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Ammonia (NH3), a zero-carbon fuel, has great potential for internal combustion engine development. However, its high ignition energy, low laminar burning velocity, narrow range of flammability limits, and high latent heat of vaporization are not conducive for engine application. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of utilizing ammonia in a heavy-duty diesel engine, specifically through low-pressure direct injection (LP-DI) of hydrogen to ignite ammonia combustion. Due to the lack of a well-corresponding mechanism for the operating conditions of ammonia-hydrogen engines, this study serves only as a trend-oriented prediction. The paper compares the engine's combustion and emission performance by optimizing four critical parameters: excess air ratio, hydrogen energy ratio, ignition timing, and hydrogen injection timing. The results reveal that excessively high hydrogen energy ratios lead to an advanced combustion phase, reducing indicated thermal efficiency.

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) guided design optimization was conducted for the piston bowl geometry for a heavy-duty diesel engine. The optimization goal was to minimize engine-out NOx emissions without sacrificing engine peak power and thermal efficiency. The CFD model was validated with experiments and the combustion system optimization was conducted under three selected operating conditions representing low speed, maximum torque, and rated power. A hundred piston bowl shapes were generated, of which 32 shapes with 3 spray angles for each shape were numerically analyzed and one optimized design of piston bowl geometry with spray angle was selected. On average, the optimized combustion system decreased nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 17% and soot emissions by 41% without compromising maximum engine power and fuel economy.

Plug-in electric vehicle (PHEV) has a promising prospect to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and optimize engine operating in high-efficiency region. According to the maximum electric power and all-electric range, PHEVs are divided into two categories, including “all-electric PHEV” and “blended PHEV” and the latter provides a potential for more rational energy distribution because engine participates in vehicle driving during aggressive acceleration not just by motor. However, the frequent use of engine may result in severe emissions especially in low state of charge (SOC) and ahead of catalyst light-off. This study quantitatively investigates the impact of oil viscosity and driving mode (hybrid/conventional) on oil dilution and emissions including particle number (PN).

The ignition of lubricating oil droplet has been proved to be the main factor for pre-ignition and the following super-knock in turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine. In this paper, the ignition process of lubricating oil droplet in combustible ambient gaseous mixture was investigated in a rapid compression machine (RCM). The pre-ignition induction by oil droplet of the ambient gaseous mixture was analyzed under different initial droplet volume and effective temperature conditions. The oil droplet was suspended on a tungsten fiber in the combustion chamber and the ignition process was recorded by a high-speed camera through the quartz window mounted at the end of the combustion chamber. The pressure traces were also obtained by a sensor in order to get the ignition delay and analyze the combustion process in detail.

Compression ratio and specific heat ratio are two dominant factors influencing engine thermal efficiency. Therefore, ultra-lean burn may be one method to deal with increasingly stringent fuel consumption and emission regulations in the approaching future. To achieve high efficiency and clean combustion, innovative combustion modes have been applied on research engines including homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI), spark-assisted compression ignition (SACI), and gasoline direct-injection compression ignition (GDCI), etc. Compared to HCCI, SACI can extend the load range and more easily control combustion phase while it is constrained by the limit of flame propagation. For SACI with ultra-lean burn in engines, equivalence ratio (φ), rich-fuel mixture around spark plug, and supercharging are three essentials for combustion stability.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), because of its low cost, high H/C ratio, and high octane number, has great potential in automotive industry, especially for heavy-duty commercial vehicles. However, relative slow flame speed of natural gas leads to long combustion duration and low thermal efficiency and tends to cause knock combustion at high load, which will aggravate engine thermal load and reliability. Enhancing turbulence intensity in combustion chamber is an effective way to accelerate flame propagation speed and improve combustion performance. In this study, the flow simulations of several piston bowls with different inner-convex forms were carried out using three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (3D-CFD) software CONVERGE. The numerical results showed the piston bowls with inner-convex could disturb the charge swirl motion and enhance turbulence of different intensity. A hexagram geometry bowl was proved to have the best function in strengthening turbulence intensity.

In order to meet increasingly stringent fuel consumption and emission regulations, more attentions are paid to improve engine efficiency. A large amount of energy-saving technologies have been applied in automotive field especially in gasoline engines. It is well known that lean burn and ultra-high compression ratio technologies are two basic and important methods to increase efficiency. In this paper, a rapid compression machine was employed to study combustion process of lean iso-octane mixture at ultra-high compression ratios (16 to 19:1). Regardless of flammability of the mixture, spark was triggered at the timing right after the end of compression, then, the flame propagation and/or auto-ignition can be recorded using high-speed photography simultaneously. The effects of equivalence ratio (φ), compression ratio (ε), dilution ratio, and effective temperature (Teff) on the combustion process was investigated.

Polyoxymethylene Dimethyl Ether (PODEn) is a promising green additive to diesel fuel, owing to the unique chemical structure (CH3O[CH2O]nCH3, n≥2) and high cetane number. Together with the general wide-distillation fuel (WDF), which has an attractive potential to reduce the cost of production of vehicle fuel, the oxygenated WDF with PODEn can help achieve a high efficiency and low emissions of soot, NOx, HC, and CO simultaneously. In this paper, the first detailed reaction mechanism (225 species, 1082 reactions) which can describe the ignition characteristics of PODE1 and PODE3 at low temperature was developed.

Low Speed Pre-Ignition (LSPI), also referred to as superknock or mega-knock is an undesirable turbocharged engine combustion phenomenon limiting fuel economy, drivability, emissions and durability performance. Numerous researchers have previously reported that the frequency of Superknock is sensitive to engine oil and fuel composition as well as engine conditions in controlled laboratory and engine-based studies. Recent studies by Toyota and Tsinghua University have demonstrated that controlled induction of particles into the combustion chamber can induce pre-ignition and superknock. Afton and Tsinghua recently developed a multi-physics approach which was able to realistically model all of the elementary processes known to be involved in deposit induced pre-ignition. The approach was able to successfully simulate deposit induced pre-ignition at conditions where the phenomenon has been experimentally observed.

This research focuses on the potential of Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) combustion meeting the Euro V emission standard on a heavy-duty multi-cylinder engine using a simple after-treatment system. However, in our previous studies, it was found that the gasoline ratio was limited in HCII by the over-high compression ratio (CR). In this paper, the effects of reducing CR on the performances of HCII at medium and high loads were explored by experimental methods. It was found that by reducing CR from 18:1 to 16:1 the peak in-cylinder pressure and the peak pressure rise rate were effectively reduced and the gasoline ratio range could be obviously extended. Thus, the combustion and emission characteristics of HCII at medium and high loads were noticeably improved. Soot emissions can be significantly reduced because of the increase of premixed combustion ratio. The reduction could be over 50% especially at high load and high speed conditions.

Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) combustion utilizes a port injection of high-volatile fuel to form a homogeneous charge and a direct injection of high ignitable fuel near the Top Dead Center (TDC) to trigger combustion. Compared to Conventional Diesel Combustion (CDC) with high injection pressures, HCII has the potential to achieve diesel-like thermal efficiency with significant reductions in NOx and PM emissions with relatively low-pressure injections, which would benefit the engine cost saving remarkably. In the first part of current investigation, experiments were conducted at medium load with single diesel injection strategy. HCII exhibited great potential of using low injection pressures to achieve low soot emissions. But the engine load for HCII was limited by high heat release rate. Thus, in the second and third part, experiments were performed at high and low load with double diesel injection strategy.

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.

Wide Distillation Fuel (WDF) refers to the fuels with a distillation range from Initial Boiling Point (IBP) of gasoline to Final Boiling Point (FBP) of diesel. Polyoxymethylene Dimethyl Ethers (PODEn) have high oxygen content and cetane number, are promising green additive to diesel fuel. In this paper, WDF was prepared by blending diesel and gasoline at ratio of 1:1, by volume; the mass distribution of oligomers in the PODE3-4 product was 88.9% of PODE3 and 8.46% of PODE4. Diesel fuel (Diesel), WDF (G50D50) and WDF (80%)-PODE3-4 (20%) (G40D40P20) were tested in a light-duty single-cylinder diesel engine, combustion characteristic, fuel consumption and exhaust emissions were measured. The results showed that: at idling condition, G40D40P20 has better combustion stability, higher heat release rate, higher thermal efficiency compared with G50D50.

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.

Stoichiometric dual-fuel compression ignition (SDCI) combustion has superior potential in both emission control and thermal efficiency. Split injection of diesel reportedly shows superiority in optimizing combustion phase control and increasing flexibility in fuel selection. This study focuses on split injection strategies in SDCI mode. The effects of main injection timing and pilot-to-total ratio are examined. Combustion phasing is found to be retarded in split injection when overmixing occurs as a result of early main injection timing. Furthermore, an optimised split injection timing can avoid extremely high pressure rise rate without great loss in indicated thermal efficiency while maintaining soot emission at an acceptable level. A higher pilot-to-total ratio always results in lower soot emission, higher combustion efficiency, and relatively superior ITE, but improvements are not significant with increased pilot-to-total ratio up to approximately 0.65.

The design and optimization of a modern spray-guided gasoline direct injection engine require a thorough understanding of the fuel spray characteristics and atomization process. The fuel spray Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technology can be an effective means to study and predict spray characteristics, and as a consequence, to drastically reduce experimental work during the engine development process. For this reason, an accurate numerical simulation of the spray evolution process is imperative. Different models based on aerodynamically-induced breakup mechanism have been implemented to simulate spray atomization process in earlier studies, and the effect of turbulence from the injector nozzle is recently being concerned increasingly by engine researchers. In this study, a turbulence-induced primary breakup model coupled with aerodynamic instability is developed.

This paper studied the knock combustion process in gasoline HCCI engines. The complex chemical kinetics was implemented into the three-dimensional CFD code with LES (Large eddy simulation) to study the origin of the knock phenomena in HCCI combustion process. The model was validated using the experimental data from the cylinder pressure measurement. 3D-CFD with LES method gives detailed turbulence, species, temperature and pressure distribution during the gasoline HCCI combustion process. The simulation results indicate that HCCI engine knock originates from the random multipoint auto-ignition in the combustion chamber due to the slight inhomogeneity. It is induced by the significantly different heat release rate of high temperature oxidation (HTO) and low temperature oxidation (LTO) and their interactions.

Fuel spray atomization process is known to play a key role in affecting mixture formation, combustion efficiency and soot emissions in direct injection engines. The fuel spray Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technology can be an effective means to study and predict spray characteristics such as penetration, droplet size and droplet velocity, and as a consequence, to drastically reduce experimental work during the engine development process. For this reason, an accurate numerical simulation of the spray evolution process is imperative. Different approaches and various models based on aerodynamically induced breakup mechanism have been implemented to simulate spray atomization process in earlier studies, and the effects of turbulence and cavitation from the injector nozzle is recently being concerned increasingly by engine researchers. In this study, an enhanced turbulence and cavitation induced primary breakup model combining aerodynamic breakup mechanism is developed.

Dieseline combustion as a concept combines the advantages of gasoline and diesel by offline or online blending the two fuels. Dieseline has become an attractive new compression ignition combustion concept in recent years and furthermore an approach to a full-boiling-range fuel. High speed imaging with near-parallel backlit light was used to investigate the spray characteristics of dieseline and pure fuels with a common rail diesel injection system in a constant volume vessel. The results were acquired at different blend ratios, and at different temperatures and back pressures at an injection pressure of 100MPa. The penetrations and the evaporation states were compared with those of gasoline and diesel. The spray profile was analyzed in both area and shape with statistical methods. The effect of gasoline percentage on the evaporation in the fuel spray was evaluated.

Using EGR instead of throttle to control the load of a stoichiometric dual-fuel dieseline (diesel and gasoline) compression ignition (SDCI) engine with three-way catalyst (TWC) aftertreatment is considered a promising technology to address the challenges of fuel consumption and emissions in future internal combustion engines. High-speed imaging is used to record the flame signal in a single-cylinder optical engine with a PFI+DI dual injection system. The premixed blue flame is identified and separated using green and blue channels in RGB images. The effects of injection timing on SDCI combustion are studied. An earlier injection strategy is found to be ideal for soot reduction; however, the ignition-injection decoupling problem results in difficulties in combustion control. It is also found that a split injection strategy has advantages in soot reduction and thermal efficiency.