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Combustion closed-loop control is now being studied intensively for engineering applications to improve fuel economy. Currently, combustion closed-loop feedback control is usually based on the cylinder pressure signal, which is the most direct and exact signal that reflects engine working process. Although there were some relatively cheap types of in-cylinder pressure sensors, cylinder pressure sensors have not been widely applied because of their high price now. Moreover, the combustion analysis based on cylinder pressure imposes high requirements on the information acquisition capability of the current ECU, such as high acquisition and analog-digital conversion frequency and so on. For developing a low price and feasible technology, a new engine information feedback method based on model calculation and crank angular velocity measurement was proposed. A simplified combustion model was operated in ECU for the real-time calculation of cylinder pressure and combustion parameters.

Although supercharged system has been widely employed in downsized engines, the effect of supercharging on the intake flow characteristics remains inadequately understood. Therefore, it is worthwhile to investigate intake flow characteristics under high intake pressure. In this study, the supercharged intake flow is studied by experiment using steady flow test bench with supercharged system and transient flow simulation. For the steady flow condition, gas compressibility effect is found to significantly affect the flow coefficient (Cf), as Cf decreases with increasing intake pressure drop, if the compressibility effect is neglected in calculation by the typical evaluation method; while Cf has no significant change if the compressibility effect is included. Compared with the two methods, the deviation of the theoretical intake velocity and the density of the intake flow is the reason for Cf calculation error.

OH, soot and temperature distributions of wall-impinging diesel fuel spray were investigated in a high-temperature high-pressure constant volume combustion vessel. The ambient temperature (Ta) was set as 773 K, and the wall temperature (Tw) was set as 523 K, 673 K, 773 K, respectively. Three different injection pressures (Pi) of 60 MPa, 100 MPa, 160 MPa, and the ambient pressures (Pa) of 4 MPa were applied. The OH spatial distributions of wall-impinging spray were measured by the method of OH chemiluminescence imaging. Two-color pyrometry was applied to evaluate the spatial distributions of KL factor and flame temperature of wall-impinging spray. The results reveal that, OH chemiluminescence is observed in the region near the impingement point firstly. The regions of high OH chemiluminescence intensity and high KL factor appear in the location near the wall surface along the whole combustion process.

This research was focused on the effect of pre-chamber ignition and compared the knock limit of normal spark ignition in the main chamber and pre-chamber jet ignition combustion in a spark ignition gasoline engine. Experiments were conducted in a single-cylinder engine with optical access. Engine was operated with stoichiometric air/fuel mixtures at 1200 rev/min and different inlet pressures of 1, 1.2, and 1.4 bar. No auxiliary fuel was injected into the pre-chamber when jet-ignition mode was used. The results show that significant knock limit extension can be realized with use of a pre-chamber ignition unit. The main differences in engine performance, heat release and combustion, knock resistance and flame propagation were compared between the pre-chamber ignition and conventional spark ignition in the main chamber by in-cylinder pressure measurements and high-speed flame chemiluminescence imaging.

Based on the temperature and pressure in the cylinder of GDI (Gasoline Direct Injection) engines under the common operating conditions, jets´ characteristics of gasoline and iso-octane at different fuel temperatures under the high ambient temperature were studied by means of high-speed photography and striation method. It is found that the supercritical gasoline jet shows the morphological collapse of jet center and the protrusion of the front surface, but the iso-octane jet doesn´t. Meanwhile, as the fuel temperature rises, the flash boiling and the interference between adjacent plumes affect the gasoline jet, and cause the center of the jet to form a high-speed and low-pressure zone, hence the air entrainment in this region contributes to the collapse of jets. The collapse and convergence of jets´ morphology are the main reasons for the change of penetration and cone angle.

A new two-dimensional wall-flow DPF microstructure model has been developed in this paper to investigate the particle deposition distribution in DPF channels and the deep-bed filtration process of DPF. The substrate wall of the DPF having a thickness of L is divided into several layers with a uniform thickness of Δy along the cross-wall direction, and each layer has specific porosity and pore size. The pressure drop, particle deposition distribution and the dynamic deep-bed filtration process of the DPF with inhomogeneous wall structure are studied under various space velocities. Besides, the differences on DPF’s performance brought by the inhomogeneous wall structure are discussed by comparing with a homogeneous wall structure.

Nowadays the strong knocking combustion involving destructive pressure wave or shock wave has become the main bottleneck for highly boosted engines when pursuing high thermal efficiency. However, its fundamental mechanism is still not fully understood. In this study, synchronization measurements through simultaneous pressure acquisition and high-speed direct photography were performed to comparatively investigate the strong knocking combustion of iso-octane and propane in a rapid compression machine with flat piston design. The pressure characteristics and visualized images of autoignition and reaction wave propagation were compared, and the correlations between thermodynamic trajectories and mixture reactivity progress were analyzed. The results show that iso-octane behaves a greater propensity to strong knocking combustion than propane at similar target pressures.

Combustion cycle-to-cycle variation (CCV) of Spark-Ignition (SI) engines can be influenced by the cyclic variations in charge motion, trapped mass and mixture composition inside the cylinder. A high CCV leads to misfire or knock, limiting the engine’s operating regime. To understand the mechanism of the effect of flow field and mixture compositions on CCV, the present numerical work was performed in a single cylinder Direct Injection Spark-Ignition (DISI) engine. A large eddy simulation (LES) approach coupled with the G-equation combustion model was developed to capture the CCV by accurately resolving the turbulent flow field spatially and temporally. Further, the ignition process was modeled by sourcing energy during the breakdown and arc phases with a line-shape ignition model which could move with the local flow. Detailed chemistry was solved both inside and outside the flame front. A compact 48-species 152-reactions primary reference fuel (PRF) reduced mechanism was used.

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is widely recognized as an outstanding portable power plant and expected to be possibly commercialization in the near future. As is well known, mechanical stresses implemented on the bipolar plates during the assembly procedure should have prominent influences on mass and heat transfer behavior inside the cell, as well as the resultant performance. In this study, an analytical model is proposed to comprehensively investigate the influence of clamping force on the mass transport, electrochemical properties and overall cell output capability of a PEM fuel cell. The results indicate that proper clamping force not only benefits the gas leakage prevention but also increases the contact area between the neighboring components to decrease the contact ohmic resistance.

In order to meet the increasingly stringent emissions restriction, it is indispensable to improve the combustion and emissions technology of high-speed marine diesel engines. Oxygen-enriched combustion and intake air humidification are effective ways to control pollution from diesel engines and improve combustion of diesel engines. In this study, the combustion and emission characteristics of supercharged intercooled marine diesel engine with humidity ratio and intake oxygen concentration were investigated by using multi-dimensional CFD model. The combustion model was established by AVL Fire code. The combination strategy of intake air humidification and oxygen-enriched combustion were optimized under partial load at 1350 rpm.

The flame structure and combustion characteristics of wall-impinging diesel fuel spray were investigated in a high-temperature high-pressure constant volume combustion vessel. The ambient temperature (Ta) was set to 773 K. The wall temperatures (Tw) were set to 523 K, 673 K and 773 K respectively. Three different injection pressures (Pi) of 600 bar, 1000bar and 1600bar, two ambient pressures (Pa) of 2 MPa and 4 MPa were applied. The flame development process of wall-impinging spray was measured by high-speed photography, which was utilized to quantify the flame luminosity intensity, ignition delay and flame geometrical parameters. The results reveal that, as the wall temperature increases, the flame luminosity intensity increases and the ignition delay decreases.

In-cylinder direct-injected technology provides a flexible and accurate optimization for internal combustion engines to reduce emission and improve fuel efficiency. With increasingly stringent requirements for the emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and CO2, the content of injections in an engine combustion cycle has reached 7 to 9 times in gasoline direct injection (GDI) and the diesel engine with high-pressure common rail (HPCR). Accurate control of both time and quantity of injection is critical for engine performance and emissions, while the dynamic response of injector spray characteristics is a key factor. In this paper, a test bench was built for monitoring the dynamic response of solenoid injectors with high-speed micro-photography and synchronous current collection system. Experimental studies on the dynamic response of GDI and HPCR solenoid injectors were carried out.

High-pressure common rail (HPCR) fuel injection system is the most widely used fuel system in diesel engines. However, when multiple injection strategy is used, the pressure wave fluctuation is un-avoided due to the opening and closing of the needle valve which will affect the subsequent fuel injection and combustion characteristics. In this paper, several parameters: injection pressure, injection intervals, the main injection pulse widths are investigated on a common rail fuel injection test rig with two injection pulses to explore their effect on the fuel injection rate and fuel quantity. The result showed that the longer injection interval between the pilot and main injections will lead to a rail pressure drop at the beginning of the main injection so that a smaller fuel quantity will be delivered. The main injection pulse width also influences fuel injection rate and the main fuel quantity.

Flash boiling spray is effective in improving the atomization and evaporation characteristics for gasoline direct injection engines. However, for a multi-hole injector the morphology structure of spray has an obvious change with the fuel temperature increasing or the ambient pressure decreasing, which influences the process of mixture formation and flame propagation. Specially, the spray collapses with both long penetration and a narrow spray angle above certain high superheat degree, which deteriorates air/fuel mixing and hence increases emissions. It is not desired for engine applications while the mechanism of spray structure transformation for multi-hole injector still remains unclear. In the present study, a systematic flash boiling spray model for multi-hole injector is built to investigate the flash boiling spray of multi-hole injector.

Although diesel engines offer higher thermal efficiency and lower fuel consumption, larger amounts of Particulate Matters (PM) are emitted in comparison with gasoline engines. The Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF) have proved one of the most promising technologies due to the “particle number” emissions regulations. In this study, the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) multi-channel model of DPF was built properly by utilizing AVL-Fire software code to evaluate the pressure drop and soot accumulation characteristics of DPF. The main objective of this paper was to investigate the effects of soot (capacity and deposit forms) and ash (capacity and distribution factors) interaction on DPF pressure drop and soot accumulation, as well as the effects of DPF boundary conditions (inlet mass flow rate and inlet temperature) on pressure drop.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of injection pressures and fuel temperatures on the secondary injection spray evolution at the end of injection from a multi-hole gasoline direct injection (GDI) injector by Mie-scattering technique. The results of this paper show that the overall injection process can be classified into five stages which are injection delay stage, main injection stage, dwell stage, secondary injection stage and ligaments breakup stage respectively. Especially, the secondary injection occurs at the end of main injection, which is abnormal and undesirable spray behaviors. During the injection, big droplets and ligaments are injected through nozzle orifices at low speed. As the injection pressure increases, the phase of the secondary injection advances, and the injection duration decreases. At medium injection pressures (at 6, 8 MPa), more quantity of fuel are injected as ligaments.

The main objective of this paper was to investigate the pressure drop characteristics of ACT (asymmetric cell technology) design filter with various inlet mass flow rates, soot loads and ash loads by utilizing 1-D computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. The model was established by AVL Boost code. Different ratios of inlet to outlet channel width inside the DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) were investigated to determine the optimal structure in practical applications, as well as the effect of soot and ash interaction on pressure loss. The results proved that pressure drop sensitivity of different inlet/outlet channel width ratios increases with the increased inlet mass flow rate and soot load. The pressure drop increases with the increased channel width ratio at the same mass flow rate. When there is little soot deposits inside DPF, the pressure drop increases with the bigger inlet.

Diesel engines generally tend to produce a very low level of NOx and soot through the application of Miller Cycle, which is mainly due to the low temperature combustion (LTC) atmosphere resulting from the Miller Cycle utilization. A CFD model was established and calibrated against the experimental data for a part load operation at 3000 r/min. A designed set of Miller-LTC combustion modes were analyzed. It is found that a higher boost pressure coupled with EGR can further tap the potential of Miller-LTC cycle, improving and expanding the Miller-LTC operation condition. The simulated results indicated that the variation of Miller timings can decrease the regions of high temperatures and then improve the levels and trade-off relationship of NOx and soot. The in-cylinder peak pressure and NOx emissions were increased dramatically though the problem of insufficient intake charge was resolved by the enhanced intake pressure that is equivalent to dual-stage turbo-charging.

This paper investigated the effects of late intake valve closing timing (IVCT) and two-stage turbocharger systems matching based on partially premixed combustion strategy. Tests were performed on a 12-liter L6 heavy-duty engine at loads up to 10 bar BMEP at various speed. IVCT (where IVCT is -80°ATDC, -65°ATDC and -55°ATDC at 1300 rpm, 1600 rpm and 1900 rpm, respectively) lowered the intake and exhaust difference pressure, reducing pumping loss and improved the effective thermal efficiency by 1%, 1.5% and 2% at BMEP of 5 bar at 1300 rpm, 1600 rpm and 1900 rpm. For certain injection timings and EGR rate, it is found that a significant reduction in soot (above 30%) and NOx (above 70%) emissions by means of IVCT. This is due to that IVCT lowered effective compression ratio and temperature during the compression stroke, resulting in a longer ignition delay as the fuel mixed more homogeneous with the charge air ahead of ignition.

The inverse boundary element method (IBEM) is presented to accurately identify the noise sources of a diesel engine in this study. The sound pressures on four near-field planes were measured as inputs for the method. Then, the acoustic model of the full diesel engine was established using the boundary element method, and the acoustic transfer vectors (ATV) between the surface normal velocity and acoustic pressure at field points were calculated over the frequency range of interest. Based on the measured sound pressure and the ATVs, the surface normal velocity distribution of the diesel engine was reconstructed by the IBEM. The reconstructed pressures at two reference field points were compared with the measured ones. Furthermore, the panel contribution of each engine component was analyzed through the reconstructed surface velocity.