to the desired coolant temperatures of 10 and 20°C by an external heater and the start ability tests were performed.

The design of a Diesel injector is a key factor in achieving higher engine efficiency. The injector's fuel atomisation characteristics are also critical for minimising toxic emissions such as unburnt Hydrocarbons (HC). However, when developing injection systems, the small dimensions of the nozzle render optical experimental investigations very challenging under realistic engine conditions. Therefore, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be used instead. For the present work, transient, Volume Of Fluid (VOF), multiphase simulations of the flow inside and immediately downstream of a real-size multi-hole nozzle were performed, during and after the injection event with a small air chamber coupled to the injector downstream of the nozzle exit. A Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach was used to account for turbulence. Grid dependency studies were performed with 200k-1.5M cells.

Flash-boiling of sprays may occur when a superheated liquid is discharged into an ambient environment with lower pressure than its saturation pressure. Such conditions normally exist in direct-injection spark-ignition engines operating at low in-cylinder pressures and/or high fuel temperatures. The addition of novel high volatile additives/fuels may also promote flash-boiling. Fuel flashing plays a significant role in mixture formation by promoting faster breakup and higher fuel evaporation rates compared to non-flashing conditions. Therefore, fundamental understanding of the characteristics of flashing sprays is necessary for the development of more efficient mixture formation. The present computational work focuses on modelling flash-boiling of n-Pentane and iso-Octane sprays using a Lagrangian particle tracking technique.

2-Butanone (C4H8O) is a promising alternative fuel candidate as a pure as well as a blend component for substitution in standard gasoline fuels. It can be produced by the dehydrogenation of 2-butanol. To describe 2-butanone's basic combustion behaviour, it is important to investigate key physical properties such as the laminar burning velocity. The laminar burning velocity serves on the one hand side as a parameter to validate detailed chemical kinetic models. On the other hand, especially for engine simulations, various combustion models have been introduced, which rely on the laminar burning velocity as the physical quantity describing the progress of chemical reactions, diffusion, and heat conduction. Hence, well validated models for the prediction of laminar burning velocities are needed. New experimental laminar burning velocity data, acquired in a high pressure spherical combustion vessel, are presented for 1 atm and 5 bar at temperatures of 373 K and 423 K.

Detailed chemical kinetics is essential for accurate prediction of combustion performance as well as emissions in practical combustion engines. However, implementation of that is challenging. In this work, dynamic adaptive chemistry (DAC) is integrated into large eddy simulations (LES) of an n-heptane spray flame in a constant volume chamber (CVC) with realistic application conditions. DAC accelerates the time integration of the governing ordinary differential equations (ODEs) for chemical kinetics through the use of locally (spatially and temporally) valid skeletal mechanisms. Instantaneous flame structures and global combustion characteristics such as ignition delay time, flame lift-off length (LOL) and emissions are investigated to assess the effect of DAC on LES-DAC results. The study reveals that in LES-DAC simulations, the auto-ignition time and LOL obtain a well agreement with experiment data under different oxygen concentrations.

Occurrence of sporadic super-knock is the main obstacle to the development of advanced gasoline engines. One of the possible inducements of super-knock, agglomerated soot particle induced pre-ignition, was studied for high boosted gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines. The correlation between soot emissions and super-knock frequency was investigated in a four-cylinder gasoline direct injection production engine. The test results indicate that higher in-cylinder soot emission correlate with more pre-ignition and super-knock cycles in a GDI production engine. To study the soot/carbon particles trigger super-knock, a single-cylinder research engine for super-knock study was developed. The carbon particles with different temperatures and sizes were introduced into the combustion chamber to trigger pre-ignition and super-knock.

Combustion behaviour and emissions characteristics of different blending ratios of diesel and gasoline fuels (Dieseline) were investigated in a light-duty 4-cylinder compression-ignition (CI) engine operating on partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode. Experiments show that increasing volatility and reducing cetane number of fuels can help promote PPCI and consequently reduce particulate matter (PM) emissions while oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions reduction depends on the engine load. Three different blends, 0% (G0), 20% (G20) and 50% (G50) of gasoline mixed with diesel by volume, were studied and results were compared to the diesel-baseline with the same combustion phasing for all experiments. Engine speed was fixed at 1800rpm, while the engine load was varied from 1.38 to 7.85 bar BMEP with the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) application.

There is an increasing recognition of injector deposit (ID) formation in fuel injection equipment as direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine technologies advance to meet increasingly stringent emission legislation and fuel economy requirements. While it is known that the phenomena of ID in DISI engines can be influenced by changes in fuel composition, including increasing usage of aliphatic alcohols and additive chemistries to enhance fuel performance, there is however still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the physical and chemical structure of these deposits, and the mechanisms of deposit formation. In this study, a mechanical cracking sample preparation technique was developed to assess the deposits across DISI injectors fuelled with gasoline and blends of 85% ethanol (E85).

Engine transient operation has attracted a lot of attention from researchers due to its high frequency of occurrence during daily vehicle operation. More emissions are expected compared to steady state operating conditions as a result of the turbo-lag problem. Ambient temperature has significant influences on engine transients especially at engine start. The effects of ambient temperature on engine-out emissions under the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) are investigated in this study. The transient engine scenarios were carried out on a modern 3.0 L, V6 turbocharged common rail diesel engine fuelled with winter diesel in a cold cell within the different ambient temperature ranging between +20 °C and −7 °C. The engine with fuel, coolant, combustion air and lubricating oil were soaked and maintained at the desired test temperatures during the transient scenarios.

Improvements in the efficiency of internal combustion engines and the development of renewable liquid fuels have both been deployed to reduce exhaust emissions of CO2. An additional approach is to scrub CO2 from the combustion gases, and one potential means by which this might be achieved is the reaction of combustions gases with sodium borohydride to form sodium carbonate. This paper presents experimental studies carried out on a modern direct injection diesel engine supplied with a solution of dissolved sodium borohydride so as to investigate the effects of sodium borohydride on combustion and emissions. Sodium borohydride was dissolved in the ether diglyme at concentrations of 0.1 and 2 % (wt/wt), and tested alongside pure diglyme and a reference fossil diesel. The sodium borohydride solutions and pure diglyme were supplied to the fuel injector under an inert atmosphere and tested at a constant injection timing and constant engine indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP).