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Mechanical load and thermal load are the two main barriers limiting the engine power output of heavy duty (HD) diesel engines. Usually, the peak cylinder pressure could be reduced by retarding combustion phasing while introducing the drawback of higher thermal load and exhaust temperature. In this paper, Miller cycle with late intake valve closing was investigated at high speed high load condition (77 kW/L) on a single cylinder HD diesel engine. The results showed the simultaneous reduction of mechanical and thermal loads. In the meanwhile, higher boosting pressure was required to compensate the Miller loss of the intake charge during intake and compression process. The combustion temperature, cylinder pressure, exhaust temperature and NOx emission were reduced significantly with Miller cycle at the operating condition. Furthermore, the combustion process, smoke number and fuel consumption were analysed.

Dimethyl ether (DME) is a highly reactive diesel substitute that can be used as a pilot fuel to ignite low- reactivity methane (CH4) in heavy-duty engines. To optimize the efficiency and emissions of CH4/DME dual-fuel engines, it is crucial to study the fundamental combustion characteristics of DME mixed with methane. This study focuses on the influence of CH4 addition on the low-temperature oxidation (LTO) preparation stage and the thermal ignition (TI) preparation stage of DME in the two-stage ignition process, as these two stages respectively control the ignition delay of the first and second stages. The comparison is made between pure DME and a 50% CH4 and 50% DME blended fuel, operating under thermodynamic conditions representing the engine in- cylinder environment at 30 atm pressure, 650K temperature, and a stoichiometric equivalence ratio. The results show that the addition of methane hardly affects the control mechanism of the two-stage ignition of DME.

Controlled Auto-Ignition (CAI) combustion, also known as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), has the potential to simultaneously reduce the fuel consumption and nitrogen oxides emissions of gasoline engines. However, narrow operating region in loads and speeds is one of the challenges for the commercial application of CAI combustion to gasoline engines. Therefore, the extension of loads and speeds is an important prerequisite for the commercial application of CAI combustion. The effect of intake charge boosting, charge stratification and spark-assisted ignition on the operating range in CAI mode was reviewed. Stratified flame ignited (SFI) hybrid combustion is one form to achieve CAI combustion under the conditions of highly diluted mixture caused by the flame in the stratified mixture with the help of spark plug.

Downsizing as a main-stream technology was widely used for design of future diesel engines in order to meet the increasingly stringent demands of emissions regulation and reduction of CO2 production. Design of intake system faces a considerable challenge accordingly. Discharge coefficient and swirl ratio as two main factors of intake port design have been widely investigated by researchers. However, these two parameters indicate a trade-off relationship. Therefore, it is difficult for a classical intake system to achieve a good balance between sufficient air charge and decent air-fuel radial mixing quality. A 1 L twin-intake-port single-cylinder diesel engine was studied in this paper. A swirl control valve designed to adjust the effective flow area of the filling port, was installed between the intake manifold and the intake filling port in order to achieve variation of swirl ratio. And there is no control valve for the intake spiral port.

The conversion of existing diesel engines to natural gas with the least amount of modifications can reduce the dependence on conventional oil and enhance national energy security. This study investigated such engine conversion using an experimental platform that consisted of a single-cylinder diesel engine modified for lean-burn natural-gas spark-ignition operation through the addition of a gas injector and a spark plug. Following steady-state experiments at several operating conditions that changed spark timing, mixture equivalence ratio, and engine speed, the experimental results suggested that the combustion phenomena in diesel engines retrofitted to lean-burn natural gas spark ignition presents significant differences compared to that in a conventional stoichiometric spark ignition engine.

Poppet-valve two-stroke gasoline engines can increase the specific power of their four-stroke counterparts with the same displacement and hence decrease fuel consumption. However, knock may occur at high loads. Therefore, the combustion with stratified lean mixture was proposed to decrease knock tendency and improve combustion stability in a poppet-valve two-stroke direct injection gasoline engine. The effect of intake pressure and split injection on fuel distribution, combustion and knock intensity in lean mixture conditions at high loads was simulated with a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic software. Simulation results show that with the increase of intake pressure, the average fuel-air equivalent ratio in the cylinder decreases when the second injection ratio was fixed at 70% at a given amount of fuel in a cycle.

Controlled auto-ignition (CAI) combustion and engine performance and emission characteristics have been intensively investigated in a single-cylinder gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine with an air-assisted injector. The CAI combustion was obtained by residual gas trapping. This was achieved by using low-lift short-duration cams and early closing the exhaust valves. Effects of EVC (exhaust valve closure) and IVO (intake valve opening) timings, spark timing, injection timing, coolant temperature, compression ratio, valve lift and duration, on CAI combustion and emissions were investigated experimentally. The results show that the EVC timing, injection timing, compression ratio, valve lift and duration had significant influences on CAI combustion and emissions. Early EVC and injection timing, higher compression ratio and higher valve lift could enhance CAI combustion. IVO timing had minor effect on CAI combustion.

In-cylinder flow was optimised in a three-valve twin-spark-plug SI engine in order to obtain good two-zone fuel fraction stratification in the cylinder by means of tumble flow. First, the in-cylinder flow field of the original intake system was measured by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The results showed that the original intake system did not produce large-scale in-cylinder flow and the velocity value was very low. Therefore, some modifications were applied to the intake system in order to generate the required tumble flow. The modified systems were then tested on a steady flow rig. The results showed that the method of shrouding the lower part of the intake valves could produce rather higher tumble flow with less loss of the flow coefficient than other methods. The optimised intake system was then consisted of two shroud plates on the intake valves with 120° angles and 10mm height. The in-cylinder flow of the optimised intake system was investigated by PIV measurements.

Diesel engines operated at high altitudes would experience performance degradation due to the fuel-air amount mismatch, resulting in combustion deterioration. Technologies that supplement oxygen concentration, such as intake oxygen enrichment, turbocharging and the addition of oxygenated fuel additives, can help restore performance at high altitudes, but each has its own limitations Operating diesel engines at high altitudes still generates extremely lean fuel-air mixtures, making the improved utilization of excess air the most economically efficient approach to optimize engine performance under such conditions.

Piston bowl geometry has important effects on diesel engine combustion. Especially for a high power density engine, much more fuel requires to burn across the cylinder in a short period after the top dead centre (TDC). Therefore the piston bowl geometry plays a critical role for the air/fuel mixing process and the combustion process. In this paper, a 3-D in-cylinder combustion modeling was carried out for a high power density engine. The ω type of bowl shape was described by seven independent parameters. Five of them are conducted to investigate their effects on the combustion process. The results show that the bowl diameter has significant effects on combustion both in the pre-mixing combustion period and in the diffusion combustion period. There exists an optimized bowl diameter value to obtain a highest indicated power. The re-entrant angle has an important effect on pre-mixing combustion and there also exists an optimized value to reach a highest indicated power.

The intake process plays an important role in the operation of internal combustion engines. In the present study, a three-dimensional transient simulation of a four-valve diesel engine was performed using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) model based on software CONVERGE. The mean velocity components in three directions through the intake valve curtain, the flow separation around the intake valves, the influences of inlet jet on turbulence flow field and cycle-to-cycle variation were investigated in this work. The result shows that the mean velocity distributes non-uniformly near the valve curtain at high valve lifts. In contrast, the mean velocity distribution is uniform at low valve lifts. It is found that the flow separation occurs at valve stem, valve seat and valve sealing through the outlet of the helical port. In contrast, flow separation is only observed in the valve seat through the outlet of the tangential port.

As a zero-carbon fuel and a hydrogen derivative, ammonia is promising for large-scale use in internal combustion engines under the global decarbonization background. Although ammonia fuel itself does not contain elemental carbon and cannot produce carbon dioxide, it contains elemental nitrogen and produces nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions during combustion. Accordingly, it is essential to understand the formation and evolution of NOX during ammonia oxidation as a prerequisite for finding solutions to control NOX emissions. Since the emission formation is chemically reaction-driven, this paper investigates the ammonia low and high temperature oxidation processes via laminar flame and ideal reactor models, which can provide steady-state NOX formation characteristics to be studied and eliminate unpredictable turbulence and gradients of species concentration and temperature in the engine combustion chamber.

The conversion of existing diesel engines to natural-gas operation can reduce the dependence on petroleum imports and curtail engine-out emissions. A convenient way to perform such conversion is by adding a gas injector in the intake manifold and replacing the diesel fuel injector with a spark plug to initiate and control the combustion process. However, challenges may appear with respect to engine’s efficiency and emissions as natural-gas spark-ignition combustion inside a diesel combustion chamber is different to that in conventional spark ignition engines. For example, major difference is the phasing and duration of the fast burn, defined as the period in which the rate of heat release increases linearly with crank angle. This study presents a methodology to investigate the fast burn inside a diesel geometry using heat release data.

Machine learning algorithms are effective tools to reduce the number of engine dynamometer tests during internal combustion engine development and/or optimization. This paper provides a case study of using such a statistical algorithm to characterize the heat transfer from the combustion chamber to the environment during combustion and during the entire engine cycle. The data for building the machine learning model came from a single cylinder compression ignition engine (13.3 compression ratio) that was converted to natural-gas port fuel injection spark-ignition operation. Engine dynamometer tests investigated several spark timings, equivalence ratios, and engine speeds, which were also used as model inputs. While building the model it was found that adding the intake pressure as another model input improved model efficiency.

Displacement downsize is an exciting technology for IC engines in recent years in order to reduce both toxic emissions and fuel consumption simultaneously. The key point of this technology is to increase power density so that a downsized engine has power output high enough to replace a bigger displacement one. This paper describes a research into the power output enhancement by combustion system optimization. This research work was conducted on a single-cylinder diesel engine with a displacement of 2.8L. The aim of the research is to increase engine power output from current 73kW to 150kW. The power output was firstly boosted to 92kW by virtue of increasing intake pressure, reducing intake flow resistance, optimizing cam profile, modifying fuel injection system and optimizing combustion parameters. As a result, a satisfied heat release pattern was obtained with the achievement of the power target.

In order to take advantage of different properties of fuel components or fractions, a new concept of fuel stratification has been proposed by the authors. This concept requires that two fractions of standard gasoline (e.g., light and heavy fractions) or two different fuels in a specially formulated composite be introduced into the cylinder separately through two separate intake ports. The two fuels will be stratified into two regions in the cylinder by means of strong tumble flows. In order to verify and optimize the fuel stratification, a two-tracer Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) technique was developed and applied to visualize fuel stratification in a three-valve twin-spark SI engine. This was realized by detecting simultaneously fluorescence emissions from 3-pentanone in one fuel (hexane) and from N,N-dimethylaniline (DMA) in the other fuel (iso-octane).

Natural gas is a promising alternative gaseous fuel due to its availability, economic, and environmental benefits. A solution to increase its use in the heavy-duty transportation sector is to convert existing heavy-duty compression ignition engines to spark-ignition operation by replacing the fuel injector with a spark plug and injecting the natural gas inside the intake manifold. The use of numerical simulations to design and optimize the natural gas combustion in such retrofitted engines can benefit both engine efficiency and emission. However, experimental data of natural gas combustion inside a bowl-in-piston chamber is limited. Consequently, the goal of this study was to provide high-quality experimental data from such a converted engine fueled with methane and operated at steady-state conditions, exploring variations in spark timing, engine speed and equivalence ratio.

Low-carbon fuels such as natural gas (NG) have the potential to lower the demand of petroleum-based fuels, reduce engine-out emissions, and increase IC engine thermal efficiency. One of the most rapid and efficient use of NG in the transportation sector would be as a direct replacement of the diesel fuel in compression ignition (CI) engines without any major engine modifications to the combustion chamber such as new pistons and/or engine head. An issue is the large variation in NG composition with the location and age of the gas well across U.S., which would affect engine operation, as well as the technology integration with emissions after treatment systems. This study used a conventional CI engine modified for spark ignition (SI) NG operation to investigate the effects of methane and a C1-C4 alkane blend on main combustion parameters like in-cylinder pressure, apparent heat release rate, IMEP, etc.

Ammonia is a zero-carbon candidate fuel for the decarbonization of internal combustion (IC) engines. A concern when using ammonia in IC engines is the increased emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOX), due to the additional nitrogen in the ammonia molecule. Compared to conventional petroleum such as gasoline and diesel, ammonia combustion adds the fuel NOX formation mechanism in addition to the original thermal NOX generation pathway, which further complicates the NOX emission characteristics of ammonia engines. Decoupling fuel NOX and thermal NOX helps to increase the understanding of the formation and evolutionary characteristics of nitrogen oxides occurring inside ammonia engines, but the available literature lacks studies in this respect. The purpose of this study is to fill this research gap and to propose a methodology for decoupling fuel NOX and thermal NOX.

On- and off-road heavy-duty diesel engines modified to spark-ignition natural gas operation can reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil and enhance national energy security. Engine conversion can be achieved through the addition of a gas injector in the intake manifold and of a spark plug in place of the diesel injector. This paper investigated combustion characteristics and engine performance at several lean-burn operating conditions that changed spark timing, mixture equivalence ratio, and engine speed, using methane as NG surrogate.