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According to authors' previous research, high pressure hydrogen engines with direct injection right before TDC and spark ignition obtain high performance and eliminate almost. abnormal combustion. This study has clarified the mooted points in the flame propagation to adjacent jets and the control of the optimum spark timing and large NOx emissions even in leaner than excess air ratio of λ=2. Nitric oxides (NOx) is the only the pollutant in the exhaust gases emitted by hydrogen engines. It has been found that the NOx formation largely depends on the mixture formation method. In order to operate the engine in a small amount of NOx, an experimental study was carried out to investigate the reduction of NOx and the output power by using dual mixture formation method, external mixture formation and direct injection.

In order to establish hydrogen engines for practical use, it is important to overcome difficulties caused by unique characteristics of hydrogen fuel. A hydrogen engine with direct injection right before top dead center(TDC) and spark ignition has advantages such as prevention of abnormal combustion and realization of high power output near the stoichiometric air-fuel ratio, in comparison with an engine with external mixture. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that ignition and combustion for this type of hydrogen engines should be improved and that further studies on mixture formation of air and injected hydrogen are necessary for the improvement. For the direct injection hydrogen engine, mixture is formed both by air flow inside the combustion chamber and by injected hydrogen jet.

The hydrogen combustion characteristics have been studied in a late-injection (near TDC) hot surface ignition engine. As a supplemental experiment, the mode of combustion was observed in a constant volume combustion chamber by the schlieren method. Consequently the combustion process, that was the flame propagation initiated by a hot surface through heterogeneous hydrogen jets, was not the same as that of a diesel engine. The experimental results in test engine showed the optimum number of injection holes and the effect of intake air swirl for better mixture formation. It was observed that the combustion was frequently accompanied by non-negligible combustion pressure vibrations at all engine operating conditions.

Considerable amount of research work on hydrogen fueled engines has been conducted for 17 years in Musashi Institute of Technology. The primary purpose of the research has been to develop a hydrogen powered autmobile, and in order to realized it, various innovations have been applied and tested. The newest outcome of this 17 years research was Musashi-7 Track, which demonstrated its performance in Innovation vehicle Design Competition held in Vancouver in July 1986. Musashi-7 Track was a modified medium duty truck, which was originally made by Hino Motors, and had a hydrogen powered engine. The track was equipped with 150 ℓ liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank and 8 MPa high pressure LH2 pump. The pump delivered 8 MPa high pressure hydrogen gas to the engine and the fuel was injected to a hot surface igniter in DI combustion chamber. This type of hydrogen enigne has following advantages. Firstly, fuel corrier weight and volume can be much smaller than those of metal-hydrides (MH).

A thin film thermocouple with a high accuracy was developed by means of computer analysis, which allowed measurements of instantaneous temperatures and heat fluxes on combustion chamber walls. Conventional Al-alloy and ceramic plates were compared in terms of the heat loss at the upper surface of each piston during combustion, using a gasoline engine and a diesel engine in the series of experiments. It was found by the comparison that the ceramic plates subjected to higher temperatures had greater heat losses in both the gasoline and diesel engines contrary to the anticipation.

Oil film thicknesses of the piston top ring and the second ring of a truck diesel engine have been measured simultaneously by embedding capacitance type clearance sensors in the ring sliding surfaces. Owing to the above, several phenomena such as the variation in oil film thickness of each ring in one cycle, correlation between the rings, difference in oil film thickness between the thrust and counter thrust-sides, effects of engine operating conditions on oil film thickness, etc. have been determined. Efforts have been also made to analyze the causes of such phenomena according to the measured results of piston slap motion and ring motions, and the calculated results of oil film thickness.