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Engine knock is a major challenge that limits the achievement of higher engine efficiency by increasing the compression ratio of the engine. To address this issue, using a higher octane number fuel can be a potential solution to reduce or eliminate the propensity for knock and so obtain better engine performance. Methanol, a promising alternative fuel, can be produced from conventional and non-conventional energy resources, which can help reduce pollutant emissions. Methanol has a higher octane number than typically gasolines, which makes it a viable option for reducing knock intensity. This study compared the combustion characteristics of gasoline and methanol fuels in an optical spark-ignition engine using multiple spark plugs. The experiment was carried out on a single-cylinder four-stroke optical engine. The researchers used a customized metal liner with four circumferential spark plugs to generate multiple flame kernels inside the combustion chamber.

Pre-chamber combustion (PCC) engines allow extending the lean limit of operation compared to common SI engines, thus being a candidate concept for the future clean transportation targets. To understand the fundamental mechanisms of the main chamber charge ignition in PCC engines, the effects of the composition in the pre-chamber were investigated numerically. A well-stirred reactor combustion model coupled with a methane oxidation mechanism reduced from GRI 3.0 was used. An open-cycle simulation was run with initialization at exhaust valve opening (EVO). For posterior simulations, the initial flow field was attained by mapping the field variables obtained from the full cycle simulation. The entire simulation domain (pre-chamber and main chamber) global excess air ratio (λ) was set to 1.3.

Earlier studies on efficiency improvement in CI engines have suggested that heat transfer losses contribute largely to the total energy losses. Fuel impingement on the cylinder walls is typically associated with high heat transfer. This study proposes a two-injector concept to reduce heat losses and thereby improve efficiency. The two injectors are placed at the rim of the bowl to change the spray pattern. Computational simulations based on the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes approach have been performed for four different fuel injection timings in order to quantify the reduction in heat losses for the proposed concept. Two-injector concepts were compared to reference cases using only one centrally mounted injector. All simulations were performed in a double compression expansion engine (DCEE) concept using the Volvo D13 single-cylinder engine. In the DCEE, a large portion of the exhaust energy is re-used in the second expansion, thus increasing the thermodynamic efficiency.

To understand key practical aspects of ammonia as a fuel for internal combustion engines, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed using CONVERGETM. A light-duty single-cylinder research engine with a geometrical compression ratio of 11.5 and a conventional pentroof combustion chamber was experimentally operated at stoichiometry. The fumigated ammonia was introduced at the intake plenum. Upon model validation, additional sensitivity analysis was performed. The combustion was modeled using a detailed chemistry solver (SAGE), and the ammonia oxidation was computed from a 38-specie and 262-reaction chemical reaction mechanism. Three different piston shapes were assessed, and it was found that the near-spark flow field associated with the piston design in combination with the tumble motion promotes faster combustion and yields enhanced engine performance.

The Double compression expansion engine (DCEE) concept has exhibited a potential for achieving high brake thermal efficiencies (BTE). The effect of different engine components on system efficiency was evaluated in this work using GT Power simulations. A parametric study on piston insulation, convection heat transfer multiplier, expander head insulation, insulation of connecting pipes, ports and tanks, and the expander intake valve lift profiles was conducted to understand the critical parameters that affected engine efficiency. The simulations were constrained to a constant peak cylinder pressure of 300 bar, and a fixed combustion phasing. The results from this study would be useful in making technology choices that will help realise the potential of this engine concept.

Pre-chamber spark ignition (PCSI) combustion is an emerging lean-burn combustion mode capable of extending the lean operation limit of an engine. The favorable characteristic of short combustion duration at the lean condition of PCSI results in high efficiencies compared to conventional spark ignition combustion. Since the engine operation is typically lean, PCSI can significantly reduce engine-out NOx emissions while maintaining short combustion durations. In this study, experiments were conducted on a heavy-duty engine at lean conditions at mid to low load. Two major studies were performed. In the first study, the total fuel energy input to the engine was fixed while the intake pressure was varied, resulting in varying the global excess air ratio. In the second study, the intake pressure was fixed while the amount of fuel was changed to alter the global excess air ratio.

High-pressure internal combustion engines promise high efficiency, but a proper injection strategy to minimize heat losses and pollutant emissions remain a challenge. Previous studies have concluded that two injectors, placed at the piston bowl's rim, simultaneously improve the mixing and reduce the heat losses. The two-injector configuration further improves air utilization while keeping hot zones away from the cylinder walls. This study investigates how the two-injector concept delivers even higher efficiency by providing additional control of spray -and injection angles. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations examined several umbrella angles, spray-to-spray angles, and injection orientations by comparing the two-injector cases with a reference one-injector case. The study focused on heat transfer reduction, where the two-injector approach reduces the heat transfer losses by up to 14.3 % compared to the reference case.

Engine knock is an abnormal phenomenon, which places barriers for modern Spark-Ignition (SI) engines to achieve higher thermal efficiency and better performance. In order to trigger more controllable knock events for study while keeping the knock intensity at restricted range, various spark strategies (e.g. spark timing, spark number, spark location) are applied to investigate on their influences on knock combustion characteristics and pressure oscillations. The experiment is implemented on a modified single cylinder Compression-Ignition (CI) engine operated at SI mode with port fuel injection (PFI). A specialized liner with 4 side spark plugs and 4 pressure sensors is used to generate various flame propagation processes, which leads to different auto-ignition onsets and knock development. Based on multiple channels of pressure signals, a band-pass filter is applied to obtain the pressure oscillations with respect to different spark strategies.

Ammonia (NH3) is a carbon-free fuel, which could partially or completely eliminate hydrocarbon (HC) fuel demand. Using ammonia directly as a fuel has some challenges due to its low burning speed and low flammability range, which generates unstable combustion inside the combustion chamber. This study investigated the effect of two different compression ratios (CRs) of 10.5 and 12.5 on the performance of ammonia combustion by using a conventional single spark-ignition (SI) approach. It was found that at a lower CR of 10.5, the combustion was unstable even at advanced spark timing (ST) due to poor combustion characteristics of ammonia. However, increasing the CR to 12.5 improved the engine performance significantly with lower cyclic variations. In addition, this research work also observed the effect of multiple spark ignition strategies on pure ammonia combustion and compared it with the conventional SI approach for the same operating conditions.

Researchers have known about a higher pre-ignition frequency of alcohol fuels for several decades now. Several studies, assessing the effect of ethanol addition on stochastic pre-ignition, have shown contradicting observations. Researchers at FEV observed an increase in pre-ignition frequency with an increase in ethanol concentration, however the pre-ignition events at high ethanol content did not lead to super-knock. Most of the studies have used varying ethanol fraction in a common base-fuel, thereby varying the auto-ignition tendency of the blend. In the current study, the effect of ethanol addition on FACE (Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines) gasolines is assessed. Five different FACE gasolines (FACE A, C, I, J and G) were used for the study. Ignition delay time of varying ethanol fractions in FACE gasolines was measured in an Ignition Quality Tester (IQT), following ASTM 6890.

Pre-ignition in modern engines is largely attributed to oil-fuel mixture droplets igniting before the spark timing. Researchers have also found pre-ignition events to be triggered by high hydrocarbon emissions from the previous cycle as well as late spark timing in the previous cycle. Additionally, an ideally scavenged engine was not found to be limited by pre-ignition. These observations point to a significant role of residuals in triggering pre-ignition events. Current work studies pre-ignition in a probabilistic approach. The effect of residuals and in-cylinder thermodynamic state is studied by varying the exhaust back pressure and intake air temperature respectively. Experiments were performed with a fixed mass flow rate of air + fuel and intake air temperature while the exhaust back pressure was varied. Intake air pressure varied in response to fixed intake temperature. Pre-ignition and super-knock count increased with increasing exhaust back pressure.

Pre-chamber Combustion (PCC) extends the lean operation limit operation of spark ignition (SI) engines, thus it has been of interest for researchers as a pathway for increased efficiency and reduced emissions. Optical diagnostic techniques are essential to understand the combustion process, but the engine components such as the piston geometry, are often different from real engines to maximize the optical access. In this study, ignition and subsequent main chamber combustion are compared in an optically accessible PCC engine equipped with a “flat” and a real engine-like “bowl” piston geometry. An active fueled narrow throat pre-chamber was used as the ignition source of the charge in the main-chamber, and both chambers were fueled with methane. Three pre-chamber fuel effective mean pressure (FuelMEP) ratios (PCFR) namely 6%, 9% and 11% of the total amount of fuel were tested at two global excess air ratios (λ) at values of 1.8 and 2.0.

Pre-ignition remains a significant bottleneck to further downsizing and downspeeding technologies employed for reducing CO2 emissions in modern turbocharged spark-ignited engines. Pre-ignition, which occurs rarely, may lead to high peak pressures that auto-ignite the entire charge before TDC. The resulting high-pressure oscillations are known as super-knock, leading to sudden and permanent hardware damage to the engine. Over the years, numerous researchers have investigated the stochastic phenomenon’s source and concluded that there is a role of lubricant additives, deposits, gasoline properties, and hot surfaces in triggering pre-ignition. No single source has been identified; the research continues. Here, we take a different approach; rather than continue the search for the source(s) of super-knock, we explore mitigating super-knock by detecting pre-ignition early enough to take immediate evasive action.

Pre-chamber combustion (PCC) is a promising engine combustion concept capable of extending the lean limit at part load. The engine experiments in the literature showed that the PCC could achieve higher engine thermal efficiency and much lower NOx emission than the spark-ignition engine. Improved understanding of the detailed flow and combustion physics of PCC is important for optimizing the PCC combustion. In this study, we investigated the gas exchange and flame jet from a narrow throat pre-chamber (PC) by only fueling the PC with methane in an optical engine. Simultaneous negative acetone planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging and OH* chemiluminescence imaging were applied to visualize the PC jet and flame jet from the PC, respectively. Results indicate a delay of the PC gas exchange relative to the built-up of the pressure difference (△ P) between PC and the main chamber (MC). This should be due to the gas inertia inside the PC and the resistance of the PC nozzle.

Pre-chamber combustion (PCC) enables leaner air-fuel ratio operation by improving its ignitability and extending flammability limit, and consequently, offers better thermal efficiency than conventional spark ignition operation. The geometry and fuel concentration of the pre-chamber (PC) is one of the major parameters that affect overall performance. To understand the dynamics of the PCC in practical engine conditions, this study focused on (i) correlation of the events in the main chamber (MC) with the measured in-cylinder pressure traces and, (ii) the effect of fuel concentration on the MC combustion characteristics using laser diagnostics. We performed simultaneous acetone planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) from the side, and OH* chemiluminescence imaging from the bottom in a heavy-duty optical engine. Two different PC Fueling Ratios (PCFR, the ratio of PC fuel to the total fuel), 7%, and 13%, were investigated.

The auto-ignition of liquid fuel and lubricant oil droplets is considered as one of the possible sources of pre-ignition. Researchers are continually finding new ways to form advanced lubricant oil by changing its composition and varying different oil additives to prevent the occurrence of this event. This study investigates additives for lubricants to suppress its auto-ignition tendency. Three sets of mixtures were prepared. The first set of mixtures were prepared by adding different alcohols namely ethanol, and methanol to the commercial lubricant oil (SAE 15W-40) in ratio of 1 - 5 % by vol The second set of mixtures were prepared by mixing SAE 15W-40 with aforementioned alcohols (1 % vol.) and H2O (1 % vol.). Lastly, the third set of mixtures were prepared by adding toluene to SAE 15W-40 in (1 % - 5% by vol.). Two experimental setups were used in the current work.

Textbook engine thermodynamics predicts that SI (Spark Ignition) engine efficiency η is a function of both the compression ratio CR of the engine and the specific heat ratio γ of the working fluid. In practice the compression ratio of the SI engine is often limited due to “knock”. Knock is in large part the effect of end gases becoming too hot and auto-igniting. Knock results in increase in heat transfer to the walls which negatively affects efficiency. Not to mention damages to the piston. One way to lower the end-gas temperature is to cool the intake gas before inducting it into the combustion chamber. With colder intake gases, higher CR can be deployed, resulting in higher efficiencies. In this regard, we investigated the efficiency of a standard Waukesha CFR engine. The engine is operated in the SI engine mode, and was operated with two differing mixtures at different temperatures.

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.