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The effect of an annular, piston bowl-rim cavity on in-cylinder and engine-out soot emissions is measured in a heavy-duty, optically accessible, single-cylinder diesel engine using in-cylinder soot diagnostics and exhaust smoke emission measurements. The baseline piston configuration consists of a right-cylindrical bowl, while the cavity-piston configuration features an additional annular cavity that is located below the piston bowl-rim and connected to the main-combustion chamber through a thin annular passage, accounting for a 3% increase in the clearance volume, resulting in a reduction in geometric compression ratio (CR) from 11.22 to 10.91. Experiments using the cavity-piston configuration showed a significant reduction of engine-out smoke ranging from 20-60% over a range of engine loads.

A hydrogen-diesel dual direct injection (H2DDI) combustion strategy in a compression-ignition engine is investigated numerically, reproducing the configuration of previous experimental investigations. These experiments demonstrated the potential of up to 50% diesel substitution by hydrogen while maintaining high engine efficiency; nevertheless, the emission of NOx increased compared with diesel operation and was strongly dependent on the hydrogen injection timing. This implies the efficiency and NOx emission are closely associated with hydrogen charge stratification; however, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Aiming to highlight the hydrogen injection-timing influence on hydrogen/air mixture stratification and engine performance, the present study numerically investigates the mixture formation and combustion process in the H2DDI engine concept using Converge, a three-dimensional fluid dynamics simulation code.

The combustion process of a homogeneous hydrogen charge in a small-bore compression ignition engine with diesel-pilot ignition was simulated using the CONVERGE computational fluid dynamics code. Analysis of the simulation results aimed to understand the processes leading to NOx production and heat loss in this combustion strategy, and their dependence on the hydrogen fuel energy fraction. Previous experimental results demonstrated promising performance, but this comes with a penalty in increased NOx emissions and potentially higher heat losses. The present study aims to enhance understanding of the mechanisms governing these phenomena. The simulated engine was initialised with a lean homogeneous hydrogen-air mixture at BDC and n-dodecane was injected as a diesel surrogate fuel near TDC. The simulations were validated based on experimental results for up to 50% hydrogen energy fraction, followed by an exploratory study with variation of the energy fraction from 0% to 90%.