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Fuel-air mixing in a direct-injection SI engine was studied to further improve full-load torque output. The fuel-injection location of DI vs. PFI results in different heat sources for fuel evaporation, hence a DI engine has been found to exhibit higher volumetric efficiency and lower knocking tendency, resulting in higher full-load torque output [1]. The ability to change injection timing of the DI engine affects heat transfer and mixture temperature, hence later injection results in lower knocking tendency. Both the higher volumetric efficiency and the lower knocking tendency can improve engine torque output. Improving volumetric efficiency requires that the fuel is injected during the intake stroke. Reducing knocking tendency, in contrast, requires that the fuel is injected late during the compression stroke. Thus, a strategy of split injection was proposed to compromise the two competing requirements and further increase direct-injection SI engine torque output.

Stratified-charge DISI engines have been launched in the market by Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Nissan. This paper discusses the current production stratified-charge DISI systems and some alternative systems, including the system using air-forced fuel injection and a proposed system that uses a swirl flow in the piston bowl with a special shape to separate the fuel-rich mixture layer from the wall surface. New DISI concepts are proposed to overcome some drawbacks of current bowl-in-piston type stratified-charge DISI systems. Charge stratification can be realized by using a soft spray with proper spray penetration, droplet size, and cone angle, as shown by CFD simulation results. The drawbacks of fuel wall wetting, soot limited load with charge stratification, large surface to volume ratio, etc., of the bowl-in-piston type system can be minimized.

A single-cylinder OKP (optimized kinetic process) engine, which uses homogeneous-charge compression-ignition (HCCI) technology, was tested, following a previous study, to evaluate the combustion system robustness and to improve the engine performance near the boundaries of the HCCI operating regime at light loads, high loads and high speed. To evaluate the robustness of HCCI combustion control, gasoline fuels with different RON were used, and the engine was tested at different coolant temperatures. It was demonstrated that the proposed HCCI control approaches could control the OKP engine system to operate robustly using different fuels and at different coolant temperatures. The effects of fuel injection timing and residual gas fraction on HCCI combustion and emissions, especially CO emissions and combustion efficiency, were tested at light loads; and the mechanisms were analyzed.

Current demands for high fuel efficiency and low emissions in automotive powerplants have drawn attention to the two-stroke engine configuration. The present study measured trapping and scavenging efficiencies of a firing two-stroke spark-ignition engine by in-cylinder gas composition analysis. Intermediate results of the procedure included the trapped air-fuel ratio and residual exhaust gas fraction. Samples, acquired with a fast-acting electromagnetic valve installed in the cylinder head, were taken of the unburned mixture without fuel injection and of the burned gases prior to exhaust port opening, at engine speeds of 1000 to 3000 rpm and at 10 to 100% of full load. A semi-empirical, zero-dimensional scavenging model was developed based on modification of the non-isothermal, perfect-mixing model. Comparison to the experimental data shows good agreement.

Multidimensional modeling is used to study air-fuel mixing in a direct-injection spark-ignition engine. Emphasis is placed on the effects of the start of fuel injection on gas/spray interactions, wall wetting, fuel vaporization rate and air-fuel ratio distributions in this paper. It was found that the in-cylinder gas/spray interactions vary with fuel injection timing which directly impacts spray characteristics such as tip penetration and spray/wall impingement and air-fuel mixing. It was also found that, compared with a non-spray case, the mixture temperature at the end of the compression stroke decreases substantially in spray cases due to in-cylinder fuel vaporization. The computed trapped-mass and total heat-gain from the cylinder walls during the induction and compression processes were also shown to be increased in spray cases.