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Methanol is one of the most promising fuels for the decarbonization of the off-road and transportation sectors. Although methanol is typically seen as an alternative fuel for spark ignition engines, mixing-controlled compression ignition (MCCI) combustion is typically preferred in most off-road and medium-and heavy-duty applications due to its high reliability, durability and high-efficiency. In this paper, the potential of using ignition enhancers to enable methanol MCCI combustion was investigated. Methanol was blended with 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (EHN) and experiments were performed in a single-cylinder production-like diesel research engine, which has a displacement volume of 0.83 L and compression ratio of 16:1. The effect of EHN has been evaluated with three different levels (3%vol, 5%vol, and 7%vol) under low- and part-load conditions. The injection timing has been swept to find the stable injection window for each EHN level and load.

To cope with regulatory standards, minimizing tailpipe emissions with rapid catalyst light-off during cold-start is critical. This requires catalyst-heating operation with increased exhaust enthalpy, typically by using late post injections for retarded combustion and, therefore, increased exhaust temperature. However, retardability of post injection(s) is constrained by acceptable pollutant emissions such as unburned hydrocarbon (UHC). This study provides further insight into the mechanisms that control the formation of UHC under catalyst-heating operation in a medium-duty diesel engine, and based on the understanding, develops combustion strategies to simultaneously improve exhaust enthalpy and reduce harmful emissions. Experiments were performed with a full boiling-range diesel fuel (cetane number of 45) using an optimized five-injections strategy (2 pilots, 1 main, and 2 posts) as baseline condition.

Spray-wall interactions in diesel engines have a strong influence on turbulent flow evolution and mixing, which influences the engine’s thermal efficiency and pollutant-emissions behavior. Previous optical experiments and numerical investigations of a stepped-lip diesel piston bowl focused on how spray-wall interactions influence the formation of squish-region vortices and their sensitivity to injection timing. Such vortices are stronger and longer-lived at retarded injection timings and are correlated with faster late-cycle heat release and soot reductions, but are weaker and shorter-lived as injection timing is advanced. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations predict that piston bowls with more space in the squish region can enhance the strength of these vortices at near-TDC injection timings, which is hypothesized to further improve peak thermal efficiency and reduce emissions. The dimpled stepped-lip (DSL) piston is such a design.

To comply with increasingly stringent pollutant emissions regulations, diesel engine operation in a catalyst-heating mode is critical to achieve rapid light-off of exhaust aftertreatment catalysts during the first minutes of cold starting. Current approaches to catalyst-heating operation typically involve one or more late post injections to retard combustion phasing and increase exhaust temperatures. The ability to retard post injection timing(s) while maintaining acceptable pollutant emissions levels is pivotal for improved catalyst-heating calibrations. Higher fuel cetane number has been reported to enable later post injections with increased exhaust heat and decreased pollutant emissions, but the mechanism is not well understood. The purpose of this experimental and numerical simulation study is to provide further insight into the ways in which fuel cetane number affects combustion and pollutant formation in a medium-duty diesel engine.

Compliance with future ultra-low nitrogen oxide regulations with diesel engines requires the fastest possible heating of the exhaust aftertreatment system to its proper operating temperature upon cold starting. Late post injections are commonly integrated into catalyst-heating operating strategies. This experimental study provides insight into the complex interactions between the injection-strategy calibration and the tradeoffs between exhaust heat and pollutant emissions. Experiments are performed with certification diesel fuel and blends of diesel fuel with butylal and hexyl hexanoate. Further analyses of experimental data provide insight into fuel reactivity and oxygen content as potential enablers for improved catalyst-heating operation. A statistical design-of-experiments approach is developed to investigate a wide range of injection strategy calibrations at three different intake dilution levels.

Regulations regarding vehicles’ CO2 emissions are continuing to become stricter due to global warming. The CO2 regulations urge automobile manufacturers to develop gasoline engines with improved efficiency; however, the main obstacle to the improvement is the knock phenomenon in spark-ignition engines. If knock is predicted, the efficiency potential can be maximized in an engine by applying modest spark timing. Several research regarding knock prediction modeling have been conducted, and typically Livengood-Wu integral model is used to predict the knock occurrence. For the prediction, knock onset should be determined on a given pressure signal of given knock cycles for establishing the 0D ignition delay model. Several methodologies for knock onset determination have been developed because checking all the knock onset position by hand is impossible considering the breadth of data sets.

Since the amount of emitted CO2 is directly related to car fuel economy, attention is being drawn to DISI (Direct-Injection Spark-Ignition) engines, which have better fuel economy than conventional gasoline engines. However, it has been a problem that the rich air-fuel mixtures associated with fuel films during cold starts due to spray impingement produce particulate matter (PM). In predicting soot formation, it is important to predict the mixture field precisely. Thus, accurate spray and film models are a prerequisite of the soot model. The previous models were well matched with low-speed collision conditions, such as those of diesel engines, which have a relatively high ambient pressure and long traveling distances. Droplets colliding at low velocities have an order of magnitude of kinetic energy similar to that of the sum of the surface tension energy and the critical energy at which the splash occurs.

The combustion process using two fuels with different reactivity, known as dual-fuel combustion or RCCI is mainly studied to reduce emissions while maintaining thermal efficiency compared to the conventional diesel combustion. Many studies have proven that dual-fuel combustion has a positive prospect in future combustion to achieve ultra-low engine-out emissions with high indicated thermal efficiency. However, a limitation on high-load expansion due to the higher maximum in-cylinder pressure rise rate (mPRR) is a main problem. Thus, it is important to establish the operating strategy and study the effect of in-cylinder flow motion with dual-fuel combustion to achieve a low mPRR and emissions while maintaining high-efficiency. In this research, the characteristics of gasoline-diesel dual-fuel combustion on different hardware were studied to verify the effect of the in-cylinder flow motion on dual-fuel combustion.

Various advanced combustion concepts, which can achieve higher thermal efficiency and emissions reduction, have been suggested as the emissions regulation gets stricter. Dual-fuel combustion that operates by using different fuels having both premixed and non-premixed combustion characteristics is one of the viable alternatives. In dual-fuel combustion, it is critical to understand air-fuel mixture distribution as it determines the ignition spot and following combustion phase. The fuel distribution in the engine is affected by various factors, such as chamber geometry, injection strategy or in-cylinder flow motion. Furthermore, among them, in-cylinder motion, usually described in terms of swirl or tumble motion, is mostly affected by in-cylinder port geometry. In this paper, 3-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used to investigate the effect of in-cylinder flow motion in dual-fuel combustion. Two head and port geometries were used in the simulations.

Most research of internal combustion engine focuses on improving the fuel economy and reducing exhaust emissions to satisfy regulations and marketability. Engine combustion is a key factor in determining engine performance. Generally, engine operating parameters are optimized for the best performance and less exhaust emissions. However, abnormal combustion results in engine conditions that are far from an optimized operation. Abnormal combustion, including a misfire, can happen for a variety of reasons, such as superannuated vehicles, extreme changes in the driving environment, etc. Abnormal combustion causes serious deterioration of not only noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), but also the fuel economy and exhaust emission. NVH stands for unwanted noise, vibration and harshness from the vehicle. The misfiring especially deteriorates vehicle comfortability. Abnormal combustion at one cylinder breaks the exciting force balance between cylinders and causes unexpected vibration.

As emissions regulations become stricter, a variety of advanced combustion concepts that can reduce emissions with a higher thermal efficiency have been suggested. Dual-fuel combustion is one of the alternatives that has both premixed and non-premixed combustion characteristics. Knowing the effects of the mixture formation in dual-fuel combustion is important because it determines the ignition location and the following combustion phase. Hence, a thorough investigation on the related factors, such as the engine hardware or fuel spray, is required. Meanwhile, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a good technique to visualize the in-cylinder phenomena and enables quantitative investigations into the detailed combustion characteristics. In this paper, a 3-dimensional CFD simulation was used to investigate the effects of the mixture formation in dual-fuel combustion. The combustion model consists of two parts.

This paper introduces the advancement of Engine Idle Stop-and-Go (ISG, also known as Auto Engine Stop-Start) and Neutral Coasting Control (NCC) with utilizing Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and GPS. The ISG and the In-Neutral Coasting (also known as Sailing or Gliding) have been widely implemented in recent vehicles for improving their fuel economy. However, many drivers find them somewhat disturbing because they basically change behaviors of their cars from what they used to. This annoyance discourages usages of those functions and eventually undermines their benefit of fuel saving. In order to mitigate the problem, new ISG and NCC algorithms are proposed. As opposed to the conventional logics that rely only on driver’s pedal action, the new algorithms determine whether or not to enable those functions for the given driving condition, based on the traffic information obtained using ADAS sensors and the location data from GPS and navigation map.

As a result of stringent global regulations on fuel economy and CO2 emissions, the development of high-efficiency SI engines is more urgent now than ever before. Along with advanced techniques in friction reduction, many researchers endeavor to decrease the B/S (bore-to-stroke) ratio from 1.0 (square) to a certain value, which is expected to reduce the heat loss and enhance the burning rate of SI engines. In this study, the effects of B/S ratios were investigated in aspects of efficiency and knock characteristics using a single-cylinder LIVC (late intake valve closing) GDI (gasoline direct injection) engine. Three B/S ratios (0.68, 0.83 and 1.00) were tested under the same mechanical compression ratio of 12:1 and the same displacement volume of 0.5 L. The head tumble ratio was maintained at the same level to solely investigate the effects of geometrical changes caused by variations in the B/S ratio.

Large-eddy simulation (LES) applications for internal combustion engine (ICE) flows are constantly growing due to the increase of computing resources and the availability of suitable CFD codes, methods and practices. The LES superior capability for modeling spatial and temporal evolution of turbulent flow structures with reference to RANS makes it a promising tool for describing, and possibly motivating, ICE cycle-to-cycle variability (CCV) and cycle-resolved events such as knock and misfire. Despite the growing interest towards LES in the academic community, applications to ICE flows are still limited. One of the reasons for such discrepancy is the uncertainty in the estimation of the LES computational cost. This in turn is mainly dependent on grid density, the CFD domain extent, the time step size and the overall number of cycles to be run. Grid density is directly linked to the possibility of reducing modeling assumptions for sub-grid scales.

It has been discussed in numerous prior studies that in-neutral coasting, or sailing, can accomplish considerable amount of fuel saving when properly used. The driving maneuver basically makes the vehicle sail in neutral gear when propulsion is unnecessary. By disengaging a clutch or shifting the gear to neutral, the vehicle may better utilize its kinetic energy by avoiding dragging from the engine side. This strategy has been carried over to series production recently in some of the vehicles on the market and has become one of the eco-mode features available in current vehicles. However, the duration of coasting must be long enough to attain more fuel economy benefit than Deceleration Fuel Cut-Off (DFCO) - which exists in all current vehicle powertrain controllers - can bring. Also, the transients during shifting back to drive gear can result in a drivability concern.

Improving fuel efficiency and emission characteristics are significant issues in engine research. Because the engine has complex systems and various operating parameters, the experimental research is limited by cost and time. One-dimensional (1D) simulation has attracted the attention of researchers because of its effectiveness and relatively high accuracy. In a 1D simulation, the applied model must be accurate for the reliability of the simulation results. Because in-cylinder turbulence mainly determines the combustion characteristics, and mean flow velocity affects the in-cylinder heat transfer and efficiency in a spark-ignited (SI) engine, a number of sophisticated models have been developed to predict in-cylinder turbulence and mean flow velocity. In particular, tumble is a significant factor of in-cylinder turbulence in SI engine.

In this study, fundamental questions in improving thermal efficiency of spark-ignition engine were revisited, regarding two principal factors, that is, stroke-to-bore (S/B) ratio and valve timings. In our experiment, late intake valve closing (LIVC) camshaft and variable valve timing (VVT) module for valve timing control were equipped in the single-cylinder, direct-injection spark-ignition (DISI) engine with three different S/B ratios (1.00, 1.20, and 1.47). In these three setups, displacement volume and compression ratio (CR) were fixed. In addition, the tumble ratio for cylinder head was also kept the same to minimize the flow effect on the flame propagation caused by cylinder head while focusing on the sole effect of changing the S/B ratio.

Increasing compression ratio is essential for developing future high-efficiency engines due to the intrinsic characteristics of spark-ignited engines. However, it also causes the unfavorable, abnormal knocking phenomena which is the auto-ignition in the unburned end-gas region. To cope with regulations, many researchers have been experimenting with various methods to suppress knock occurrence. In this paper, it is shown that cooling the combustion chamber using coolants, which is one of the most practical methods, has a strong effect on knock mitigation. Furthermore, the relationship between thermal boundary and coolant temperatures is shown. In the beginning of this paper, knock metrics using an in-cylinder pressure sensor are explained for readers, even though entire research studies cannot be listed due to the innumerableness. The coolant passages for the cylinder head and the liner were separated to examine independent cooling strategies.

Hyundai-Kia Motor Company recently developed a multi-way, electrical coolant valve for engine thermal management module (TMM). The main purposes of the TMM are to boost fuel economy by accelerating engine warm-up and also to enhance engine thermal efficiency by actively controlling the operating temperature. In addition to those, the system can improve vehicle heating and cooling performance as well. The electrical coolant valve is a key component in the TMM as it modulates the amount of coolant flow to individual components in cooling system such as engine oil heat exchanger, heater core, and radiator. The coolant flow modulation is done by controlling the electric valve’s position with using an electric motor attached to the valve. The objective of the valve control is to manage coolant temperature at a desired level that varies depending on vehicle’s operating condition. This paper discusses the control algorithm developed for controlling electrical coolant valve.

The increasing interest in the application of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to Internal Combustion Engines (hereafter ICEs) flows is motivated by its capability to capture spatial and temporal evolution of turbulent flow structures. Furthermore, LES is universally recognized as capable of simulating highly unsteady and random phenomena driving cycle-to-cycle variability (CCV) and cycle-resolved events such as knock and misfire. Several quality criteria were proposed in the recent past to estimate LES uncertainty: however, definitive conclusions on LES quality criteria for ICEs are still far to be found. This paper describes the application of LES quality criteria to the TCC-III single-cylinder optical engine from University of Michigan and GM Global R&D; the analyses are carried out under motored condition.