22 HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry 1500 rpm, 4 bar imep. imep = indicated mean effective pressure B40. 320 520 z —Sicombustion S10. — CAI combustion 0 100 200 300 400 500 Cylinder volume (co) 2.1 In-cylinder pressure traces of CAI and SI operation at the same operating condition. SI and CI combustions. Furthermore, chemical kinetics plays a critical role in the better understanding and control of the auto-ignition process and ensuring heat release involved in this combustion mode. A large number of studies have been carried out to provide better understanding of these issues by means of advanced experimental and computational techniques. In this section, the general characteristics of CAI gasoline engines will be presented and discussed. In an ideal case, CAI/HCCI combustion can be described as controlled autoignition of a premixed fuel/air mixture and involves the simultaneous reactive envelopment of the entire fuel/air mixture without a flame front. As shown in Plate 2 (between pages 268 and 269), the initiation of combustion always occurs at multiple sites in the premixed fuel/air mixture, The heat release process is much faster than the conventional SI combustion and is more closely described by a constant volume heat addition process, as shown in Fig. 2.1. This combustion mode also results in a more uniform and repeatable heat release in comparison with that of SI operation, as illustrated by the close resemblance of the mass fraction burned curves of 100 CAI combustion cycles in Plate 3 (between pages 268 and 269) 2.2.1 Region of CAI operation Figure 2.2 shows a typical CAI region attainable for a gasoline engine [1]. ‘These results were obtained from a single cylinder research engine operating at the following conditions. Engine speed 1500 rpm Airflow: WOT Inlet charge temperature: 320+ 1°COverview of CAI/HCCI gasoline engines 23 Partial burn region IZ x A 45. + > 40: st * $3 asf +" | ~ 30> + *_s ~ =| = : . A 254 ico ‘|. af ° | < . "4 CAN : LR 2.04 knock region eS Knock rigion “> ~ i ek _— “| wo ~ a _ . — Qin — ~ Misfire, glean), 0 tt 3 70 70 30 40 80 60 EGR rate [% by mass] 2.2 Boundary regions for CAI operation for unleaded gasoline. Coolant temperature 80 + 0.2°C Oil temperature 55+ 1°C Compression ratio 115 In order to achieve CAT operation, the inlet charge temperature was raised to 320°C by an air heater, Exhaust gas re-circulating took place well before the air heater for homogeneous mixed air and EGR and was cooled sufficiently before entry to the inlet manifold to allow the inlet charge temperature to be controlled accurately by the heater irrespective of EGR rate. Fuel was delivered to the intake port at a pressure of 2.7 bar using a Bosch port injector. The horizontal axis in Fig. 2.2 represents the total gravimetric percentage of EGR in the cylinder, and the vertical axis represents the overall A/F ratio of the cylinder charge. The attainable CAI region is limited by three boundaries: 1. misfire 2. partial burn 3. knock limit. The first boundary defines the misfire region. At higher EGR rates, the CO, and H,0 content of the intake charge is raised significantly, causing the occasional failure of ignition. Higher EGR rates are obtainable as lambda is, increased because there is increasingly more Oy and less CO, and H,024 HCCI and CAI engines for the automotive industry Lambda 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 EGR rate [% by mass] 2.3 Indicated mean effective pressure (imep) values (bar) in the CAI operational range. content in the intake charge, leading to more stable ignition and subsequent combustion, As fuel flow-rate is decreased (lambda increase), the net heat-release is also decreased, The resulting gradual lowering of average combustion temperature leads to more unburned charge, characterised by high CO and unburned HC emissions, and by an increase in cycle-to-cycle variations. Knocking combustion occurs at the lower boundary (high-load) of the region. At the knock boundary, if no EGR is used, the richest lambda attainable is approximately 3.15. As EGR is increased, the knock limit is brought closer to lambda 1.0, with 43% EGR. Figure 2.3 shows the imep map for the gasoline CAI region. As expected, the imep decreases linearly with the A/F ratios as the fuelling is decreased at constant air flow rate. The highest imep of 3.8 bar occurs at lambda 1.0, EGR rate 43% at the knock limit while the lowest imep cannot be clearly defined as it will depend upon the acceptable levels of wHC and CO emissions, specific fuel consumption, and cyclic variation. 2.2.2 Unburned hydrocarbon (uHC) and CO emissions Figures 2.4 and Fig. 2.5 show the specific unburned hydrocarbon emission and CO emission, respectively. Other studies by Kaiser et al. [2] and by Dec