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Effect of retarded injection timing on knock resistance and cycle to cycle

variation in GDI engine

Article  in  Journal of Energy Resources Technology · February 2018

DOI: 10.1115/1.4039322

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Lei Zhou
State Key Laboratory of Engines,
Tianjin University,
Tianjin 300072, China
Aifang Shao
State Key Laboratory of Engines,
Tianjin University,
Tianjin 300072, China
Jianxiong Hua
State Key Laboratory of Engines,
Tianjin University,
Tianjin 300072, China
Haiqiao Wei1,2
State Key Laboratory of Engines,
Tianjin University,
Tianjin 300072, China
e-mail: whq@tju.edu.cn
Dengquan Feng
State Key Laboratory of Engines,
Tianjin University,
Tianjin 300072, China
Effect of Retarded Injection
Timing on Knock Resistance and
Cycle to Cycle Variation in
Gasoline Direct Injection Engine
In spark ignition engines, gasoline direct injection (GDI) is surely the most attractive
technology to achieve the demand of high energy efficiency by directly injecting fuel into
combustion chamber. This work, as a preliminary study, investigates the effect of
retarded injection timing on knock resistance and cycle-to-cycle variation in gasoline
engine by experimental method. The retarded injection timing during compression stroke
coupled with increased intake air temperature was employed to concentrate on suppress-
ing knock occurrence with stable combustion. Based on the great advantage of injection
timing retard on knock suppression, intake temperature was used in this work to reduce
cycle-to-cycle variation. In addition, piezo-electrically actuated injector was employed.
The results show that injection timing retard during compression stroke can significantly
suppress the knock tendency, but combustion becomes unstable and cycle-to-cycle varia-
tion is larger than 10%. Thus, increasing intake temperature decreased the cycle-to-cycle
variation but increased significantly the knock tendency, as expect. Meanwhile, rich
fuel–air mixture in this work also had the same effect as intake temperature did. It can be
concluded that retarded injection timing is of significant potential to suppress the knock
in GDI engine, although the high intake temperature causes high probability of large
knock occurrence. The percentages of knock at the spark timings of 24  CA before top
dead center (BTDC) and 26  CA BTDC were significantly reduced from approximately
40% to 7% and from approximately 60% to 10%, respectively. Furthermore, the retarded
injection timing not only reduced the probability of knock occurrence, but also decreased
the knock intensity obviously. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4039322]

Keywords: retarded injection timing, knock intensity, intake temperature, GDI, cycle-to-
cycle variation

1 Introduction improving engine performances. For example, in several studies

[10,11] the split injection was carried out to improve combustion
Nowadays, downsizing associated with turbocharging represents
efficiency and increase exhaust gases temperature to fasten
one of the most valuable options to reduce the CO2 emissions of
the catalyst warm-up to potentially reduce pollutants emission.
automotive spark ignition engines. However, the tendency of knock
Moreover, Kuwahara et al. [12] presented that knock was sup-
occurrence increases significantly with promoted compression ratio
pressed within low-speed range, and particle materials were
and boosted pressure. Knocking combustion in gasoline engines is
achieved by split injection with first injection at intake stroke and
an abnormal combustion phenomenon, which can destroy the
second injection at compression stroke. Liu et al. [13] also
engine and constrain the engine performance and thermal effi-
employed split injection to investigate the knock occurrence for
ciency. As a consequence, different methods are currently being
methanol–gasoline blends in a spark ignition engine. Recently,
employed to achieve knock suppression, including mainly the adop-
Marseglia et al. [14] demonstrated the effect of two-time injection
tion of cooled exhaust gas recirculation [1–3], Miller cycle [4,5],
on knock occurrence by optical method and three-dimensional
reduced intake air temperature, reasonable internal model control
calculation. In addition, in GDI, charge stratification is generally
[6], delayed spark timing, and alternative fuels [7–9].
controlled by late injections, which can realize rich zone and lean
Recently, in spark ignition engines, gasoline direct injection
zone separated in combustion chamber [11], whose combustion
(GDI) is surely the most attractive technology to achieve the
occurs in the combustion chamber far away from wall, leading to
demand of high energy efficiency by directly injecting fuel into
less heat loss from the wall and significantly reducing the fuel–air
combustion chamber. It is different from the traditional port fuel
mixture concentration near the wall that has the potential ability
injection architecture, since GDI has the potential to reduce knock
to reduce knock tendency. Meanwhile, late injections to realize
tendency and to improve fuel economy. Therefore, injection strat-
stable stratification can promote gasoline evaporation and shorten
egy plays an important role in controlling combustion and
mixture formation time under different loads and at different
engine speeds [15].
1
Corresponding author. Therefore, it can be found that split injection strategy is often
2
Present address: State Key Laboratory of Engines, Tianjin University, Tianjin used as a very effective methodology to improve engine perform-
300072, China. ance in GDI engine. Moreover, it should be noted that for single
Contributed by the Internal Combustion Engine Division of ASME for
publication in the JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESOURCES TECHNOLOGY. Manuscript received
injection, fuel injection timing is also an important parameter that
August 6, 2017; final manuscript received January 26, 2018; published online influences combustion and exhaust emissions of diesel engine
February 27, 2018. Assoc. Editor: Avinash Kumar Agarwal. [16–18], which has been comprehensively investigated in diesel

Journal of Energy Resources Technology Copyright V

C 2018 by ASME JULY 2018, Vol. 140 / 072202-1
 Fig. 1 Experimental setup of single-cylinder gasoline engine

engines. However, in gasoline engine, injection timing, in particu- Fig. 1. The engine’s geometrical specification is CR10:1, stoke of
lar late injection during compression stroke, is a totally new con- 100 mm. The engine combustion chamber consists of a flattop pis-
cept and still requires comprehensive study [19]. Several studies ton and a pent-roof cylinder head with spray-guided design. The
[19–22] were carried out to investigate the effect of injection tim- details and specifications are reported in Table 1. The experimen-
ing on the combustion performance of GDI engine. For example, tal apparatus includes the following modules: the single-cylinder
Song et al. [19] demonstrated the effect of injection timings of engine, an electrical dynamometer, the data acquisition system,
single injection strategy on fuel–air mixture formation and com- control units, and fuel consumption meter instruments. The single
bustion process. The results show that for single injection, cylinder engine is a Ricardo E6 4-stroke SI engine. The electrical
retarded injection timing could lead to an increase in flame propa- dynamometer is DZDC-20, which was made in China. The control
gation speed and in-cylinder pressure. But injections were only unit is MOTEC M400 ECU. The fuel consumption meter instru-
adopted during intake stoke. Sj€oberg and Reuss [20] presented ment was made in China. The engine equipped with a BMW pie-
that retarded injection timing can reduce exhaust NO emissions zoelectricity injector, and the injection pressure is 12.5 MPa. The
for stratified-charge spark ignition operation with gasoline fuel ignition timings and start of spark were controlled by MOTEC
because combustion phase retard leads to the reduction of peak- M400 ECU. The injection duration at 30  C, 50  C, and 70  C
average combustion temperature. They also noted that the injec- were 2.57 ms. The 2.45 ms and 2.28 ms for equivalence ratio of
tion timing retard for single injection strategy is quite limited for unity, respectively. The engine was equipped with a variable
gasoline due to the occurrence of unstable combustion. Overall, valve timing system in order to optimize intake and exhaust valve
the effect of retarded injection timing during compression stroke lift for each regime of operation. The intake valve open timing
on antiknock performance in GDI engine has not been carefully was 370  CA before top dead center (BTDC), intake valve close
studied in previous works. timing was 124  CA BTDC, exhaust valve open timing was
The major objective of this work, as a preliminary study, is to 150  CA after top dead center (ATDC), and exhaust valve close
present a potential methodology to both improve antiknock per- timing was 380  CA ATDC. The equivalence ratio was measured
formance and achieve combustion stability. The retarded injection
timing during compression stroke coupled with increased intake
air temperature was employed to concentrate on suppressing Table 1 Experimental conditions of the single cylinder
knock occurrence with stable combustion. It should be noted that
Item Specification
although the increased intake air temperature could increase
knock tendency, it was used in this work to reduce the cycle-to- Bore/stroke 80  100 mm
cycle variations. In addition, a piezo-electrically actuated injector Compression ratio 10:1
was employed. The proposed method is different from previous Sweep volume 0.5 L
thoughts. This work will provide a valuable insight into the under- Engine speed 1600 rpm
standing of antiknock mechanism. Intake valve open 370  CA BTDC
The paper is organized as follows: the experimental setup and Intake valve close 130  CA BTDC
procedures are briefly discussed in Sec. 2. The baseline case is Exhaust valve open 380  CA ATDC
presented in Sec. 2. The results and discussion are presented in Exhaust valve close 150  CA ATDC
Combustion system Direct-injection
Sec. 3. Finally, major conclusions from this work are concluded Injector BMW piezoelectricity injector
in Sec. 4. Injection pressure 12.5 MPa
Intake pressure Atmospheric pressure
2 Experiment Apparatus and Conditions Intake temperature 30 (baseline), 50, 70  C
Equivalence ratio 1, 1.09, 1.16
The study was carried out on a four-stroke, direct injection, Start of injection BTDC 240, 210, 180, 150, 120, 100, 80, 60  CA
inlet heating, single-cylinder spark ignition engine. The experi- Injection duration 2.57 ms (30  C), 2.45 ms (50  C), 2.28 ms (70  C)
mental setup of single-cylinder gasoline engine can be seen in

072202-2 / Vol. 140, JULY 2018 Transactions of the ASME

by a lambda sensor, whose accuracy was 60.1%. The engine was
equipped with direct current dynamometer. The accuracy of the
dynamometer was 61 rpm, and the engine speed was maintained
at 1600 rpm. The pressure data acquisition system included a Kis-
tler 6118B pressure transducer, a Kistler 5011 charge amplifier
and a National Instruments PC-612 data acquisition card. The fre-
quency was approximately 96 kHz. Pressure sampling was trig-
gered using a photoelectric encoder coupled to the crankshaft with
0.1 crank angle degree resolution. Samples were taken for 200
consecutive cycles, so that an average could be taken. All the tem-
peratures were measured with K-type thermocouples. The intake
temperature was controlled by calescence instrument, and 30  C
(baseline), 50  C, and 70  C were achieved by the instrument in
this study. The intake air pressure was fixed at atmospheric pres-
sure. The coolant temperature was maintained at 80 6 3  C. Com-
mercial gasoline (RON 92) was delivered, and the accuracy of the
fuel consumption meter was 60.5%.
3 Results and Discussion
In this work, the effect of retarded injection timing during com-
pression stroke on antiknock performance and cycle-to-cycle vari-
ation were studied in a directly injection spark ignition gasoline
engine. Therefore, the performance of various injection timings
and initial intake temperatures at different spark timings were
comprehensively investigated. Since intake temperature can influ-
ence intake air discharge, two different combustion modes
Fig. 2 Knock tendency versus spark timing and mass fraction
burned of 20  CA BTDC for various SOI timings at equivalence
ratio of 1.0 (/ 5 1:0) and intake temperature of 30  C
Journal of Energy Resources Technology
including stoichiometric combustion with equivalence ratio of
unity and rich combustion with constant fuel mass at different
intake temperatures were considered.
The maximum amplitude of filtered pressure oscillations
(MAPO) is defined as the largest absolute amplitude of band-pass
filtered pressure oscillations within a crank angle [23]. In this paper,
the criterion of MAPO was 0.1 MPa. One cycle was considered as a
knock cycle, when MAPO > 0.1 MPa [24]. As at an operating con-
dition where 10% of total cycles were knock cycles, knock occur-
rence was confirmed. The effective output torques and in-cylinder
pressures for 200 consecutive cycles were recorded. The cutoff fre-
quency of the band pass filter was 5–20 kHz in order to identify the
oscillated pressure traces of the knock.
Figure 2 shows the percentages of knock occurrence versus
spark timing for various start of injection (SOI) timings at equiva-
lence ratio of 1.0 and intake temperature of 30  C. In the present
experiment, the intake valve close timing was fixed at 130  CA
BTDC. Thus, the present SOI timings cover both the intake pro-
cess and the compression stroke. First, advancing the spark timing
obviously increase the knock tendency, as expected. It can be seen
that the overall knock tendency was suppressed by retarding injec-
tion timing at various spark timings. Retarding SOI timing signifi-
cantly affected premixed mass burn fraction, which can be seen in
Fig. 2(b). For spark ignition engine, the retarded SOI timing can
promote the fuel stratification and reduce the mixture concentra-
tion near the wall and subsequently the end-gas autoignition. Note
that, when the SOI timing was retarded to 120  CA BTDC during
compression stroke, the combustion became unstable, which will
be discussed later. It also can be found that the knock tendency is
not sensitive to the injection timing at the spark timing of 18  CA
BTDC due to almost approximately normal combustion.
It can be found that the maximum amplitude of the decrease of
the knock occurrence probability for the retarded injection timing
from 240 to 150  CA BTDC is around 50%. But for the injection
timing of 150  CA BTDC, serious knock probability is still high.
Until the injection timing is retarded to 120  CA BTDC, the knock
was almost diminished. However, it should be noted that the com-
bustion becomes unstable and the cycle-to-cycle variation was
higher than 25% at different spark timings for injection timing of
120  CA BTDC, as shown in Fig. 3. Figure 3 shows the torque
and COVIMEP of the engine at different injection timings and
spark timings. In this experiment, the spark plug was mounted on
the side of the combustion chamber near wall, and the retarded
injection timing will cause very lean mixture formation of air–fuel
near the spark plug, which might bring in combustion instability,
or even misfire. Therefore, compared with the results in Fig. 2, the
knock suppression is also partly due to the cause of large cycle-to-
cycle variation, such as the injection timing of 120  CA BTDC.
Fig. 3 Torque and cycle-to-cycle variation versus spark timing
for different injection timings at / 5 1:0 and intake temperature
of 30  C
JULY 2018, Vol. 140 / 072202-3
Fig. 4 Knock tendency and cycle-to-cycle variation versus
spark timing for three intake temperatures at / 5 1:0 and injec-
tion timing of 120  CA BTDC with injected fuel mass as same as
the condition of intake temperature of 30  C
The combustion instability decreases the torque or load, and
reduces the combustion thermodynamic condition for autoigni-
tion. The COVIMEP of the single cylinder engine is always under
5% at normal condition, and when the COVIMEP up to 10%, the
condition was deemed as unstable. It also can be seen from Figs. 2
and 3 that advancing spark timing could slightly improve combus-
tion stability and torque but significantly increase the knock tend-
ency. Therefore, to obtain the best torque and combustion stability
under different injection timings requires best spark timing. Over-
all, except the effect of spark timing, the retarded injection timing
for single injection strategy has the potential to improve knock
suppression but is quite limited due to the combustion instability.
In order to decrease cycle-to-cycle variation as shown in Fig. 3,
the high-intake temperature was adopted in this work, which can
improve mixture chemistry reaction activity and increase flame
propagation speed. Consequently, the stable combustion can be
achieved. First, the experiments at various intake temperatures
were carried out at the equivalence ratio of 1.0. It should be noted
that increasing intake temperature leads to a decrease of intake
charge and injected fuel mass if maintaining the equivalence ratio
at 1.0.
Figure 4 demonstrates that knock tendency and cycle-to-cycle
variation versus spark timing for three intake temperatures at
/ ¼ 1:0 and injection timing of 120  CA BTDC. It is well known
that end-gas temperature is reduced by a delayed spark timing
[25], which suppresses the knock tendency. It can be seen that
both advancing spark timing and increasing intake temperature
can reduce cycle-to-cycle variation but promote knock occurrence
as shown in Fig. 5. It is noticeable that in theory the local mixture
density near the wall becomes lean for retarded SOI timing, which
072202-4 / Vol. 140, JULY 2018
Fig. 5 Percentages of knock (a) and cycle-to-cycle variation (b)
versus spark timing for three intake temperatures and different
injection timings with the same injected fuel mass at three
intake temperatures
can lead to difficult ignition and combustion instability if the
chemistry reaction activity is not considered. The increase of
chemistry reaction activity can be caused by increasing intake
temperature, which inversely promotes knock occurrence and con-
sequently leads to the trade-off relation of cycle-to-cycle variation
and knock tendency. The increase of reaction activity not only
improves combustion stability, but also promotes the end-gas
autoignition near the wall. As a result, the end-gas autoignition
can induce to the knocking combustion. It can be seen that
advancing the spark timing has the same effects on both the knock
and cycle-to-cycle variation as increasing intake temperature.
Advancing spark timing can give sufficient time to burning the
mixture, but also give more time and thermodynamic conditions
to end-gas autoignition. It can be found that for high intake tem-
perature, it is more sensitive to the spark timing for reducing the
cycle-to-cycle variation. For example, for the intake temperature
of 70  C and the spark timing of 28  CA BTDC, the engine can
realize stable combustion. Therefore, the trade-off between cycle-
to-cycle variation and knock tendency need to be solved urgently
and will be discussed later.
As mentioned earlier, it is concluded that increasing intake
temperature has significant potential to reduce cycle-to-cycle vari-
ation, and retarding SOI timing can suppress knock occurrence.
Consequently, the proposed method combining intake temperature
and retarded injection timing was applied in this work to solve the
trade-off between cycle-to-cycle variation and knock tendency.
Transactions of the ASME
 Table 2 Experimental cases

Cases Description

Tin30-240 SOI is 240  CA BTDC, and Tin is 30  C

Tin30-210 SOI is 210  CA BTDC, and Tin is 30  C
Tin30-180 SOI is 180  CA BTDC, and Tin is 30  C
Tin30-150 SOI is 150  CA BTDC, and Tin is 30  C
Tin30-120 SOI is 120  CA BTDC, and Tin is 30  C
Tin50-120 SOI is 120  CA BTDC, and Tin is 50  C
Tin50-100 SOI is 100  CA BTDC, and Tin is 50  C
Tin70-120 SOI is 120  CA BTDC, and Tin is 70  C
Tin70-100 SOI is 100  CA BTDC, and Tin is 70  C
Tin70-80 SOI is 80  CA BTDC, and Tin is 70  C
Tin70-60 SOI is 60  CA BTDC, and Tin is 70  C

Meanwhile, in order to further reduce cycle-to-cycle variation the

same injected fuel mass was employed based on the equivalence
ratio of 1.0 for intake temperature of 30  C. Therefore, the equiva-
lence ratios for the intake temperatures of 70  C and 50  C are Fig. 6 Torque and cycle-to-cycle variation for different retarded
approximately 1.16 and 1.09, respectively, which also means rich injection timings at different intake temperatures and spark tim-
mixture formation for the higher intake temperature. Note that, in ing of 24  CA BTDC
this work, increasing intake temperature can expand lean combus-
tion limit and improve combustion stability. Meanwhile, overall lower than the knock critical value of 10%. It can be concluded
rich mixture formation based on the mixture stratification by that retarded SOI timing is of significant potential to suppress the
retarding injection timing cause the increase of the local fuel con- knock in GDI engine, although high intake temperature brings
centration near wall or spark plug. high probability of knock occurrence.
The effects of both the intake temperature and the retarded SOI It can be seen in Fig. 6 that although retarded SOI timing can
timing at different spark timings with the same injected fuel mass effectively reduce knock occurrence, the torque decreases slightly,
on cycle-to-cycle variation and knock tendency are shown in
Fig. 5. Note that the experimental cases are listed in Table 2. It
can be seen in Fig. 5(a) that when the intake temperature was
increased to 50  C, the COVsIMEP were still higher than 10% at
most spark timings. However, for the intake temperature of 70  C,
the COVsIMEP were below 10% for different retarded SOI timings
at all the spark timings, which are better than the results at same
condition except the equivalence ratio as shown in Fig. 4(b).
Thus, the results also indicate that for the injection timing retard
during compression stroke, the rich mixture also can suppress
cycle-to-cycle variation. Overall, increasing intake temperature
and enriching mixture concentration effectively improve combus-
tion stability. The only present issue is the increase of knock tend-
ency as increasing intake temperature as shown in Fig. 5(b). It can
be seen that when rich mixture is applied, knock tendency is
increased by comparing with the knock tendency in Fig. 4(a). The
result is different from previous study, which used rich fuel–air
mixture suppresses the knock occurrence. Since in previous stud-
ies, rich mixture is generally formed at intake stroke, which
reduces the intake temperature and delays combustion phasing.
Note that all the SOI timings for the intake temperature of 70  C
were used during compression stroke or after intake valve close,
which can achieve effectively mixture stratification and reduce
the in-cylinder temperature in term of the fuel evaporation.
It can be found that although the SOI timing was already
retarded to 60  CA BTDC, the cycle-to-cycle variations still main-
tained below 5% at different spark timings and the combustion
keeps stable. In terms of the performance of the intake tempera-
ture of 70  C with rich fuel–air mixture on cycle-to-cycle varia-
tion, the methodology of retarding the injection timing to further
suppress knock occurrence was adopted in present experiment.
Note that when the COV-IMEP ups to 10%, the condition was
deemed as unstable condition in present experiment. Figure 5(b)
shows knock tendency versus spark timing for different retarded
injection timings. It can be seen that retarded SOI timing can
obviously suppress knock occurrence at various spark timings,
especially at advanced spark timing. In particular for the injection
timing of 60  CA BTDC at the intake temperature of 70  C, the
percentages of knock at the spark timings of 24  CA BTDC and Fig. 7 Average temperatures versus crank angle, and CA10/
26  CA BTDC were sharply reduced from approximately 40% to CA50 for different injection timings and intake temperatures at
7% and from approximately 60% to 10%, respectively, which is spark timing of 24  CA BTDC

Journal of Energy Resources Technology JULY 2018, Vol. 140 / 072202-5

 Fig. 8 Maximum amplitude of filtered pressure oscillations distribution for different injection timings and intake temperatures
at the spark timings of 24  CA BTDC and 26  CA BTDC
which is a general issue for most antiknock methodologies. It is
consistent with previous study [21] regarding to the effect of injec-
tion timing retard on combustion phasing and misfire by planar
laser induced fluorescence spray visualization. However, it should
be noted that this work only concentrates on antiknock performance
and cycle-to-cycle variation or combustion stability considering
retarded SOI timing. Furthermore, a great extent reduction of knock
tendency is achieved by retarding injection timing, even using high
intake temperature. The results demonstrate that injection timing
retard during compression stroke is of the potential to suppress
knock in GDI engine, and might maintain thermodynamic effi-
ciency and torque if combining with other methods, such as boost
pressure and higher compression ratio, which is our future work.
Figure 7 shows the average temperatures versus crank angle,
and CA10/CA50 for different injection timings and intake temper-
atures at the spark timing of 24  CA BTDC. Note that the average
temperature was evaluated by two-zone combustion modeling
rather than measured by the temperature sensor. The local
enlarged image of the temperatures at near top dead center (TDC)
indicates the combustion characteristics in Fig. 7(a). Note that the
overall trend of knock tendency is related to the temperature at
near TDC and CA10/CA50. For instance, the combustion temper-
ature at near TDC is the highest, and CA10/CA50 are the shortest
at the SOI timing of 60  CA BTDC and the intake temperature of
70  C, which represents the fastest flame propagation speed and
burning rate and consequently decreases the probability of end-
gas autoignition. Therefore, the percentage of knock is lowest as
shown in Fig. 5(b).
To further understand the effect of retarded SOI timing on the
knock intensity or the largest absolute amplitude of pressure
072202-6 / Vol. 140, JULY 2018
oscillation, Fig. 8 shows the knock intensity distribution at differ-
ent injection timings and two intake temperatures at the spark tim-
ings of 24  CA BTDC and 26  CA BTDC. It can be seen that
retarded SOI timing not only reduces the probability of knock
occurrence but also reduces the knock intensity obviously. For the
intake temperature of 70  C, all the MAPO values are located
below 0.5 MPa at the spark timing of 24  CA BTDC for all injec-
tion timings. As for advancing the spark timing to 26  CA BTDC,
MAPO had a slight increase at the injection timing of 120  CA
BTDC. However, MAPO becomes below 0.5 MPa again by
retarding the injection timing to 80  CA BTDC and 60  CA
BTDC. The results further prove that retarded SOI timing might
decrease the sensitivity of knock or knock intensity to spark
timing.
4 Conclusion
The major objective of this work is to present a potential meth-
odology to improve antiknock performance. The retarded SOI
timing during the compression stroke coupled with increased
intake air temperature was employed to concentrate on suppress-
ing knock occurrence and enhancing combustion stability. This
work will provide a new insight into the understanding of anti-
knock mechanism.
The present results show that retarded SOI timing during com-
pression stroke can significantly suppress the knock tendency,
although the high intake temperature causes high probability of
large knock occurrence. Note that the increased intake air temper-
ature was used in this work to reduce cycle-to-cycle variation.
The percentages of knock at the spark timings of 24  CA BTDC
Transactions of the ASME
 and 26  CA BTDC were significantly reduced from approximately
40% to 7% and from approximately 60% to 10%, respectively.
Overall, the retarded injection timing not only reduced the proba-
bility of knock occurrence, but also decreased the knock intensity
obviously.
Furthermore, it can be concluded that enriching mixture con-
centration effectively improves combustion stability, but introdu-
ces the high knock propensity. Therefore, a trade-off relationship
between cycle-to-cycle variations and knock tendency are found
as using rich fuel–air mixture and high intake temperature. How-
ever, based on the very low cyclic variation, SOI timing can also
be significantly retarded, which further reduce significantly knock
occurrence. As a result, the trade-off relationship between cycle-
to-cycle variations and knock tendency can be solved by present
method.
It should be noted that this work only propose a potential meth-
odology to significantly suppress knock, which can give a large
space to improve engine performance using other methods.
Although the present method with increased intake air tempera-
ture employed in this work might decrease engine power, it is
believed that taking into account other methods, such as boosted
pressure, high-energy ignition system, will further compensate the
loss of torque to achieve both antiknock performance and high
engine power, which is our next work in future.
Funding Data
 National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
51476114, 51606133, and 91641203).
Nomenclature
ATDC ¼ after top dead center
BTDC ¼ before top dead center
CA10 ¼ combustion phasing as defined by the crank angle of
10% accumulative heat release ( CA)
CA50 ¼ combustion phasing as defined by the crank angle of
50% accumulative heat release ( CA)
COV ¼ coefficient of variation
CR ¼ compression ratio
GDI ¼ gasoline direct injection
IMEP ¼ indicated mean effective pressure
MAPO ¼ maximum amplitude of filtered pressure oscillations
Pmax ¼ maximum pressure
SOI ¼ start of injection
Tin ¼ intake temperature
g ¼ indicated thermal efficiency
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