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Combustion visualizations were carried out in a constant volume vessel to study the partially premixed combustion of a gasoline-like fuel using high speed imaging. The test fuel (G80H20) is composed by volume 80% commercial gasoline and 20% n-heptane. The effects of ambient gas composition, ambient temperature and injection pressure on G80H20 combustion characteristics were analyzed. Meanwhile, a comparison of the EGR effect on combustion process between G80H20 and diesel was made. Four ambient gas conditions that represent the in-cylinder gas compositions of a heavy-duty diesel engine with EGR ratios of 0%, 20%, 40% and 60% were used to simulate EGR conditions. Variables also include two ambient temperature (910K and 870K) and two injection pressure (20 MPa and 50 MPa) conditions.

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.

Combustion closed-loop control is now being studied intensively for engineering applications to improve fuel economy. Currently, combustion closed-loop feedback control is usually based on the cylinder pressure signal, which is the most direct and exact signal that reflects engine working process. Although there were some relatively cheap types of in-cylinder pressure sensors, cylinder pressure sensors have not been widely applied because of their high price now. Moreover, the combustion analysis based on cylinder pressure imposes high requirements on the information acquisition capability of the current ECU, such as high acquisition and analog-digital conversion frequency and so on. For developing a low price and feasible technology, a new engine information feedback method based on model calculation and crank angular velocity measurement was proposed. A simplified combustion model was operated in ECU for the real-time calculation of cylinder pressure and combustion parameters.

This paper studied the knock combustion process in gasoline HCCI engines. The complex chemical kinetics was implemented into the three-dimensional CFD code with LES (Large eddy simulation) to study the origin of the knock phenomena in HCCI combustion process. The model was validated using the experimental data from the cylinder pressure measurement. 3D-CFD with LES method gives detailed turbulence, species, temperature and pressure distribution during the gasoline HCCI combustion process. The simulation results indicate that HCCI engine knock originates from the random multipoint auto-ignition in the combustion chamber due to the slight inhomogeneity. It is induced by the significantly different heat release rate of high temperature oxidation (HTO) and low temperature oxidation (LTO) and their interactions.

In order to reduce emissions, size and manufacturing cost, integrated exhaust manifold become popular in gasoline engine, especially in three-cylinder engine. Moreover, due to shorter length, lighter weight, and less component connections, the exhaust manifold and hot end durability will improve apparently. In this work, an advanced cylinder head with integrated exhaust manifold is adopted in a three-cylinder turbo engine. Because of this integration characteristic, the gas retain in cylinder head longer and the temperature reach higher level than normal cylinder head, which will cause thermal fatigue failure more easily. To validate the exhaust manifold and hot end durability, series simulation and test validation work have been done. Firstly, overall steady state and transient temperature simulation was done for global model. For turbocharger, in order to simulate the outlet turbulent flow and 3d rotation, a code was compiled to define this 3d rotation.

Turbulent jet ignition (TJI) combustion using pre-chamber ignition can accelerate the combustion speed in the cylinder and has garnered growing interest in recent years. However, it is complicated for the optimization of the pre-chamber structure and combustion system. This study investigated the effects of the pre-chamber structure and the intake ports on the combustion characteristics of a gasoline engine through CFD simulation. Spark ignition (SI) combustion simulation was also conducted for comparison. The results showed that the design of the pre-chamber that causes the jet flame colliding with walls severely worsen the combustion, increasing the knocking intendency, and decrease the thermal efficiency. Compared with SI combustion mode, the TJI combustion mode has the higher heat transfer loss and lower unburned loss. The well-optimized pre-chamber can accelerate the flame propagation with knock suppression.

A 1-Dimensional (1-D) model of fluid dynamic and chemistry kinetics following hot spot auto-ignition has been developed to simulate the process from auto-ignition to pressure wave propagation. The role of wall effect on the physical-chemical interaction process is numerically studied. A pressure wave is generated after hot spot auto-ignition and gradually damped as it propagates. The reflection of the wall forms a reflected pressure wave with twice the amplitude of the incident wave near the wall. The superposition of the reflected and forward pressure waves reinforces the intensity of the initial pressure wave. Wall effect is determined by the distance between the hot spot center and the cylinder wall. Hot spot auto-ignition near the wall easily initiates detonation under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions because pressure wave reflection couples with chemical reactions and propagates in the mixture with high reactivity.

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.

A conceptual approach to help understand and simulate droplet induced pre-ignition is presented. The complex phenomenon of oil-fuel droplet induced pre-ignition has been decomposed to its elementary processes. This approach helps identify the key fluid properties and engine parameters that affect the pre-ignition phenomenon, and could be used to control LSPI. Based on the conceptual model, a 3D CFD engine simulation has been developed which is able to realistically model all of the elementary processes involved in droplet induced pre-ignition. The simulation was successfully able to predict droplet induced pre-ignition at conditions where the phenomenon has been experimentally observed. The simulation has been able to help explain the observation of pre-ignition advancement relative to injection timing as experimentally observed in a previous study [6].

Wide Distillation Fuel (WDF) refers to the fuels with a distillation range from Initial Boiling Point (IBP) of gasoline to Final Boiling Point (FBP) of diesel. Polyoxymethylene Dimethyl Ethers (PODEn) have high oxygen content and cetane number, are promising green additive to diesel fuel. In this paper, WDF was prepared by blending diesel and gasoline at ratio of 1:1, by volume; the mass distribution of oligomers in the PODE3-4 product was 88.9% of PODE3 and 8.46% of PODE4. Diesel fuel (Diesel), WDF (G50D50) and WDF (80%)-PODE3-4 (20%) (G40D40P20) were tested in a light-duty single-cylinder diesel engine, combustion characteristic, fuel consumption and exhaust emissions were measured. The results showed that: at idling condition, G40D40P20 has better combustion stability, higher heat release rate, higher thermal efficiency compared with G50D50.

Polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers (PODEn) are promising alternative fuel candidates for diesel engines because they present advantages in soot reduction. This study uses a PODEn mixture (contains PODE3-6) from mass production to provide oxygen component in blend fuels. The spray combustion of PODEn-diesel bend fuels in a constant volume vessel was studied using high speed imaging, PLII-LEM and OH* chemiluminescence. Fuels of several blend ratios are compared with pure diesel. Flame luminance data show a near linear decrease tendency with the blend ratio increasing. The OH* images reveal that the ignition positions of all the cases have small differences, which indicates that using a low PODEn blend ratio of no more than 30% does not need significant adjustment in engine combustion control strategies. It is found that 30% PODEn blended with diesel (P30) can effectively reduce the total soot by approximately 68% in comparison with pure diesel.

Ammonia shows promise as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines (ICEs) in reducing CO2 emissions due to its carbon-free nature and well-established infrastructure. However, certain drawbacks, such as the high ignition energy, the narrow flammability range, and the extremely low laminar flame speed, limit its widespread application. The dual fuel (DF) mode is an appealing approach to enhance ammonia combustion. The combustion characteristics of ammonia-diesel dual fuel mode and ammonia-PODE3 dual fuel mode were experimentally studied using a full-view optical engine and the high-speed photography method. The ammonia energy ratio (ERa) was varied from 40% to 60%, and the main injection energy ratio (ERInj1) and the main injection time (SOI1) were also varied in ammonia-PODE3 mode.

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.

This study improved the computational efficiency significantly using parallel computation and reduced mechanisms. A 3-dimensional engine moving mesh of intake port, exhaust port and combustion chamber was established for HCCI engine cycle simulation. To achieve a more accurate analysis, chemical kinetics was implemented into the CFD code to study the intake, spray, ignition, combustion, and pollution formation process in HCCI engine. The simulations were run on a cluster of 16-CPU, parallelized by Message-Passing Interface (MPI) mode. The cases with detailed and reduced reaction mechanisms were calculated using 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 CPUs respectively and the corresponding computational time and speed-up were discussed. Using MPI 8-CPU with reduced mechanism (less than 40 species) is the optimal scheme for CFD/Chemistry calculation of typical HCCI engine.

The detailed chemical kinetics was implemented into the 0D single-zone model, 1D engine cycle model and 3D CFD model respectively. Both simulation and experiment were carried out on a four-stroke gasoline HCCI engine with direct injection. The 0D model (HRG) was developed to study the isolating effect of HCCI parameters. The 1D engine cycle model with HRG was established to study the gas exchange process and the direct injection strategy in the gasoline HCCI engine with two-stage direct injection (TSDI) and negative valve overlap (NVO). The 3D model with HRG was constructed to study the ignition control mechanism in “two-zone HCCI” combustion via analysis the auto-ignition spots distribution in combustion chamber. “Two-zone HCCI” is defined in this paper as premixed ultra-lean compression ignition combining with premixed ultra-rich compression ignition. The three models were validated by experiments.

High boost and direct injection hold the potential of enhanced power density and fuel consumption in the development of gasoline engines. However, super-knock with strong destructiveness was widely reported at low-speed and high-load operating regime in turbocharged GDI engines. The objective of this study is to clarify the characteristics of super-knock and to try to find some feasible solutions to suppress super-knock. To fast evaluate super-knock at low-speed and high-load regime, a rapid test procedure including three super-knock test sections of 5000 cycles with 3 idle operations, was proposed. The experimental data indicate that pre-ignition is not the sufficient condition for super-knock. Pre-ignition may lead to super-knock, heavy knock, slight knock, and non-knock. Compared with conventional knock, knock intensity of super-knock is much higher and the maximum amplitude of pressure rise at start of knock is more than one order of magnitude higher.

The ignition of lubricating oil droplet has been proved to be the main factor for pre-ignition and the following super-knock in turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine. In this paper, the ignition process of lubricating oil droplet in combustible ambient gaseous mixture was investigated in a rapid compression machine (RCM). The pre-ignition induction by oil droplet of the ambient gaseous mixture was analyzed under different initial droplet volume and effective temperature conditions. The oil droplet was suspended on a tungsten fiber in the combustion chamber and the ignition process was recorded by a high-speed camera through the quartz window mounted at the end of the combustion chamber. The pressure traces were also obtained by a sensor in order to get the ignition delay and analyze the combustion process in detail.

An integrated simulation platform for turbocharged internal combustion engines has been developed. Multi-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) codes are integrated into the system to model the turbocharging circuit, gas circuit, in-cylinder circuit, coolant and oil circuits. As the turbocharger is a critical factor for the IC engine, a turbocharger through-flow model based on mass, momentum, and energy conservation equations has been developed and added in the integrated platform. Compared with the traditional MAP method, the through-flow model can solve the problems of transient matching and lack of numerous experimental maps during the pre-prototype engine design. Partial systems in the integrated platform, such as the in-cylinder flow and combustion circuit, can be modeled by 3-D CFD codes for the investigation of the detailed flow patterns.

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.

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.