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In order to extend the HCCI high load operational limit, the effects of the distributions of temperature and fuel concentration on pressure rise rate (dP/dθ) were investigated through theoretical and experimental methods. The Blow-Down Super Charge (BDSC) and the EGR guide parts are employed simultaneously to enhance thermal stratification inside the cylinder. And also, to control the distribution of fuel concentration, direct fuel injection system was used. As a first step, the effect of spatial temperature distribution on maximum pressure rise rate (dP/dθmax) was investigated. The influence of the EGR guide parts on the temperature distribution was investigated using 3-D numerical simulation. Simulation results showed that the temperature difference between high temperature zone and low temperature zone increased by using EGR guide parts together with the BDSC system.

In this study, in order to clarify the mechanism of preignition occurrence in highly boosted SI engine at low speed and high load operating conditions, directphotography of preignition events and light induced fluorescence imaging of lubricant oil droplets during preignition cycles were applied. An endoscope was attached to the cylinder head of the modified production engine. Preigntion events were captured using high-speed video camera through the endoscope. As a result, several types of preignition sources could be found. Preignition caused by glowing particles and deposit fragments could be observed by directphotography. Luminous flame was observed around the piston crevice area during the exhaust stroke of preignition cycles.

The authors investigated the reasons of how a preignition occurs in a highly boosted gasoline engine. Based on the authors' experimental results, theoretical investigations on the processes of how a particle of oil or solid comes out into the cylinder and how a preignition occurs from the particle. As a result, many factors, such as the in-cylinder temperature, the pressure, the equivalence ratio and the component of additives in the lubricating oil were found to affect the processes. Especially, CaCO3 included in an oil as an additive may be changed to CaO by heating during the expansion and exhaust strokes. Thereafter, CaO will be converted into CaCO3 again by absorbing CO2 during the intake and compression strokes. As this change is an exothermic reaction, the temperature of CaCO3 particle increases over 1000K of the chemical equilibrium temperature determined by the CO2 partial pressure.

In reciprocating internal combustion engines, the Otto cycle indicates the best thermal efficiency under a given compression ratio. To achieve an ideal Otto cycle, combustion must take place instantaneously at top dead center, but in fact, this is impossible. Meanwhile, if we allow slower piston motion around top dead center, combustion will be promoted at that period; then both the in-cylinder pressure and degree of constant volume will increase, leading to higher thermal efficiency. In order to verify this hypothesis, an engine with slower piston motion around top dead center, using an ideal constant volume combustion engine, was built and tested. As anticipated, the degree of constant volume increased. However, thermal efficiency was not improved, due to increased heat loss.

We had improved RCM and developed a Super Rapid Compression Machine (SRCM) that realizes an extremely rapid compression compared with the conventional RCM. In this study, the performance of the developed SRCM was evaluated. The SRCM was used to investigate on the effects of equivalence ratio on HCCI of n-heptane and iso-octane fuel/air mixture. Experimental results for ignition delay time, τ, and combustion time, t, were obtained from the cylinder pressure histories. The HCCI at high engine speeds was clarified by Optical observation using a high speed camera. As a result, the ignition delay time and combustion time are found to saturate above equivalence ratio of 0.6 at constant compression ratio. In the HCCI combustion in high compression ratio case, shock wave occurs from the core region of the roll-up vortex cause by piston motion. The HCCI combustion has many peaks over a wide range of frequency.

Motorcycles have been classified by engine displacement from commercial and legal demands. If this restriction on displacement were removed, what could be done to improve fuel economy? “Down sizing” would be an obvious idea. However this paper proposes a quite inverse concept, i.e. a large displacement lower speed engine. Mechanical friction in four-stroke engines generally decreases in proportion to the square of engine speed. Thus mechanical efficiency should be better at lower operation speeds. According to this concept, developing a 200cm3 experimental engine was successful in improving fuel economy by 79% in the ECE40 mode and by 97% at 60km/h cruise condition, compared to the 100cm3 original engine.

Because the two-stroke gasoline engine has a feature of high power density, it might become a choice for automobiles' power train if the high HC exhaust emissions and high fuel consumption rate could be improved. As the GDI technology is quite effective for two-stroke engines, a Schnurle-type small engine was modified to a GDI engine, and its performance was tested. Also, numerical analysis of the mixture-formation process was carried out. Results indicated it was possible to reduce both the HC emissions and fuel consumption drastically with the same maximum power as a carbureted engine at WOT condition. However, misfiring in light load condition was left unresolved. Numerical analysis clarified the process of how the mixture formation got affected by the injector location, injection timing, and gas motion.

The authors have been engaged in developing a new-generation two-stroke gasoline engine which could be employed ultimately for automobiles. By investigating the defects of the Schnurle-type two-stroke gasoline engine, a reverse uniflow-type direct injection engine has been developed and built. The newly introduced system employs stratified charge combustion in light to medium load conditions by using the technology already developed for the four-stroke direct injection gasoline engines while it can supply the maximum power output by using a super-charger and attaining homogeneous combustion. Engine performance is being tested experimentally. In order to analyze the performance test results, numerical analysis of in-cylinder phenomena, such as gas-exchange, gas motion, fuel spray formation, and mixture formation is carried out in this paper.

This paper details the air-fuel mixing process in a gasoline direct injection (DI) engine. Laser measurement techniques such as particle image velocimetry (PIV) and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) were employed on the optical engine with a transparent cylinder to analyze the in-cylinder flow and fuel vapor concentration. In addition, firing tests were conducted using an actual engine. Test results showed that the multi-stage injection is effective for air-fuel mixing and improvement of combustion stability.

Behaviors of shock waves in knocking phenomena were observed in detail and influences of low temperature reaction on the flame and spontaneous ignition of end gas were investigated through experiments using high-speed direct and schlieren photography. As a result, it was found that light emission of shock waves, that is an indicator of pressure, rose when the shock waves collided with the cylinder wall and that pressure waves arose by low temperature reaction before knocking occurrence. Flame oscillation was caused by pressure waves. It is presumed that pressure waves influence spontaneous ignition.

To avoid knocking phenomena, a special crank mechanism for gasoline engine that allowed the piston to move rapidly near TDC (Top Dead Center) was developed and experimentally demonstrated in the previous study. As a result, knocking was successfully mitigated and indicated thermal efficiency was improved [1],[2],[3],[4]. However, performance of the proposed system was evaluated at only limited operating conditions. In the present study, to investigate the effect of piston movement near TDC on combustion characteristics and indicated thermal efficiency and to clarify the knock mitigation mechanism of the proposed method, experimental studies were carried out using a single cylinder engine with a compression ratio of 13.7 at various engine speeds and loads. The special crank mechanism, which allows piston to move rapidly near TDC developed in the previous study, was applied to the test engine with some modification of tooling accuracy.

To understand the mechanism of the combustion by torch flame jet in a gas engine with pre-chamber and also to obtain the strategy of improving thermal efficiency by optimizing the structure of pre-chamber including the diameter and number of orifices, the combustion process was investigated by three dimensional numerical simulations and experiments of a single cylinder natural gas engine. As a result, the configuration of orifices was found to affect the combustion performance strongly. With the same orifice diameter of 1.5mm, thermal efficiency with 7 orifices in pre-chamber was higher than that with 4 orifices in pre-chamber, mainly due to the reduction of heat loss by decreasing the impingement of torch flame on the cylinder linear. Better thermal efficiency was achieved in this case because the flame propagated area increases rapidly while the flame jets do not impinge on the cylinder wall intensively.

The durability of a piston is an essential factor that limits the engine performance. The temperature of a piston, therefore, is valuable information for the development of an engine. As the conventionally applied material hardness method is not a direct measurement of temperature during operation, this method is useful only under constant-speed operating conditions and unable to satisfy various demands of piston temperature measurement. The authors have, therefore, developed the piston temperature measurement system that withstands high engine speed using the compact and light-weight electromagnetic induction method that permits direct measurements of piston temperatures with a thermistor and allows measurement information exchange near the bottom dead center. The system is applicable to motorcycle engines which often use high speed allows measurement up to 15,300 r/min and assures durability and reliability for more than 10 hours.

In order to improve thermal efficiency of spark ignition engines, a novel method to increase degree of constant volume was considered. Because the combustion speed is not infinity as assumed in Otto cycle but limited, it is necessary to decrease the piston-movement around TDC so as to increase degree of constant volume. At first, experimental study was made to confirm this. A test engine which has longer expansion stroke than compression stroke and enables a slow piston-movement during combustion period was built. The experimental data indicated an increase in degree of constant volume, but did not show an increase in thermal efficiency. In order to clarify this reason, numerical simulations are conducted in this paper. As a result, the gain due to the increase in degree of constant volume caused by piston-motion during combustion was found not exceeding the loss by increased heat loss.

In reciprocating internal combustion engines, the piston stops in a moment at top dead center (TDC), so there exists a necessary time to proceed combustion. However more slowing piston motion around TDC, does it have a possibility to produce the following effects? The slowed piston motion may expedite combustion proceed and increase cylinder pressure. This may lead to an increase of degree of constant volume. As a result, thermal efficiency may be improved. In order to verify this idea, two types of engines were tested. The first engine attained high cylinder pressure as expected. The P-V diagram formed an almost ideal Otto cycle. However, this did not contribute to the improvement in the thermal efficiency. Then the second engine with further slower piston motion by active piston control was tested in order to examine the above reason.

Honda developed a 750cm3 V-4 engine adopting an elliptical piston, and began selling the “NR” motorcycle with the engine installed in 1992. The adoption of an elliptical piston and cylinder achieved a compact layout of eight valves, which consists of four intake valves and four exhaust valves per cylinder. This paper explains the features of an engine with such a layout, focusing on the following: 1) Multiple valves and short-stroke enable the 750cm3 engine to achieve 15,000rpm. 2) The engine is more compact and lightweight than an engine having the same displacement, and more powerful than one with twice as many cylinders (8 cylinders). Also, this paper describes the techniques giving improved blowby gas and oil consumption characteristics as related to the sealing property of the piston, cylinder and piston ring and achieving performance equivalent to a conventional motorcycle engine.

A new combustion method of high compression ratio SI engine was studied and proposed in order to achieve higher thermal efficiency of SI engine comparable to that of CI engine. Compression ratio of SI engine is generally restricted by the knocking phenomena. A combustion chamber profile and a cranking mechanism are studied to avoid knocking with high compression ratio. Since reducing the end-gas temperature will suppress knocking, a combustion chamber was considered to have a wide surface at the end-gas region. However, wide surface will lead to high heat loss, which may cancel the gain of higher compression ratio operation. Thereby, a special cranking mechanism was adopted which allowed the piston to move rapidly near TDC. Numerical simulations were performed to optimize the cranking mechanism for achieving higher thermal efficiency. An elliptic gear system and a leaf-shape gear system were employed in the simulations.

The lean combustion system, developed for fuel economy inprovement, uses a Lean Mixture Sensor for the feedback control of air-fuel ratio in the lean mixture range. The Lean Mixture Sensor, comprises a zirconia solid electrolyte cell which has an electrochemical pumping action and a ceramic coating layer as a diffusion layer; the measurable range is from the stoichiometric to 25 of air-fuel ratio.

Conventional two-stroke engines have defects such as unstable combustion, high fuel consumption rate and high HC emissions. In order to overcome the defects, a direct fuel injection system and a novel scavenging system were adopted. The authors tested a newly developed reverse uniflow-type two-stroke direct injection gasoline engine that was designed by numerical simulations. In comparison with the base engine at low engine speed, HC emission was decreased by up to 80%, and BSFC was reduced by around 40%. Power and BSFC were superior to those of a latest port-injection four-stroke engine. Furthermore, it was found that engine performance of exhaust gas emissions, fuel economy or output power can be selectively optimized by switching homogeneous and stratified combustion.

High specific power output two-stroke engine for snowmobile use was converted to a Direct Fuel Injection (DFI) engine, in order to achieve lower HC emission by avoiding fuel short circuiting and to obtain higher specific power output by increasing induction air and optimizing A/F. High pressure single fluid fuel system was chosen because of extremely high fuel delivery rate. The fuel injector and its location were investigated and optimized for better mixture formation and lower HC emission. 140kW/L level specific power output, maximum engine speed of 9000 rpm, and 1/2 the level of HC emissions were obtained.