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Dieseline combustion as a concept combines the advantages of gasoline and diesel by offline or online blending the two fuels. Dieseline has become an attractive new compression ignition combustion concept in recent years and furthermore an approach to a full-boiling-range fuel. High speed imaging with near-parallel backlit light was used to investigate the spray characteristics of dieseline and pure fuels with a common rail diesel injection system in a constant volume vessel. The results were acquired at different blend ratios, and at different temperatures and back pressures at an injection pressure of 100MPa. The penetrations and the evaporation states were compared with those of gasoline and diesel. The spray profile was analyzed in both area and shape with statistical methods. The effect of gasoline percentage on the evaporation in the fuel spray was evaluated.

In this paper, a hybrid combustion mode in four-stroke gasoline direct injection engines was studied. Switching cam profiles and injection strategies simultaneously was adopted to obtain a rapid and smooth switch between SI mode and HCCI mode. Based on the continuous pressure traces and corresponding emissions, HCCI steady operation, HCCI transient process (combustion phase adjustment, SI-HCCI, HCCI-SI, HCCI cold start) were studied. In HCCI mode, HCCI combustion phase can be adjusted rapidly by changing the split injection ratio. The HCCI control strategies had been demonstrated in a Chery GDI2.0 engine. The HCCI engine simulation results show that, oxygen and active radicals are stored due to negative valve overlap and split fuel injection under learn burn condition. This reduces the HCCI sensitivity on inlet boundary conditions, such as intake charge and intake temperature. The engine can be run from 1500rpm to 4000rpm in HCCI mode without spark ignition.

Knocking is the main obstacle of increasing compression ratio to improve the thermal efficiency of gasoline engines. In this paper, the concept of stratified stoichiometric mixture (SSM) was proposed to suppress knocking in gasoline engines. The rich mixture near the spark plug increases the speed of the flame propagation and the lean mixture in the end gas suppresses the auto ignition. The overall air/fuel ratio keeps stoichiometric to solve the emission problem using three way catalysts (TWC). Moreover, both the rich zone and lean zone lead to soot free combustion due to homogeneous mixture. The effect on the knocking of homogeneous and stratified mixture was studied in a direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine using numerical simulation and experimental investigation respectively.

High boost and direct injection are effective ways for energy saving in gasoline engines. However, the occurrence of super-knock at high load has become a main obstacle for further improving power density and fuel economy. It has been known that super-knock can be induced by pre-ignition, and oil droplet auto-ignition is found to be one of the possible mechanisms. In this study, experiments were conducted in a single-cylinder thermal research engine (TRE), in which different types of oil and surrogates were directly injected into the cylinder and then led to pre-ignition and super-knock. The effect of oil injection timing, oil injection quantity, different gasoline and different oil were tested. All the oil in this work could induce pre-ignition, even though their combustion phasing was much later than that in the case of n-hexadecane.

Particle Number (PN) have already been a big issue for developing high efficiency internal combustion engines (ICEs). In this study, controlled spark-assisted stratified compression ignition (SSCI) with moderate end-gas auto-ignition was used for reducing PN in a high compression ratio gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine. Under wide open throttle (WOT) and Maximum Brake Torque timing (MBT) condition, high external cooled exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) was filled in the cylinder, while two-stage direct injection was used to form desired stoichiometric but stratified mixture. SSCI combustion mode exhibits two-stage heat release, where the first stage is associated with flame propagation induced by spark ignition and the second stage is the result of moderate end-gas auto-ignition without pressure oscillation at the middle or late stage of the combustion process.

A new combustion mode namely multiple premixed compression ignition (MPCI) for gasoline engines was proposed. The MPCI mode can be realized by two or more times gasoline injections into cylinder with a high pressure around the compression TDC and featured with a premixed combustion after each injection in the cylinder, which is different from the existed gasoline direct injection compression ignition (GDICI) modes such as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) mode with gasoline injection occurred in intake stroke, and partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode with multiple gasoline injections in intake and compression strokes before the start of combustion (SOC). Therefore the spray and combustion of the MPCI mode are alternatively occurred as "spray-combustion-spray-combustion" near the TDC, rather than "spray-spray-combustion" sequence as traditional PPCI gasoline engines.

Two premixed compression ignition modes for low octane gasoline are numerically investigated. The multiple premixed compression ignition (MPCI) mode is featured with a sequence of “spray- combustion- spray- combustion”, while the partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode is a sequence of “spray- spray- combustion”. This paper compares the combustion process of the two modes using multi-dimensional CFD code, KIVA-3v, which can perform chemical reaction calculations for different fuels by a discrete multiple component (DMC) method. The fuel used for simulation consists of 58.5% i-C8H18 and 41.5% n-C7H16 in volume, and has the same RON and similar physical properties to straight-run naphtha used in the experiment. The engine operating condition is fixed at a 1600rpm and 0.7 MPa IMEP. The injection strategies for these two modes are different. All of the parameters in the simulation come from the single cylinder engine experiments.

HCCI combustion was studied in a 4-stroke gasoline engine with a direct injection system. The electronically controlled two-stage gasoline injection and spark ignition system were adopted to control the mixture formation, ignition timing and combustion rate in HCCI engine. The engine could be operated in HCCI combustion mode in a range of load from 1 to 5 bar IMEP and operated in SI combustion mode up to load of 8 bar IMEP. The HCCI combustion characteristics were investigated under different A/F ratios, engine speeds, starts of injection, as well as spark ignition enabled or not. The test results reveal the HCCI combustion features as a high-pressure gradient after ignition and has advantages in high thermal efficiency and low NOx emissions over SI combustion. At the part load of 1400rpm and IMEP of 3.5bar, ISFC in HCCI mode is 25% lower and NOx emissions is 95% lower than that in SI mode.

Super knock which occurs in highly boosted spark ignition engines in low speed pre-ignition regime can lead to severe engine damage. However, super knock occurs occasionally, it is difficult to clearly identify the causes. The widely accepted assumption for the cause of this phenomenon is oil intrusion. Most of oils have been proved to have higher cetane number than n-heptane dose, indicating that the intruded oil is very liable to auto-ignition in a boosted engine. Although there have been reported the type of base oil and additive has significant effect on pre-ignition frequency, the oil induced super knock is still so far not supported by any direct evidence. This paper presents the effect of direct oil intrusion into cylinder on super knock. The experiment was carried out in a single cylinder engine. The diluted oil by gasoline with different ratio was directly injected into cylinder using a modified single-hole injector with 4MPa injection pressure.

The effects of the temporal and spatial distributions of ignition timings of combustion zones on combustion noise in a Direct Injection Compression Ignition (DICI) engine were studied using experimental tests and numerical simulations. The experiments were performed with different fuel injection strategies on a heavy-duty diesel engine. Cylinder pressure was measured with the sampling intervals of 0.1°CA in order to resolve noise components. The simulations were performed using the KIVA-3V code with detailed chemistry to analyze the in-cylinder ignition and combustion processes. The experimental results show that optimal sequential ignition and spatial distribution of combustion zones can be realized by adopting a two-stage injection strategy in which the proportion of the pilot injection fuel and the timings of the injections can be used to control the combustion process, thus resulting in simultaneously higher thermal efficiency and lower noise emissions.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) and Spark Ignition (SI) dual-mode operation provides a practical solution to apply HCCI combustion in gasoline engines. However, the different requirements of air-fuel ratio and EGR ratio between HCCI combustion and SI combustion results in enormous control challenges in HCCI/SI mode switch. In this paper, HCCI combustion was achieved in a four-cylinder gasoline direct injection engine without knock and misfire using close-loop control by knock index. Assisted Spark Stratified Compression Ignition (ASSCI) combustion was obtained stably at medium-high load. ASSCI combustion exhibits two-stage heat release with initial flame propagation and controlled auto-ignition. The knock index of ASSCI combustion is less than HCCI combustion due to the lower pressure rise rate.

The design and optimization of a modern spray-guided gasoline direct injection engine require a thorough understanding of the fuel spray characteristics and atomization process. The fuel spray Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technology can be an effective means to study and predict spray characteristics, and as a consequence, to drastically reduce experimental work during the engine development process. For this reason, an accurate numerical simulation of the spray evolution process is imperative. Different models based on aerodynamically-induced breakup mechanism have been implemented to simulate spray atomization process in earlier studies, and the effect of turbulence from the injector nozzle is recently being concerned increasingly by engine researchers. In this study, a turbulence-induced primary breakup model coupled with aerodynamic instability is developed.

Fuel spray atomization process is known to play a key role in affecting mixture formation, combustion efficiency and soot emissions in direct injection engines. The fuel spray Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technology can be an effective means to study and predict spray characteristics such as penetration, droplet size and droplet velocity, and as a consequence, to drastically reduce experimental work during the engine development process. For this reason, an accurate numerical simulation of the spray evolution process is imperative. Different approaches and various models based on aerodynamically induced breakup mechanism have been implemented to simulate spray atomization process in earlier studies, and the effects of turbulence and cavitation from the injector nozzle is recently being concerned increasingly by engine researchers. In this study, an enhanced turbulence and cavitation induced primary breakup model combining aerodynamic breakup mechanism is developed.

Low Speed Pre-Ignition (LSPI), also referred to as superknock or mega-knock is an undesirable turbocharged engine combustion phenomenon limiting fuel economy, drivability, emissions and durability performance. Numerous researchers have previously reported that the frequency of Superknock is sensitive to engine oil and fuel composition as well as engine conditions in controlled laboratory and engine-based studies. Recent studies by Toyota and Tsinghua University have demonstrated that controlled induction of particles into the combustion chamber can induce pre-ignition and superknock. Afton and Tsinghua recently developed a multi-physics approach which was able to realistically model all of the elementary processes known to be involved in deposit induced pre-ignition. The approach was able to successfully simulate deposit induced pre-ignition at conditions where the phenomenon has been experimentally observed.

In the context of carbon neutrality, ammonia is considered a zero-carbon fuel with potential applications in the transportation sector. However, its high ignition energy, low flame speed, and high natural temperature, indicative of low reactivity, make it challenging to be applied as a sole fuel in engines. In such a scenario, the use of another zero-carbon and highly reactive fuel, hydrogen, becomes necessary to enhance the combustion of ammonia. Furthermore, jet ignition, a method known for improving engine combustion performance, may also hold potential for enhancing the combustion performance of ammonia engines. To explore the applicability of jet ignition in engines, this study conducted experimental research on a single-cylinder engine. Two ignition methods were employed: passive jet ignition of premixed ammonia-hydrogen at a compression ratio of 11.5, and active jet ignition of pure ammonia using hydrogen jet flame at a compression ratio of 17.3.

Ammonia (NH3), a zero-carbon fuel, has great potential for internal combustion engine development. However, its high ignition energy, low laminar burning velocity, narrow range of flammability limits, and high latent heat of vaporization are not conducive for engine application. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of utilizing ammonia in a heavy-duty diesel engine, specifically through low-pressure direct injection (LP-DI) of hydrogen to ignite ammonia combustion. Due to the lack of a well-corresponding mechanism for the operating conditions of ammonia-hydrogen engines, this study serves only as a trend-oriented prediction. The paper compares the engine's combustion and emission performance by optimizing four critical parameters: excess air ratio, hydrogen energy ratio, ignition timing, and hydrogen injection timing. The results reveal that excessively high hydrogen energy ratios lead to an advanced combustion phase, reducing indicated thermal efficiency.