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Silent, clean, and efficient combustion was realized with emulsified blends of aqueous ethanol and diesel fuel in a DI diesel with pilot injection and cooled EGR. The pilot injection sufficiently suppressed the rapid combustion to acceptable levels. The thermal efficiency with the emulsified fuel improved as the heat release with the pilot injection was retarded to near top dead center, due to poor ignitability and also due to a reduction in afterburning. With the emulsified fuel containing 40 vol% ethanol and 10 vol% water (E40W10), the smokeless operation range can be considerably extended even under low fuel injection pressure or low intake oxygen content conditions.

Dual fuel combustion with premixed ethanol as the main fuel and direct injection of diesel fuel as an ignition source poses problems including large unburned emissions and excessively rapid combustion. In this report the influence of compression ratios, injection timings of diesel fuel, and intake oxygen concentrations was systematically investigated in a modern diesel engine. The combustion process was classified into three stages: the first rapid combustion of diesel fuel and the ethanol mixture entrained into the diesel fuel spray; the second mild combustion with flame propagation of the ethanol mixture; and the third rapid combustion with auto-ignition of the unburned ethanol mixture without knocking. The third stage combustion occurs occasionally at several operating conditions and has been termed as PREMIER (premixed mixture ignition in the end-gas region) combustion.

The past efforts to develop aluminum alloy engine parts were focused on the formulation of chemical composition rather than the heat treatment conditions of aluminum alloys. Only a few studies have been made on optimizing heat treatment conditions. This paper deals with the effects of artificial aging on two aluminum alloys, A356 and A319, which have been often used for engine cylinder heads. The aluminum alloys were artificially aged under several different conditions after T6 heat treatment. The alloys were tested for such mechanical properties as pure tension, cyclic loading resistance and thermo-mechanical fatigue failure. The microstructure was observed by TEM to see the effects on microstructure in terms of mechanical properties.

The HCCI engine offers the potential of low NOx emissions combined with diesel engine like high efficiency, however HCCI operation is restricted to low engine speeds and torques constrained by narrow noise (HCCI knocking) and misfiring limits. Gasoline like fuel vaporizes and mixes with air, but the mixture may auto-ignite at the same time, leading to heavy HCCI knocking. Retarding the CA50 (the crank angle of the 50% burn) is well known as a method to slow the maximum pressure rise rate and reduce HCCI knocking. The CA50 can be controlled by the fuel composition, for example, di-methyl ether (DME), which is easily synthesized from natural gas, has strong low temperature heat release (LTHR) characteristics and ethanol generates strong LTHR inhibitor effects. The utilization of DME-ethanol binary blended fuels has the potential to broaden the HCCI engine load-speed range.

Port injection of ethanol addition as an ignition inhibitor was implemented to control ignition timing and expand the operating range in DME fueled HCCI combustion. The ethanol reduced the rate of low-temperature oxidation and consequently delayed the onset of the high-temperature reaction with ultra-low NOx over a wide operating range. Along with the ethanol addition, changes in intake temperature, overall equivalence ratio, and engine speed are investigated and shown to be effective in HCCI combustion control and to enable an extension of operation range. A chemical reaction analysis was performed to elucidate details of the ignition inhibition on low-temperature oxidation of DME-HCCI combustion.

Premixed diesel combustion modes including low temperature combustion and MK combustion are expected to realize smokeless and low NOx emissions. As ignition must be delayed until after the end of fuel injection to establish these combustion modes, methods for active ignition control are being actively pursued. It is reported that alcohols including methanol and ethanol strongly inhibit low temperature oxidation in HCCI combustion offering the possibility to control ignition with alcohol induction. In this research improvement of diesel combustion and emissions by ethanol intake port injection for the promotion of premixing of the in-cylinder injected diesel fuel, and by increased EGR for the reduction of combustion temperature.

Many methods for estimating the fatigue life of an aluminum alloy have been proposed in order to save development time and cost as demand for durable and light-weighted material grows strong. None of them, however, are practical enough to estimate the life of an engine component because thermal and mechanical loads on the engine component change as time elapses. Firstly, this paper deals with a method for clarifying the inelastic characteristics of an aluminum alloy, especially the effects of strain amplitude, ductile period (compression-tension cycle time) and temperature range on inelastic deformation, by making experiment where both thermal and mechanical loads were applied in the inverted phase(‘out-of phase’). Secondly the paper discusses a possibility of improving accuracy in determining the fatigue life of the material by introducing a new index of ‘plastic work density per second’, which is based on the conventional concept of plastic strain energy density.

Smokeless and ultra low NOx combustion without knocking in a dual-fuel diesel engine with induced LPG as the main fuel was established with a uniquely developed piston cavity divided by a lip in the sidewall. A small quantity of diesel fuel was directly injected at early compression stroke into the lower part of the cavity as an ignition source for this confined area, and this suppressed explosively rapid combustion just after ignition and spark-knock like combustion at later stage. A combination of the divided cavity, EGR, and intake air throttling was effective to simultaneously eliminate knocking, and reduce THC and NOx significantly.

Critical for the use of aluminum alloys for cylinder heads are strength and durability. In our study, the mechanism of the low cycle fatigue and creep was clarified based on the mechanical properties of aluminum alloys, such as tensile, compressive, thermal fatigue and creep characteristics, which were determined by conducting tests on test pieces. The behavior of a cylinder head under cyclic thermal condition was represented by using a high-precision analysis method with cyclic creep taken into consideration. Moreover, the high-precision analysis method turned out to be effective in estimating a low cycle fatigue life under the cyclic thermal condition.