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Corona ignition is a promising technology that has been demonstrated to be capable of improving the reliability of lean combustion. However, arcing is unavoidable during corona discharge. The high current surge during arcing can cause excessive damage to the corona ignition system. In this work, a control framework is proposed to help reduce and prevent arcing from happening in a corona ignition system. Experimental results are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

To overcome the unfavorable operation conditions caused by lean/diluted charges in modern Spark Ignited (SI) engines, various advanced ignition systems have been proposed in the past. Among them, the dual-coil and multi-coil Transistor Coil Ignition (TCI) systems with offset discharge strategy caused significant attention in literature because they can generate a continuous spark with high spark energy being delivered into the cylinder. Comparing with the dual-coil system, a multi-coil system is capable to apply more flexible control strategies and generate a higher discharge current. However, the spark energy and transfer efficiency of the multi-coil system are still worthy to investigate as they are important performance indicators for a TCI system. In this paper, the discharge characteristics of the dual-coil and triple-coil strategies under both quiescent and flow conditions were studied firstly by experimental methods.

A semi-empirical turbulent flame growth model has been developed based on thermodynamic equilibrium calculations and experiments in a 125-mm cubical combustion chamber. It covers the main flame growth period from spark kernel formation until flame wall contact, including the effects of laminar flame speed, root mean square turbulence intensity, turbulent eddy size, and flame size. As expected, the combustion rate increases with increasing laminar flame speed and/or turbulence intensity. The effect of turbulent eddy scale is less obvious. For a given turbulence intensity, smaller scales produce higher instantaneous flame speed. However, turbulence of a smaller scale also decays more rapidly. Thus, for a given laminar flame speed and turbulence intensity at the time of ignition, there is an optimum turbulent eddy size which leads to the fastest combustion rate over the period considered.

The ever-growing demand to meet the stringent exhaust emission regulations have driven the development of modern gasoline engines towards lean combustion strategies and downsizing to achieve the reduction of exhaust emission and fuel consumption. Currently, the inductive ignition system is still the dominant ignition system applied in Spark Ignited (SI) engines. It is popular due to its simple design, low cost and robust performance. The new development in spark ignition engines demands higher spark energy to be delivered by the inductive ignition system to overcome the unfavorable ignition conditions caused by the increased and diluted in-cylinder charge. To meet this challenge, better understanding of the inductive ignition system is required. The development of a first principle model for simulation can help in understanding the working mechanism of the system in a better way.

Advanced combustion engines, as power sources, dominate all aspects of the transportation sector. Stringent emission and fuel efficiency standards have promoted the research interest in advanced combustion strategies and alternative fuels. Owing to the comparable energy density to the existing fossil fuels and renewable production, alcohol and ether fuels may be a suitable replacement, or an additive to the gasoline/diesel fuels to meet the future emission standards with minimal modification to current engine geometry. Furthermore, lean and diluted combustion are well-researched pathways for efficiency improvement and reduction of engine-out emissions of modern engines. However, lean-burn or EGR dilution can introduce combustion inefficiencies in the form of excessive hydrocarbon, carbonyl species and carbon monoxide emissions.

A vehicle undergoing longitudinal or lateral accelerations experiences load transfer, dynamically changing the normal load carried by each tire. Conventional braking systems are designed only to work adequately over a large range of conditions, but often ignore the dynamic state of the tire's normal load. Fortunately, new developments in braking system hardware give designers more control over the application of braking pressures. By identifying the tires that carry increased normal load, and biasing the braking system toward those tires, total braking force can be increased. The purpose of this research is to investigate advantages of open-loop load transfer based active brake pressure distribution. By estimating the tractive ability of the tires as a function of measurable vehicle conditions, brake pressure can be applied in proportions appropriate for the current dynamic state of the vehicle, referred to as Active Brake Proportioning (ABP).

In this work, engine tests were performed to realize EGR-enabled LTC on a single-cylinder common-rail diesel engine with three different compression ratios (17.5, 15 and 13:1). The engine performance was first investigated at 17.5:1 compression ratio to provide baseline results, against which all further testing was referenced. The intake boost and injection pressure were progressively increased to ascertain the limiting load conditions for the compression ratio. To extend the engine load range, the compression ratio was then lowered and EGR sweep tests were again carried out. The strength and homogeneity of the cylinder charge were enhanced by using intake boost up to 3 bar absolute and injection pressure up to 180 MPa. The combustion phasing was locked in a narrow crank angle window (5~10° ATDC), during all the tests.

Low temperature combustion (LTC), though effective to reduce soot and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) simultaneously from diesel engines, operates in narrowly close to unstable regions. Adaptive control strategies are developed to expand the stable operations and to improve the fuel efficiency that was commonly compromised by LTC. Engine cycle simulations were performed to better design the combustion control models. The research platform consists of an advanced common-rail diesel engine modified for the intensified single cylinder research and a set of embedded real-time (RT) controllers, field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices, and a synchronized personal computer (PC) control and measurement system.

Hollow polymer-based automotive components cannot, in general, be directly injection molded because they cannot be ejected from the mold. The common practice is to injection mold two or more parts, and then join these together with a welding process. Of the many joining process available, laser welding has an advantage in geometric design freedom. The laser weld joints are also generally stronger than those of vibration welds because the weld joints are located in the walls rather than on external flanges. Eliminating the external flanges also makes the part more compact. In transmission laser welding processes, the laser beam passes through a transparent part to its interface with an opaque part. The beam energy is absorbed near the interface in the opaque part, and heat flows back across to the transparent half to make the weld pool. So successful laser welds are possible only when there is a continuous interfacial fit between the parts.

Extensive empirical work indicates that the exhaust emission and fuel efficiency of modern common-rail diesel engines characterise strong resilience to biodiesel fuels when the engines are operating in conventional high temperature combustion cycles. However, as the engine cycles approach the low temperature combustion (LTC) mode, which could be implemented by the heavy use of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) or the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) type of combustion, the engine performance start to differ between the use of conventional and biodiesel fuels. Therefore, a set of fuel injection strategies were compared empirically under independently controlled EGR, intake boost, and exhaust backpressure in order to improve the neat biodiesel engine cycles.

In the recent decades, the emission and fuel efficiency regulations put forth by the emission regulation agencies have become increasingly stringent and this trend is expected to continue in future. The advanced spark ignition (SI) engines can operate under lean conditions to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Under such lean conditions, the ignition and complete combustion of the charge mixture is a challenge because of the reduced charge reactivity. Enhancement of the in-cylinder charge motion and turbulence to increase the flame velocity, and consequently reduce the combustion duration is one possible way to improve lean combustion. The role of air motion in better air-fuel mixing and increasing the flame velocity, by enhancing turbulence has been researched extensively. However, during the ignition process, the charge motion can influence the initial spark discharge, resulting flame kernel formation, and flame propagation.

The ever-stringent emission regulations are major challenges for the diesel fueled engines in automotive industry. The applications of advanced after-treatment technologies as well as alternative fuels [1] are considered as promising methodology to reduce exhaust emission from compression ignition (CI) engines. Using dimethyl ether (DME) as an alternative fuel has been extensively studied by many researchers and automotive manufactures since DME has demonstrated enormous potential in terms of emission reduction, such as low CO emission, and soot and sulfur free. However, the effect of employing DME in a lean NOX trap (LNT) based after-treatment system has not been fully addressed yet. In this work, investigations of the long breathing LNT system using DME as a reductant were performed on a heated after-treatment flow bench with simulated engine exhaust condition.

Clean diesel engines are one of the fuel efficient and low emission engines of interest in the automotive industry. The combustion chamber flow field and its effect on fuel spray characteristics plays an important role in improving the efficiency and reducing the pollutant emission in a direct injection diesel engine, in terms of influencing processes of breakup, evaporation mixture formation, ignition, combustion and pollutant formation. Ultra-high injection pressure fuel sprays have benefits in jet atomization, penetration and air entrainment, which promote better fuel-air mixture and combustion. CFD modeling is a valuable tool to acquire detailed information about these important processes. In this research, the characteristics of ultra-high injection pressure diesel fuel sprays are simulated and validated in a quiescent constant volume chamber. A profile function is utilized in order to apply variable velocity and mass flow rate at the nozzle exit.

Spark ignition systems with the capability of providing spark event with either higher current level or longer discharge duration has been developed in recent years to help IC engines towards clean combustion with higher efficiency under lean/diluted intake charge. In this research, a boosted current spark strategy was proposed to investigate the effect of spark discharge current level and discharge duration on the combustion process. Firstly, the discharge characteristics of a boosted current spark system were tested with a traditional spark plug under crossflow conditions, and results showed that the spark channel was more stable, and was stretched much longer when the discharge current was boosted. Then the boosted current strategy was used in a spark ignition engine operating under lean conditions. Boosted current was added to the spark channel with different timing, duration, and current levels.

The increased availability of natural gas (NG) in the U.S. has renewed interest in the application to heavy-duty (HD) diesel engines in order to realize fuel cost savings and reduce pollutant emissions, while increasing fuel economy. Reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) combustion employs two fuels with a large difference in auto-ignition properties to generate a spatial gradient of fuel-air mixtures and reactivity. Typically, a high octane fuel is premixed by means of port-injection, followed by direct injection of a high cetane fuel late in the compression stroke. Previous work by the authors has shown that NG and diesel RCCI offers improved fuel efficiency and lower oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and soot emissions when compared to conventional diesel diffusion combustion. The work concluded that NG and diesel RCCI engines are load limited by high rates of pressure rise (RoPR) (>15 bar/deg) and high peak cylinder pressure (PCP) (>200 bar).

For spark ignition (SI) engines, further improvement of engine efficiency has become the major development trend, and lean burn/EGR technologies, as well as intensified in-cylinder flow, need to be adapted to reach that target. Stronger ignition sources become more favorable under extreme lean/EGR conditions. Among the ignition technologies developed, multiple ignition sites technology has been proved to be an effective way to help with the initial flame kernel development. In this paper, a spark ignited 4-cylinder turbo-charged production engine is employed to investigate the impact of multiple ignition sites technology on engine performance under lean burn conditions. Four in-house designed 3-core sparkplugs are installed on the cylinders to replace traditional stock sparkplugs, in order to generate multiple ignition sites in the cylinders.

Carburized parts often see use in powertrain components for the automotive industry. These parts are commonly quenched and tempered after the carburizing process. The present study compared the austempering heat treatment to the traditional quench-and-temper process for carburized parts. Samples were produced from SAE 8620, 4320, and 8822 steels and heat treated across a range of conditions for austempering and for quench-and-tempering. Distortion was examined through the use of Navy C-Ring samples. Microstructure, hardness, and Charpy toughness were also examined. X-ray diffraction was used to compare the residual stress found in the case of the components after the quench-and-temper and the austempering heat treatments. Austempering samples showed less distortion and higher compressive residual stresses, while maintaining comparable hardness values in both case and core. Toughness measurements were also comparable between both processes.

Reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) combustion employs two fuels with a large difference in auto-ignition properties that are injected at different times to generate a spatial gradient of fuel-air mixtures and reactivity. Researchers have shown that RCCI offers improved fuel efficiency and lower NOx and Soot exhaust emissions when compared to conventional diesel diffusion combustion. The majority of previous research work has been focused on premixed gasoline or ethanol for the low reactivity fuel and diesel for the high reactivity fuel. The increased availability of natural gas (NG) in the U.S. has renewed interest in the application of compressed natural gas (CNG) to heavy-duty (HD) diesel engines in order to realize fuel cost savings and reduce pollutant emissions, while increasing fuel economy. Thus, RCCI using CNG and diesel fuel warrants consideration.

A production V-8 engine was redesigned to run on low temperature combustion (LTC) with conventional Diesel fuel. Two fuel injection strategies were used to attain reduction in soot and NOx; a) early premixed injection strategy: fuel injected early during the compression stroke and b) late premixed injection strategy: fuel injected close to TDC with heavy EGR. The early premixed injection strategy yielded low NOx and soot but struggled to vaporize the fuel as noted in unburned hydrocarbons readings. The late premixed injection strategy introduced the fuel at higher in-cylinder temperatures and densities, improving the fuel's vaporization and limited the unburned hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide. The use of high EGR and high injection pressure for late premixed injection strategy provided sufficiently long ignition delay that resulted in partially premixed cylinder charge before combustion, and thereby prevented high soot, even in presence of high EGR.

Lean burn or EGR diluted combustion with enhanced charge motion is effective in improving the efficiency of spark ignition engines. However, the ignition process under these conditions is getting more challenging due to higher ignition energy required by the lean or diluted mixture, as well as the interactions of the gas flow on the flame kernel. Enhanced spark discharge energy is essential to initiate the combustion under these conditions. Moreover, the discharge process should be more carefully controlled to improve the effectiveness of the spark. In this study, spark ignition systems with boosted discharge energy are used to ignite diluted air-fuel mixture under forced flow conditions. The impacts of the discharge current level, the discharge duration and the discharge current profile on the ignition are investigated in detail using optical diagnosis.