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Controlled Auto-Ignition (CAI) also known as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is increasingly seen as a very effective way of lowering both fuel consumption and emissions. Hence, it is regarded as one of the best ways to meet stringent future emissions legislation. It has however, still many problems to overcome, such as limited operating range. This combustion concept was achieved in a production type, 4-cylinder gasoline engine, in two separated tests: naturally aspirated and turbocharged. Very few modifications to the original engine were needed. These consisted basically of a new set of camshafts for the naturally aspirated test and new camshafts plus turbocharger for the test with forced induction. After previous experiments with naturally aspirated CAI operation, it was decided to investigate the capability of turbocharging for extended CAI load and speed range.

Pumping Mean Effective Pressure (PMEP) is the main factor limiting the improvement of thermal efficiency in a spark-ignition (SI) engine under low load. One of the ways to reduce the pumping loss under low load is to use Cylinder DeActivation (CDA). The CDA aims at reducing the firing density (FD) of the SI engine under low load operation and increasing the mass of air-fuel mixture within one cycle in one cylinder to reduce the throttling effect and further reducing the PMEP. The multi-stroke cycles can also reduce the firing density of the SI engine after some certain reasonable design, which is feasible to improve the thermal efficiency of the engine under low load in theory. The research was carried out on a calibrated four-cylinder SI engine simulation platform. The thermal efficiency improvements of the 6-stroke cycle and 8-stroke cycle to the engine performance were studied compared with the traditional 4-stroke cycle under low load conditions.

CAI combustion has the potential to be the most clean combustion technology in internal combustion engines and is being intensively researched. Following the previous research on CAI combustion of gasoline fuel, systematic investigation is being carried out on the application of bio-fuels in CAI combustion. As part of an on-going research project, CAI combustion of methanol and ethanol was studied on a single-cylinder direct gasoline engine with an air-assisted injector. The CAI combustion was achieved by trapping part of burnt gas within the cylinder through using short-duration camshafts and early closure of the exhaust valves. During the experiment the engine speed was varied from 1200rpm to 2100rpm and the air/fuel ratio was altered from the stoichiometry to the misfire limit. Their combustion characteristics were obtained by analysing cylinder pressure trace.

The automobile industry is under intense pressure to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of vehicles. There is also increasing pressure to reduce the other tail-pipe emissions from vehicles to combat air pollution. Electric powertrains offer great potential for eliminating tailpipe CO2 and all other tailpipe emissions. However, current battery technology and recharging infrastructure still present limitations for some applications, where a continuous high-power demand is required. Furthermore, not all markets have the infrastructure to support a sizeable electric fleet and until the grid energy generation mix is of a sufficiently low carbon intensity, then significant vehicle life-cycle CO2 savings could not be realized by the Battery Electric Vehicles. This investigation examines the effects of combustion, efficiencies, and emissions of two alcohol fuels that could help to significantly reduce CO2 in both tailpipe and the whole life cycle.

Controlled auto Ignition (CAI) combustion has great potential for reducing both NOx emissions and fuel consumption in IC engines and the application of direct injection technology to the CAI engine adds another dimension of control to the combustion process. In this work an air-assisted injection system was applied to an engine that used residual gas to initiate and control CAI combustion. Injections were performed at Exhaust valve closure (EVC), intake valve opening (IVO) and BDC of the intake/compression stroke and the effects on combustion phasing (i.e. ignition timing and burn duration), engine output, fuel consumption and exhaust emissions analyzed. Injection at EVC gave the best results in terms of engine output, operating range and combustion stability. Injection at IVO generally resulted in the lowest fuel consumption. It was found that injection timing is an effective means of controlling combustion phasing.

This work was concerned with study of the in-cylinder flow field and flame development in a spark ignition research engine equipped with Bowditch piston optical access. High-speed natural light (chemiluminescence) imaging and simultaneous in-cylinder pressure data measurement and analysis were used to understand the fundamentals of flame propagation for a variety of ethanol fuels blended with either gasoline or iso-octane. PIV was undertaken on the same engine in a motoring operation at a horizontal imaging plane close to TDC (10 mm below the fire face) throughout the compression stroke (30°,40°,90° and 180°bTDC) for a low load engine operating condition at 1500rpm/0.5 bar inlet plenum pressure. Up to 1500 cycles were considered to determine the ensemble average flow-field and turbulent kinetic energy. Finally, comparisons were made between the flame and flow experiments to understand the apparent interactions.

A fuel stratification concept has been developed in a three-valve twin-spark spark ignition engine. This concept requires that two fuels or fuel components of different octane numbers (ON) be introduced into the cylinder separately through two independent inlet ports. They are then stratified into two regions laterally by a strong tumbling flow and ignited by the spark plug located in each region. This engine can operate in the traditional stratified lean-burn mode at part loads to obtain a good part-load fuel economy as long as one fuel is supplied. At high loads, an improved fuel economy might also be obtained by igniting the low ON fuel first and leaving the high ON fuel in the end gas region to resist knock. This paper gives a detailed description of developing the fuel stratification concept, including optimization of in-cylinder flow, mixture and combustion.

An accurate prediction of residual burned gas within the combustion chamber is important to quantify for development of modern engines, especially so for those with internally recycled burned gases and HCCI operations. A wall-guided GDI engine has been fitted with an in-cylinder sampling probe attached to a fast response NDIR analyser to measure in-situ the cycle-by-cycle trapped residual gas. The results have been compared with a model which predicts the trapped residual gas fraction based on heat release rate calculated from the cylinder pressure data and other factors. The inlet and exhaust valve timings were varied to produce a range of Residual Gas Fraction (RGF) conditions and the results were compared between the actual measured CO2 values and those predicted by the model, which shows that the RGF value derived from the exhaust gas temperature and pressure measurement at EVC is consistently overestimated by 5% over those based on the CO2 concentrations.

The application of controlled auto-ignition (CAI) combustion in gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines is becoming of more interest due to its great potential of reducing both NOx emissions and fuel consumption. Injection timing has been known as an important parameter to control CAI combustion process. In this paper, the effect of injection timing on mixture and CAI combustion is investigated in a single-cylinder GDI engine with an air-assisted injector. The liquid and vapour phases of fuel spray were measured using planar laser induced exciplex fluorescence (PLIEF) technique. The result shows that early injection led to homogeneous mixture but late injection resulted in serious stratification at the end of compression. CAI combustion in this study was realized by using short-duration camshafts and early closure of the exhaust valves. During tests, the engine speed was varied from 1200rpm to 2400rpm and A/F ratio from stoichiometric to lean limit.

Climate change mitigation is the main challenge for the automotive industry, as the government issues legislation to combat CO2 emissions. In addition to electrification and battery electric vehicles, using low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels in Internal Combustion (IC) engines can also be an effective way to reach net zero-carbon transport. This study investigated and compared the combustion characteristics, performance and emissions of a highly boosted spark ignition (SI) engine fuelled with EU VI 95 RON E10 gasoline and blends of second-generation bio-gasoline with different ethanol contents of 5% (E5), 10% (E10), and 20% (E20). The single-cylinder SI engine was equipped with a centrally mounted high-pressure injector and supplied externally boosted air. Engine experiments were conducted at 2000 RPM and 3000 RPM with low and high load operations.

Turbulent Jet Ignition (TJI) is a pre-chamber ignition system for an otherwise standard gasoline spark ignition engine. TJI works by injecting chemically active turbulent jets to initiate combustion in a premixed fuel/air mixture. The main advantage of TJI is its ability to ignite and burn, completely, very lean fuel/air mixtures in the main chamber charge. This occurs with a very fast burn rate due to the widely distributed ignition sites that consume the main charge rapidly. Rapid combustion of lean mixtures leads to lower exhaust emissions due to more complete combustion at a lower temperature. For this research, the effectiveness of the Mahle TJI system on combustion stability, lean limit and emissions in a single cylinder spark engine fueled with gasoline at different speeds was investigated. The combustion and heat release process was analyzed and the exhaust emissions were measured.

The environmental and sustainable energy concerns in transport are being addressed through the decarbonisation path and the potential of hydrogen as a zero-carbon alternative fuel. Using hydrogen to replace fossil fuels in various internal combustion engines shows promise in enhancing efficiency and achieving carbon-neutral outcomes. This study presents an experimental investigation of hydrogen (H2) combustion and engine performance in a boosted spark ignition (SI) engine. The H2 engine incorporates both port fuel injection (PFI) and direct injection (DI) hydrogen fuel systems, capable of injecting hydrogen at pressures of up to 4000 kPa in the DI system and 1000 kPa in the PFI operations. This setup enables a direct comparison of the performance and emissions of the PFI and DI operations. The study involves varying the relative air-to-hydrogen ratio (λ) at different speeds to explore combustion and engine limits for categorising and optimising operational regions.

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).

Controlled Auto Ignition (CAI), also known as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), is one of the most promising combustion technologies to reduce the fuel consumption and NOx emissions. In order to take advantage of the inherent ability to retain a large and varied amount of residual at part-load condition and its potential to achieve extreme engine downsizing of a poppet valve engine running in the 2-stroke cycle, a single cylinder 4-valves camless direct injection gasoline engine has been developed and employed to investigate the CAI combustion process in the 2-stroke cycle mode. The CAI combustion is initiated by trapped residual gases from the adjustable scavenging process enabled by the variable intake and exhaust valve timings. In addition, the boosted intake air is used to provide the in-cylinder air/fuel mixture for maximum combustion efficiency.

The Controlled Auto-Ignition (CAI) combustion, also known as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) was achieved by trapping residuals with early exhaust valve closure in conjunction with direct injection. Multi-cycle 3D engine simulations have been carried out for parametric study on four different injection timings, in order to better understand the effects of injection timings on in-cylinder mixing and CAI combustion. The full engine cycle simulation including complete gas exchange and combustion processes was carried out over several cycles in order to obtain the stable cycle for analysis. The combustion models used in the present study are the Shell auto-ignition model and the characteristic-time combustion model, which were modified to take the high level of EGR into consideration. A liquid sheet breakup spray model was used for the droplet breakup processes.

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.

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 this paper, an experimental study was performed to investigate characteristics of flame propagation and knocking combustion of hydrous (10% water content) and anhydrous ethanol at different air/fuel ratios in comparison to RON95 gasoline. Experiments were conducted in a full bore overhead optical access single cylinder port-fuel injection spark-ignition engine. High speed images of total chemiluminescence and OH* emission was recorded together with the in-cylinder pressure, from which the heat release data were derived. The results show that under the stoichiometric condition anhydrous ethanol and wet ethanol with 10% water (E90W10) generated higher IMEP with at an ignition timing slightly retarded from MBT than the gasoline fuel for a fixed throttle position. Under rich and stoichiometric conditions, the knock limited spark timing occurred at 35 CA BTDC whereas both ethanol and E90W10 were free from knocking combustion at the same operating condition.

A thermodynamic model has been utilised in the analysis of a SI engine operating with a divided charge stratification system. Such a charge stratification system divides the cylinder charge into two distinct regions: a combustible charge around the spark plug and a dilution charge beyond this. The model has been utilised to reveal differing effects of both dilution charge composition (EGR or air) and temperature upon the performance and emissions of such a stratified charge engine.