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The schlieren visualization of in-cylinder processes from the side of an engine cylinder is useful to understand the phenomena which change along the cylinder axis. A transparent collimating cylinder, TCC, permits schlieren observation inside the cylinder through its transparent wall. In this study, a single cylinder visualization engine with the TCC was applied to a direct-injection gasoline engine. A fuel spray, mixture formation and combustion were observed with a simultaneous measurement of in-cylinder pressure. The shape of the fuel spray and subsequent mixture formation process are drastically changed with the injection timing. The images of luminous flame were also taken with the schlieren images during the combustion period. Stable combustion, misfire and abnormal combustion are discussed with the comparison between the observed results and in-cylinder pressure analysis.

A multi-component fuel vaporization model is developed for numerical analysis of specific fuel component behaviors in port-fuel-injection(PFI) gasoline engines. In order to specify the differences of in-cylinder fuel distribution among its components, three-dimensional calculations of intake flow, spray and vapor motion of each component are performed with respect to engine wall temperature and the distillation characteristics of the fuel. Simultaneous measurements of in-cylinder behaviors of different volatility components in the fuel are also carried out using a laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique to validate the calculation results. In both measurements and calculations, the same fuels are used, which are composed of seven or eight components to simulate the distillation characteristics of two kinds of gasoline. The in-cylinder vapor amount of high and low volatility components is compared between the calculations and the experiments.

Three-dimensional numerical analysis of fuel liquid and mixture behavior in a port-injection gasoline engine is assessed by comparing calculations with measurements. The fuel mass distributed in the intake port and cylinder is measured using an engine with hydraulic valve and gas sampling system. The experimental results show that about half of the fuel mass per injection enters the cylinder, and the rest stays in the port. The difference of the mass fraction of injected fuel directly entering the cylinder is small between the cases of single pulse injection and serial injection. Therefore, three-dimensional calculation presupposing single pulse injection has difficulty in predicting the in-cylinder mixture formation process, although it can analyze the amount of fuel wetting the port wall. The calculations are performed for a port-injection engine, and the differences of fuel behavior with respect to swirl control valve opening and wall temperature are discussed.

The laser-induced exciplex fluorescence (LIEF) technique, currently used to observe mixture formation in a diesel engine, has been applied to a spark ignition (SI) engine and a new equivalence ratio calibration technique has been developed in order that two-dimensional measurements of the equivalence ratio may be made in an operating engine. Spectrally separated fluorescent images of liquid and vapor phase fuel distributions were obtained by adding new exciplex-forming dopants to the gasoline fuel. Dual light sheets from an excimer laser were introduced into one of the cylinders of a 4-valve lean-burn engine, and 2-D images of the mixture formation were recorded at pre-set crank angles during the induction and compression strokes by an image-intensified camera equipped with the appropriate filter.

In the case of engine bearings, pressure in a cylinder is necessary for the analysis of lubrication. In this study, a cycle simulation of gasoline engines has been developed to predict the pressure in the cylinder under the wide range of engine operation. In the cycle simulation, intake and exhaust processes are included and combustion process is calculated with flame propagation based on burning velocity. Here, the equation of ignition delay and the equation of burning velocity were determined with experimental results of a gasoline engine over wide A/F ratio. The pressure in the cylinder over the engine cycle is introduced into an elastohydrodynamic lubrication analysis of a con-rod bearing to calculate the load on the bearing in addition to the inertia force. Orbital movement, minimum film thickness, and power loss in the bearing were estimated over the wide range of engine operation.

The properties of diesel fuels were investigated in terms of particulate emissions to clarify the specification of such a diesel fuel for minimizing particulate emissions. Diesel fuels were analyzed using thin layer chromatography (TLC), and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). These analysis revealed the entire composition of hydrocarbons in diesel fuels according to molecular formula. The entire composition of hydrocarbons in diesel fuels could be expressd on a three-dimensional graph: the X-axis as carbon number, the Y-axis as H/C ratio and the Z-axis as the amount of hydrocarbons of identical molecular formula. By using the graph, the properties reported so far were investigated. Also, simplified images of the fuel sprayed into a cylinder and its flame were derived from the observational results previously reported.

A concept of dual-fuel, Premixed Compression Ignition (PCI) combustion controlled by two fuels with different ignitability has been developed to achieve drastically low NOx and smoke emissions. In this system, isooctane, which was used to represent high-octane gasoline, was supplied from an intake port and diesel fuel was injected directly into an engine cylinder at early timing as ignition trigger. It was found that the ignition timing of this PCI combustion can be controlled by changing the ratio of amounts of injected two fuels and combustion proceeds very mildly by making spatial stratifications of ignitability in the cylinder even without EGR, as preventing the whole mixture from igniting simultaneously. The operable range of load, where NOx and smoke were less than 10ppm and 0.1 FSN, respectively, was extended up to 1.2MPa of IMEP using an intake air boosting system together with dual fueling.

The stoichiometric direct injection gasoline engines have higher torque performance than the port injection engines, as the volumetric efficiency can be increased due to the cooling effects of charging air by the fuel evaporation in the cylinder. They need only 3-way catalyst, leading to the cost down. However there exists the injection timing (region) that increased volumetric efficiency does not lead to higher torque. In order to investigate the phenomena, the in-cylinder mixture formation process has been analyzed by the LIF and the CFD techniques. As the results, it has been revealed that the phenomena are caused by the inhomogeneous mixture distribution before the ignition timing.

Two-line excitation LIF (Laser-Induced Fluorescence) technique for 2-dimensional temperature measurements in an engine cylinder before ignition is presented. From the fundamental examinations, the combination of toluene tracer with a pair of excitation lines of 248nm and 266nm has been selected because of the high LIF intensity ratio and closer excitation wavelengths. In-cylinder thermometry is conducted using a visualized single cylinder spark ignition engine both in PFI (port-fuel-injection) and DI (direct-injection) operation. The accuracy of this technique is determined through the homogeneous PFI experiment. Temperature and fuel distribution in unburned mixture are measured simultaneously in DI operation. It exists a strong correlation between equivalence ratio and temperature inside the mixture. Temperature in the fuel rich region is lower than in the fuel lean region.