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Wavelet analysis was used to calculate turbulence and mean velocity levels for LDV measurements made in a four valve spark ignition engine. Five different camshafts were tested, and they produce significantly different flow behaviour. The standard cam gives tumble and with valve deactivation, swirl is produced. One camshaft with early inlet valve closing and two camshafts with late inlet valve closing were also tested. The wavelet toolbox for Matlab version 5.1 has been used for the wavelet calculations. The wavelet technique produces both time resolved and frequency resolved velocity information. The results indicate some influence of the turbulence frequency content on the rate of heat release. Correlation against heat-release can be seen for different scales of turbulence. The breakdown of the tumble (low frequency turbulence) into high frequency turbulence can be seen clearly.

Pre-chamber combustion (PCC) has re-emerged in recent last years as a potential solution to help to decarbonize the transport sector with its improved engine efficiency as well as providing lower emissions. Research into the combustion process inside the pre-chamber is still a challenge due to the high pressure and temperatures, the geometrical restrictions, and the short combustion durations. Some fundamental studies in constant volume combustion chambers (CVCC) at low and medium working pressures have shown the complexity of the process and the influence of high pressures on the turbulence levels. In this study, the pre-chamber combustion process was investigated by combustion visualization in an optically-accessible pre-chamber under engine relevant conditions and linked with the jet emergence inside the main chamber. The pre-chamber geometry has a narrow-throat. The total nozzle area is distributed in two six-hole rows of nozzle holes.

In the study presented in this paper, a vehicle driving cycle simulation of the pneumatic hybrid has been conducted. The pneumatic hybrid powertrain has been modeled in GT-Power and validated against experimental data. The GT-Power engine model has been linked with a MATLAB/simulink vehicle model. The engine in question is a single-cylinder Scania D12 diesel engine, which has been converted to work as a pneumatic hybrid. The base engine model, provided by Scania, is made in GT-power and it is based on the same engine configuration as the one used in real engine testing. During pneumatic hybrid operation the engine can be used as a 2-stroke compressor for generation of compressed air during vehicle deceleration and during vehicle acceleration the engine can be operated as a 2-stroke air-motor driven by the previously stored pressurized air.

Demand for transport energy is growing but this growth is skewed heavily toward commercial transport, such as, heavy road, aviation, marine and rail which uses heavier fuels like diesel and kerosene. This is likely to lead to an abundance and easy availability of lighter fractions like naphtha, which is the product of the initial distillation of crude oil. Naphtha will also require lower energy to produce and hence will have a lower CO₂ impact compared to diesel or gasoline. It would be desirable to develop engine combustion systems that could run on naphtha. Many recent studies have shown that running compression ignition engines on very low Cetane fuels, which are very similar to naphtha in their auto-ignition behavior, offers the prospect of developing very efficient, clean, simple and cheap engine combustion systems. Significant development work would be required before such systems could power practical vehicles.

Autoignition of a homogeneous mixture is very sensitive to operating conditions. Therefore fast combustion phasing control is necessary for reliable operation. There are several means to control the combustion phasing of a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine. This paper presents cycle-to-cycle cylinder individual control results from a six-cylinder HCCI engine using a Variable Valve Actuation (VVA) system. As feedback signal, the crank angle for 50% burned, based on cylinder pressure, is used. Three control structures are evaluated, Model Predictive Control (MPC), Linear Quadratic Gaussian control (LQG) and PID control. In the control design of the MPC and LQG controller, dynamic models obtained by system identification were used. Successful experiments were performed on a port-injected six-cylinder heavy-duty Diesel engine operating in HCCI mode.

Variable compression ratio (VCR) technology has long been recognized as a method for improving the automobile engine performance, efficiency, fuel economy with reduced emission. This paper presents a design of hydraulically actuated piston based on the VCR piston proposed by the British Internal Combustion Engine Research Institute (BICERI). In this design, the compression height of the piston automatically changes in response to engine cylinder pressure by controlling the lubrication oil flow via valves in the piston. In addition, numerical models including piston kinetic model, oil hydraulic model, compression ratio model and etc., have been established to evaluate the piston properties. The oil flow characteristics between two chambers in VCR piston have been investigated and the response behaviors of VCR engine and normal engine, such as compression pressure and peak cylinder pressure, are compared at different engine loads.

The present paper shows the validation of a self tuning heat release method with no need to model heat losses, crevice losses and blow by. Using the pressure and volume traces the method estimates the polytropic exponents (before, during and after the combustion event), by the use of the emission values and amount of fuel injected per cycle the algorithm calculates the total heat release. These four inputs are subsequently used for computing the heat release trace. The result is a user independent algorithm which results in more objective comparisons among operating points and different engines. In the present paper the heat release calculated with this novel method has been compared with the one computed using the Woschni correlation for modeling the heat transfer. The comparison has been made using different fuels (PRF0, PRF80, ethanol and iso-octane) making sweeps in relative air-fuel ratio, engine speed, EGR and CA 50.

The focus of this study is to aid the development of the isobaric combustion engine by investigating multiple injection strategies at moderately high pressures. A three-dimensional (3D) commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, CONVERGE, was used to conduct simulations. The validation of the isobaric combustion case was carried out through the use of a single injector with multiple injections. The computational simulations were matched to the experimental data using methods outlined in this paper for different multiple injection cases. A sensitivity analysis to understand the effects of different modeling components on the quantitative prediction was carried out. First, the effects of the kinetic mechanisms were assessed by employing different chemical mechanisms, and the results showed no significant difference in the conditions under consideration.

Gasoline fuels are complex mixtures which consist of more than 200 different hydrocarbon species. In order to decrease the chemical and physical complexity, oxygenated surrogate components were used to enhance the fundamental understanding of partially premixed combustion (PPC). The ignition quality of a fuel is measured by octane number. There are two methods to measure the octane number: research octane number (RON) and motor octane number (MON). In this paper, RON and MON were measured for a matrix of n-heptane, isooctane, toluene, and ethanol (TERF) blends spanning a wide range of octane number between 60.6 and 97. First, regression models were created to derive RON and MON for TERF blends. The models were validated using the standard octane test for 17 TERF blends. Second, three different TERF blends with an ignition delay (ID) of 8 degrees for a specific operating condition were determined using a regression model.

Combination of right EGR rates with turbocharging has been identified as a promising way to increase the maximum load and efficiency of heavy duty spark-ignited natural gas engines. With stoichiometric conditions a three way catalyst can be used which means that regulated emissions can be kept at very low levels. However dilution limit is limited in these types of engines because of the lower burnings rate of natural gas with higher EGR rates. One way to extend the dilution limit of a natural gas engine is to run the engine with Hythane (natural gas+ some percentage hydrogen). Previously benefits of hydrogen addition to a Lean Burn natural-gas fueled engine was investigated [1] however a complete study for stoichiometric operation was not performed. This paper presents measurements made on a heavy duty 6-cylinder natural gas engine.

An estimation model which uses the gross heat release data and the fuel energy to estimate the total amount of emissions and unburned Hydro Carbon (HC) is developed. Gross heat release data is calculated from a self-tuned heat release method which uses in-cylinder pressure data for computing the energy released during combustion. The method takes all heat and mass losses into account. The method estimates the polytropic exponent and pressure offset during compression and expansion using a nonlinear least square method. Linear interpolation of polytropic exponent and pressure offset is then performed during combustion to calculate the gross heat release during combustion. Moreover the relations between the emissions specifically HC and Carbon Monoxide (CO) are investigated. The model was validated with experimental data and promising results were achieved.

A phosphor thermometry, for measurements of two-dimensional gas-phase temperature was examined in turbulent combustion in an engine. The reasonable temperature deviation and the agreement with calculated data within 5% precision were achieved by single-shot images in the ignition process of compression ignition engine. Focusing on the local flame kernel, the flame structure could be quantitatively given by the temperature. It became evident that the HCCI flame kernels had 1-3 mm diameter and the isolated island structures. Subsequently, the HTR zone consisted of the combined flame kernels near TDC.

Phosphor thermometry was used during fuel injection in an optical engine with the glass piston of reentrant type. SiO2 coated phosphor particle was used for the gas-phase temperature measurements, which gave much less background signal. The measurements were performed in motored mode, in combustion mode with injection of n-heptane and in non-combustion mode with injection of iso-octane. In the beginning of injection period, the mean temperature of each injection cases was lower than that of the motored case, and temperature of iso-octane injection cases was even lower than that of n-heptane injection cases. This indicates, even if vaporization effect seemed to be the same at both injection cases, the effect of temperature decrease changed due to the chemical reaction effect for the n-heptane cases. Chemical reaction seems to be initiated outside of the fuel liquid spray and the position was moving towards the fuel rich area as the time proceeds.

Spark ignition gasoline engine efficiency is limited by a number of factors; these include the pumping losses that result from throttling for load control, spark ignition and the slow burn rates that result in poor combustion phasing and a compression ratio limited by detonation of fuel. A new combustion process has been developed based on the patented concept of injection-ignition known as Transonic Combustion or TSCi™; this combustion process is based on the direct injection of fuel into the cylinder as a supercritical fluid. Supercritical fuel achieves rapid mixing with the contents of the cylinder and after a short delay period spontaneous ignition occurs at multiple locations. Multiple ignition sites and rapid combustion combine to result in high rates of heat release and high cycle efficiency. The injection-ignition process is independent from the overall air/fuel ratio contained in the cylinder and thus allows the engine to operate un-throttled.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of charge stratification on the combustion phasing in a single cylinder, heavy duty (HD) compression ignition (CI) engine. To do this the start of injection (SOI) was changed from -180° after top dead centre (ATDC) to near top dead centre (TDC) during which CA50 (the crank angle at which 50% of the fuel energy is released) was kept constant by changing the intake temperature. At each SOI, the response of CA50 to a slight increase or decrease of either intake temperature or SOI were also investigated. Afterwards, the experiment was repeated with a different intake oxygen concentration. The results show that, for the whole SOI period, the required intake temperature to keep constant CA50 has a “spoon” shape with the handle on the -180° side.

Partially premixed combustion (PPC) is a promising way to achieve high efficiency and low engine-out emissions simultaneously in a heavy-duty engine. Compared to Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), it can be controlled by injection events and much lower HC and CO emissions can be achieved. This work focuses on the transition from HCCI to PPC and combustion and emissions characteristics during the process are investigated. Injection strategies, EGR and boost pressure were the main parameters used to present the corresponding effect during the transition.

This study applies a state feedback based Closed-Loop Combustion Control (CLCC) using Fast Thermal Management (FTM) on a multi cylinder Variable Compression Ratio (VCR) engine. At speeds above 1500 rpm is the FTM's bandwidth broadened by using the VCR feature of this engine, according to a predefined map, which is a function of load and engine speed. Below 1500 rpm is the PID based CLCC using VCR applied instead of the FTM while slow cylinder balancing is effectuated by the FTM. Performance of the two CLCC controllers are evaluated during an European EC2000 drive cycle, while HC, CO and CO2 emissions are measured online by a Fast Response Infrared (FRI) emission equipment. A load and speed map calculated for an 1.6L Opel Astra is used to get reference values for the dynamometer speed and the load control. The drive cycle test is initiated from a hot engine and hence no cold start is included. Commercial RON/MON 92/82 gasoline, which corresponds to US regular, is utilized.

More stringent emission regulations call for high-efficiency engines in the heavy-duty vehicle sector. Towards this goal, reduced heat losses, as well as increased work output, are needed. In this study, a multiple injector concept to control the combustion as well as reduce the hot boundary zones is proposed. Earlier studies have proven that multiple injectors experience lower heat losses and higher efficiency. However, a comprehensive investigation of the causes for experimental heat loss was not performed in depth. Experiments in a heavy-duty CI engine equipped with three injectors were thus performed. Engine configurations of single, dual and triple injectors were compared for a single-injection case as well as a multi-injection (Sabathe-cycle) case. Heat losses, efficiency and the emission levels were quantified and investigated. Optical experiments were performed to investigate the temperature field as well as flame behavior.

Partially premixed combustion has the potential of high efficiency and simultaneous low soot and NOx emissions. Running the engine in PPC mode with high octane number fuels has the advantage of a longer premix period of fuel and air which reduces soot emissions, even at higher loads. The problem is the ignitability at low load and idle operating conditions. The objective is to investigate the usefulness of negative valve overlap on a light duty diesel engine running with gasoline partially premixed combustion at low load operating conditions. The idea is to use negative valve overlap to trap hot residual gases to elevate the global in-cylinder temperature to promote auto-ignition of the high octane number fuel. This is of practical interest at low engine speed and load operating conditions because it can be assumed that the available boost is limited. The problem with NVO at low load operating conditions is that the exhaust gas temperature is low.

Ion current measurements can give information useful for controlling the combustion stability in a multi-cylinder engine. Operation near the dilution limit (air or EGR) can be achieved and it can be optimized individually for the cylinders, resulting in a system with better engine stability for highly diluted mixtures. This method will also compensate for engine wear, e.g. changes in volumetric efficiency and fuel injector characteristics. Especially in a port injected engine, changes in fuel injector characteristics can lead to increased emissions and deteriorated engine performance when operating with a closed-loop lambda control system. One problem using the ion-current signal to control engine stability near the lean limit is the weak signal resulting in low signal to noise ratio. Measurements presented in this paper were made on a turbocharged 9.6 liter six cylinder natural gas engine with port injection.