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Combustion characteristics of dimethyl ether, DME, have been investigated experimentally, in a heavy duty single cylinder engine equipped with an adapted common rail fuel injection system, and the effects of varying injection timing, rail pressure and exhaust gas recirculation on the combustion and emission parameters. The results show that DME combustion does not produce soot and with the use of exhaust gas recirculation NOX emissions can also be reduced to very low levels. However, high injection pressure and/or a DME adopted combustion system is required to improve the mixing process and thus reduce the combustion duration and carbon monoxide emissions.

This work evaluates the effect of charge stratification on combustion phasing, rate of heat release and emissions for HCCI combustion. Engine experiments in both optical and traditional single cylinder engines were carried out with PRF50 as fuel. The amount of stratification as well as injection timing of the stratified charge was varied. It was found that a stratified charge can influence combustion phasing, increasing the stratification amount or late injection timing of the stratified charge leads to an advanced CA50 timing. The NOx emissions follows the CA50 advancement, advanced CA50 timing leads to higher NOx emissions. Correlation between CA50 can also be seen for HC and CO emissions when the injection timing was varied, late injection and thereby advanced CA50 timing leads to both lower HC and CO emissions.

The purpose of the European « SPACE LIGHT » (Whole SPACE combustion for LIGHT duty diesel vehicles) 3-year project launched in 2001 is to research and develop an innovative Homogeneous internal mixture Charged Compression Ignition (HCCI) for passenger cars diesel engine where the combustion process can take place simultaneously in the whole SPACE of the combustion chamber while providing almost no NOx and particulates emissions. This paper presents the whole project with the main R&D tasks necessary to comply with the industrial and technical objectives of the project. The research approach adopted is briefly described. It is then followed by a detailed description of the most recent progress achieved during the tasks recently undertaken. The methodology adopted starts from the research study of the in-cylinder combustion specifications necessary to achieve HCCI combustion from experimental single cylinder engines testing in premixed charged conditions.

The automotive industry is striving to adopt model-based engine design and optimization procedures to reduce development time and costs. In this scenario, first-principles gas dynamic models predicting the mass, energy and momentum transport in the engine air path system with high accuracy and low computation effort are extremely important today for performance prediction, optimization and cylinder charge estimation and control. This paper presents a comparative study of two different modeling approaches to predict the one-dimensional unsteady compressible flow in the engine air path system. The first approach is based on a quasi-3D finite volume method, which relies on a geometrical reconstruction of the calculation domain using networks of zero-dimensional elements. The second approach is based on a model-order reduction procedure that projects the nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations describing the 1D unsteady flow in engine manifolds onto a predefined basis.

This paper describes the development, application and comparison of two different non-linear numerical codes, respectively based on a 1D and 3D schematization of the geometrical domain, for the prediction of the acoustic behavior of common silencing devices for i.c. engine pulse noise abatement. A white noise approach has been adopted and applied to predict the attenuation curves of silencers in the frequency domain, while a non-reflecting boundary condition was used to represent an anechoic termination. Expansion chambers, Helmholtz and column resonators, Herschel-Quincke tubes have been simulated by both the 1D and the 3D codes and the results compared to the available linear acoustic analytical solutions. Finally, a hybrid approach, in which the CFD code has been integrated with the 1D model, is described and applied to the simulation of a single cylinder engine. The computed results are compared to the measured pressure waves and emitted sound pressure level spectra.

Future requirements for emission reduction from combustion engines in ground vehicles might be met by using the HCCI combustion concept. In this concept a more or less homogenous air fuel mixture is compressed to auto ignition. This gives good fuel consumption compared to a normal SI engine and its ability to burn lean mixtures at low temperatures has a positive impact on exhaust emissions. However, there are challenges associated with this concept, for instance its limited operating range and combustion control. The objective of this work is to investigate a hybrid concept, based on a combination of HCCI combustion of n-heptane and SI combustion of hydrogen. The basic idea is to initiate HCCI combustion with a spark ignited stratified lean hydrogen mixture. To verify that the combustion sequence consists of flame front combustion followed by HCCI combustion, photographs of OH chemiluminescence from the combustion were taken.

An investigation of the possibility to extend the 3-dimensional modeling capabilities from conventional diesel to the HCCI combustion mode simulation was carried out. Experimental data was taken from a single cylinder engine operating with early injections for the HCCI and a split-injection (early pilot+main) for the high speed Diesel engine operation. To properly phase the HCCI mode in the experiments, high amounts of cooled EGR and a decreased compression ratio were used. In numerical simulation performed using KIVA3-V code, modified to incorporate the Detailed Chemistry Approach the same conditions were reproduced. Special attention is paid on the analysis of the events leading up to the auto-ignition, which was reasonably well predicted.

This paper investigates how particulates number PN is influenced by fuel wall-film, liner wetting, and the mixing quality for different start of injection timings (SOI). Both experimental data with PN measurements, endoscope images from a high-speed camera from a single-cylinder engine, and CFD simulations were used for the analysis. Engine geometry was a spray-guided system with 300 bar fuel pressure and with single injections. Data was captured for 2000 rpm / 9 bar IMEPn. The results show that fuel film on the piston was only found to significantly increase PN for over-advanced SOI (in our engine geometry, earlier than -310 CAD). This results in luminescence from diffusion burn on the piston surface, which strongly contributes to PN. For an SOI timing of -310 CAD, fuel film on piston reaches a maximum of 3% of the injected fuel, vaporizes, and no remaining fuel film is found at the time of ignition. Approximately 0.5-1% of the fuel ends up on the liner.

Active prechamber combustion systems for SI engines represent a feasible and effective solution in reducing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions for both marine and ground heavy-duty engines. However, reliable and low-cost numerical approaches need to be developed to support and speed-up their industrial design considering their geometry complexity and the involved multiple flow length scales. This work presents a CFD methodology based on the RANS approach for the simulation of active prechamber spark-ignition engines. To reduce the computational time, the gas exchange process is computed only in the prechamber region to correctly describe the flow and mixture distributions, while the whole cylinder geometry is considered only for the power-cycle (compression, combustion and expansion). Outside the prechamber the in-cylinder flow field at IVC is estimated from the measured swirl ratio.

Stratified combustion in gasoline engines constitutes a promising means of achieving higher thermal efficiency for low to medium engine loads than that achieved with combustion under standard homogeneous conditions. However, creating a charge that leads to a stable efficient low-emission stratified combustion process remains challenging. Combustion through a stratified charge depends strongly on the dynamics of the turbulent fuel-air mixing process and the flame propagation. Predictive simulation tools are required to elucidate this complex mixing and combustion process under stratified conditions. For the simulation of mixing processes, combustion models based on large-eddy turbulence modeling have typically outperformed the standard Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes methods.

Natural gas, biogas, and biomethane are attractive fuels for compressed natural gas (CNG) engines because of their beneficial physical and chemical characteristics. This paper examines three combustion modes - homogeneous stoichiometric, homogeneous lean burn, and stratified combustion - in an optical single cylinder engine with a gas direct injection system operating with an injection pressure of 18 bar. The combustion process in each mode was characterized by indicated parameters, recording combustion images, and analysing combustion chemiluminescence emission spectra. Pure methane, which is the main component of CNG (up to 98%) or biomethane (> 98 %), was used as the fuel. Chemiluminescence emission spectrum analysis showed that OH* and CN* peaks appeared at their characteristic wavelengths in all three combustion modes. The peak of OH* and broadband CO2* intensities were strongly dependent on the air/fuel ratio conditions in the cylinder.

To act on global warming, CO2 emissions must be reduced. This will require a reduction in the use of fossil fuels for transportation. Because of the large quantities of fossil fuels used in transportation, sources of renewable fuels other than biomass will have to be explored, such as electrofuels synthesized from CO2 using renewable electricity. Potential electrofuels include methanol and ethanol, which have shown promising results in SI engines. However, their low cetane numbers make these fuels unsuitable for CI engines because of their poor auto-ignition qualities. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the viability of using methanol and ethanol in CI engines at compression ratios of 16.7 and 20 with a pilot-main injection strategy in the PPC/CI regime. Single cylinder engine tests on a heavy duty engine were performed under medium load conditions (1262 rpm and 172 Nm).

Laws concerning emissions from heavy duty (HD) internal combustion engines are becoming increasingly stringent. New engine technologies are needed to satisfy these new requirements and to reduce fossil fuel dependency. One way to achieve both objectives can be to partially replace fossil fuels with alternatives that are sustainable with respect to emissions of greenhouse gases, particulates and nitrogen oxides (NOx). A suitable candidate is methanol. The aim of the study presented here was to investigate the possible advantages of combusting methanol in a heavy duty Diesel engine. Those are, among others, lower particulate emissions and thereby bypassing the NOx-soot trade-off. Because of methanol’s poor auto-ignition properties, Diesel was used as an igniting sources and both fuels were separately direct injected. Therefore, two separate standard common rail Diesel injection systems were used together with a newly designed cylinder head and adapted injection nozzles.

A serie of experiments were carried out to compare the combustion and emissions characteristics of a diesel engine using non-circular (elliptical) and circular shaped fuel injector nozzle holes. Elliptic nozzle holes have the potential to increase air entrainment into the spray, which could lead to decreased emissions from diesel combustion. Previous work [6,7] has shown some interesting results in a passenger car diesel engine and also in a single cylinder engine with optical access. The idea is based on results from investigations of gas jets, where the air entrainment for elliptical jets was increased substantially compared to circular jets. The present series of experiments were carried out to further investigate these effects. The non-circular holes, which were made with an aspect ratio of close to 2:1, have a similar flow rate as the conventional circular holes. Two different angles of the elliptical major axis to the injector centerline were used.

Heavy-duty vehicles are primarily powered by diesel fuel, emitting CO2 emissions regardless of the exhaust after-treatment system. Contrastingly, a hydrogen engine has the potential to decarbonize the transportation sector as hydrogen is a carbon free, renewable fuel. In this study, a multi-physics 1D simulation tool (GT-Power) is used to model the gas exchange process and performance prediction of a two-stroke hydrogen engine. The aim is to establish a maximum torque-level for a four-stroke hydrogen engine and then utilize different methods for two-stroke modeling to achieve similar torque by optimizing the gas exchange process. A camless engine is used as base, enabling the flexibility to utilize approximately square valve lift profiles. The preliminary step is the GT-Power model validation, which has been done using diesel and hydrogen engines (single-cylinder heavy-duty) experiments at different operating points (871 rpm, 1200 rpm, 1259 rpm, and 1508 rpm).