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Compression ignition internal combustion engines provide unmatched power density levels, making them suitable for numerous applications including heavy-duty freight trucks, marine shipping, and off-road construction vehicles. Fossil-derived diesel fuel has dominated the energy source for CI engines over the last century. To mitigate the dependency on fossil fuels and lessen anthropogenic carbon released into the atmosphere within the transportation sector, it is critical to establish a fuel source which is produced from renewable energy sources, all the while matching the high-power density demands of various applications. Dimethyl ether (DME) has been used in non-combustion applications for several decades and is an attractive fuel for CI engines because of its high reactivity, superior volatility to diesel, and low soot tendency. A range of feedstock sources can produce DME via the catalysis of syngas.

Performance of the ignition system becomes more important than ever, because of the extensively used EGR in modern spark-ignition engines. Future lean burn SI and SACI combustion modes demand even stronger ignition capability for robust ignition control. For spark-based ignition systems, extensive research has been carried out to investigate the discharge characteristics of the ignition process, including discharge current amplitude, discharge duration, spark energy, and plasma stretching. The correlation between the spark stretch and the discharge energy, as well as the impact of discharge current level on this correlation, are important with respect to both ignition performance, and ignition system design. In this paper, a constant volume combustion chamber is applied to study the impact of plasma stretch on the spark energy release process with cross-flow speed from 0 m/s up to 70 m/s.

Advanced combustion engines dominate all automotive applications. Future high efficiency clean combustion engines can contribute significantly to sustainable transportation. Effective ignition strategies are studied to enable lean and diluted combustion under considerably high-density mixture and strong turbulences, for improving the efficiency and emissions of future combustion engines. Continuous discharge and multi-site ignition strategies have been proved to be effective to stabilize the combustion process under lean and EGR diluted conditions. Continuous discharge strategy uses a traditional sparkplug with a single spark gap and multiple ignition coil packs. The ignition coil packs operate under a specific time offset to realize a continuous discharge process with a prolonged discharge duration. Multi-site ignition strategy also uses multiple ignition coil packs.

Lean burn is regarded as one of the most effective ways to improve fuel efficiency for spark ignition engines. However, the excessive air dilution deteriorates combustion stability, limiting the degree of engine operational dilution. The intensified flow field is therefore introduced into the cylinder to mitigate the decline of the burning velocity caused by the leaned-out fuel-air mixture. In a moderate flow field, flame kernels are formed near the hot spark plasma during discharge and stick to the spark gap even after the end of discharge; the flame front then propagates outward and evolves into self-sustained flame. Flame attaching to the spark gap is a common phenomenon in the early combustion stage and has been reported to be beneficial for flame inception in the literature.

With the increasing demand of emission reductions from the automotive industry, advanced after-treatment strategies have been investigated to overcome the challenges associated with meeting increasingly stringent emission regulations. Ongoing investigations on low temperature combustion (LTC) strategies are being researched to meet future emission regulations, however, the lowered exhaust temperature presents an even greater issue for exhaust after-treatment due to the change in combustion modes. Catalyst temperature is critical for the catalytic ability to maintain effective conversion efficiency of regulated emissions. The use of periodic flow reversal has shown benefits of maintaining catalyst temperature by alternating the exhaust flow direction through the catalytic converter, reducing the catalyst sensitivity to inlet gas temperature fluctuations.

Meeting the increasingly stringent emission and fuel efficiency standards is the primary objective of the modern automotive research. Lean/diluted combustion is a promising avenue to realize high-efficiency combustion and reduce emissions in SI engines. Under diluted conditions, the flame propagation speed is reduced because of the reduced charge reactivity. Enhancing in-cylinder charge motion and turbulence, and thereby increasing the flame speed, is a possible way to harness the combustion process in SI engines. However, charge motion can have a significant effect on the spark ignition process because of the reduced discharge duration and frequent restrikes. A longer discharge duration can aid in the formation of a self-sustained flame kernel and subsequent stable ignition. Therefore, an empirical study is undertaken to investigate the effect of discharge duration and ignition timing on the ignition and early combustion in a port fueled SI engine, operated under lean conditions.

Lean burn or EGR diluted combustion with enhanced charge motion is effective in improving the efficiency of spark ignition engines. However, the ignition process under these conditions is getting more challenging due to higher ignition energy required by the lean or diluted mixture, as well as the interactions of the gas flow on the flame kernel. Enhanced spark discharge energy is essential to initiate the combustion under these conditions. Moreover, the discharge process should be more carefully controlled to improve the effectiveness of the spark. In this study, spark ignition systems with boosted discharge energy are used to ignite diluted air-fuel mixture under forced flow conditions. The impacts of the discharge current level, the discharge duration and the discharge current profile on the ignition are investigated in detail using optical diagnosis.

For internal combustion engine systems, lean and diluted combustion is an important technology applied for fuel efficiency improvement. Because of the thermodynamic boundary conditions and the presence of in-cylinder flow, the development of a well-sustained flame kernel for lean combustion is a challenging task. Reliable spark discharge with the addition of enhanced delivered energy is thus needed at certain time durations to achieve successful combustion initiation of the lean air-fuel mixture. For a conventional transistor coil ignition system, only limited amount of energy is stored in the ignition coil. Therefore, both the energy of the spark discharge and the duration of the spark discharge are bounded. To break through the energy limit of the conventional transistor coil ignition system, in this work, an adaptive spark ignition system is introduced. The system has the ability to reconstruct the conductive ion channels whenever it is interrupted during the spark discharge.

Ignition performance is critical for the implementation of diluted combustion for spark-ignition engines. The short circuit and restrike phenomena can influence the initial ignition volume and discharge duration which are important for the stable ignition processes. In this study, the short circuits and restrikes of spark channels are studied with various flow velocities, spark plug gaps and discharge energies. The development of the spark channels is captured by using the direct imaging technique with a CMOS camera equipped with an image intensifier. A multi-coil ignition system is designed to enable flexible control of discharge energies. The results show that the spark plug gap size is a critical parameter to suppress the phenomena of short circuits and restrikes. With the enlargement of spark plug gap, the maximum and average lengths of the spark channel effectively increase.

Advanced ignition systems with enhanced discharge current have been extensively investigated in research, since they are highly regarded as having the potential to overcome challenges that arise when spark-ignition engines are running under lean or EGR diluted conditions. Local flow field is also of particular importance to improve the ignitability of the air-fuel mixture in SI engines as the spark plasma channel can be stretched by the flow across the spark gap, leading to longer plasma length, thus more thermal spark energy distributed to the air-fuel mixture in the vicinity of the spark plug. Research results have shown that a constantly high discharge current is effective to maintain a stable spark plasma channel with less restrikes and longer plasma holding period.

The conventional transistor coil ignition system with coil-out energy up to 100 mJ might not be sufficient to establish a self-sustained flame kernel under lean combustion with strong in-cylinder flow motion. Further increase of the discharge current will decrease the voltage across the spark gap, which will affect the calculation of the energy delivered to the spark gap. In this paper, the relationship between the discharge current and gap voltage is investigated, and it is discovered that the spark energy doesn,t increase monotonously with the increase of the discharge current. However, engine test results still indicate a positive impact of discharge current amplitude on the engine performance.

The control of combustion phasing in homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion is investigated with neat n-butanol in this work. HCCI is a commonly researched combustion mode, owing to its improved thermal efficiency over conventional gasoline combustion, as well as its lower nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate matter emissions compared to those of diesel combustion. Despite these advantages, HCCI lacks successful widespread implementation with conventional fuels, primarily due to the lack of effective combustion phasing control. In this preliminary study, chemical kinetic simulations are conducted to study the auto-ignition characteristics of n-butanol under varied background pressures, temperatures, and dilution levels using established mechanisms in CHEMKIN software. Increasing the pressure or temperature lead to a shorter ignition delay, whereas increasing the dilution by the application of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) leads to a longer ignition delay.

The breakdown phase is considered to have the highest electric-thermal energy transfer efficiency among all the discharge modes in a conventional spark ignition process. In this study, an external capacitor is connected in parallel with the spark plug in order to enhance the discharge energy and power during the breakdown phase. A constant volume combustion chamber is used to investigate the high power spark discharge under different background pressures and with varied flow velocities. Results show that the added parallel capacitance is effective in redistributing the spark energy. With the increase in parallel capacitance, the breakdown power and energy increase, though at the cost of reduced glow phase energy. The breakdown energy also increases with the increased background pressure. Then combustion tests are carried out to study the effects of the breakdown power enhanced spark on flame propagation under both quiescent and flow conditions via optical diagnosis.

Multi-spark discharge (MSD) ignition is widely used in high-speed internal combustion engines such as racing cars, motorcycles and outboard motors in attempts to achieve multiple sparks during each ignition. In contrast to transistor coil ignition (TCI) system, MSD system can be greatly shortened the charging time in a very short time. However, when the engine speed becomes higher, the ignition will be faster, electrical energy stored in the ignition system will certainly become less, especially for MSD system. Once the energy released into the spark plug gap can’t be guaranteed sufficiently, ignition will become more difficult, and it will get worse in some harsh environment such as strong turbulence or lean fuel conditions. With these circumstances, the risks of misfire and partial combustion will increase, which can deteriorate the power outputs and exhaust emissions of internal combustion engine.

In the recent decades, the emission and fuel efficiency regulations put forth by the emission regulation agencies have become increasingly stringent and this trend is expected to continue in future. The advanced spark ignition (SI) engines can operate under lean conditions to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Under such lean conditions, the ignition and complete combustion of the charge mixture is a challenge because of the reduced charge reactivity. Enhancement of the in-cylinder charge motion and turbulence to increase the flame velocity, and consequently reduce the combustion duration is one possible way to improve lean combustion. The role of air motion in better air-fuel mixing and increasing the flame velocity, by enhancing turbulence has been researched extensively. However, during the ignition process, the charge motion can influence the initial spark discharge, resulting flame kernel formation, and flame propagation.

This empirical work investigates the impacts of thermodynamic parameters, such as pressure and temperature, and fuel properties, such as fuel Cetane number and aromatic contents on ignition delay in diesel engines. Systematic tests are conducted on a single-cylinder research engine to evaluate the ignition delay changes due to the fuel property differences at low, medium and high engine loads under different EGR dilution ratios. The test fuels offer a range of Cetane numbers from 28 to 54.2 and aromatic contents volume ratios from 19.4% to 46.6%. The experimental results of ignition delays are used to derive an ignition delay model modified from Arrhenius’ expression. Following the same format of Arrhenius’ equation, the model incorporates the pressure and temperature effects, and further includes the impacts of intake oxygen concentration, fuel Cetane number and aromatic contents volume ratio on the ignition delay.

This paper examines the diesel-ethanol dual fuel combustion at medium engine loads on a single-cylinder research diesel engine with a compression ratio of 16.5:1. The effect of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and ethanol energy ratio was investigated for the dual fuel combustion to achieve simultaneously ultra-low NOx and soot emissions. A medium ethanol ratio of about 0.6 was found suitable to meet the requirements for mixing enhancement and ignition control, which resulted in the lowest NOx and soot emissions among the tested ethanol ratios. A double-pilot injection strategy was found competent to lower the pressure rise rate owing to the reduced fuel quantity in the close-to-TDC injection. The advancement of pilot injection timing tended to reduce the CO and THC emissions, which is deemed beneficial for high EGR operations. The reactivity mutual-modulation between the diesel pilot and the background ethanol mixture was identified.

Spark ignition systems with the capability of providing spark event with either higher current level or longer discharge duration has been developed in recent years to help IC engines towards clean combustion with higher efficiency under lean/diluted intake charge. In this research, a boosted current spark strategy was proposed to investigate the effect of spark discharge current level and discharge duration on the combustion process. Firstly, the discharge characteristics of a boosted current spark system were tested with a traditional spark plug under crossflow conditions, and results showed that the spark channel was more stable, and was stretched much longer when the discharge current was boosted. Then the boosted current strategy was used in a spark ignition engine operating under lean conditions. Boosted current was added to the spark channel with different timing, duration, and current levels.

In this work, a spatially distributed spark ignition strategy was employed to improve the ignition process of well-mixed ultra-lean dilute gasoline combustion in a high compression ratio (13.1:1) single cylinder engine at partial loads. The ignition energy was distributed in the perimeter of a 3-pole igniter. It was identified that on the basis of similar total spark energy, the 3-pole ignition mode can significantly shorten the early flame kernel development period and reduce the cyclic variation of combustion phasing, for the spark timing sweep tests at λ 1.5. The effect of ignition energy level on lean-burn operation was investigated at λ 1.6. Within a relatively low ignition energy range, i.e. below 46 mJ per pole, the increase in ignition energy via ether 1 pole or 3 pole can improve the controllability over combustion phasing and reduce the variability of lean burn combustion. Higher ignition energy was required in order to enable ultra-lean engine operation with λ above 1.6.

Future clean combustion engines tend to increase the cylinder charge to achieve better fuel economy and lower exhaust emissions. The increase of the cylinder charge is often associated with either excessive air admission or exhaust gas recirculation, which leads to unfavorable ignition conditions at the ignition point. Advanced ignition methods and systems have progressed rapidly in recent years in order to suffice the current and future engine development, and a simple increase of energy of the inductive ignition system does not often provide the desired results from a cost-benefit point of view. Proper design of the ignition system circuit is required to achieve certain spark performances.