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Advanced ignition system for internal combustion engines

Article · April 2015

DOI: 10.1364/LIC.2015.P1A.1

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 P1A.1.pdf Laser Ignition Conference 2015 © OSA 2015

ADVANCED IGNITION SYSTEM FOR INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

A.A. Tropina, Ye.G. Vovk
Kharkov National Automobile and Highway University, Kharkov, Ukraine
Abstract. A new compact generator of high-voltage nanosecond pulses on the basis of
the drift step recovery diodes combined with a control unit has formed an advanced ignition
system, which has been tested for the four-cylinder engine operating on the gasoline fuel.

It is a well known fact that in the spark-ignition engine an organization of the highly effective
ignition process, which combines energy efficiency and engine emissions reduction is a very
complicated problem. Different operating loads, different mixture composition in the vicinity of
the ignition point, necessity to decrease exhaust gases toxicity leads to different demands to the
same ignition system. As an alternative of the classic spark ignition a laser discharge or
combined laser-microwave discharges with a possibility of the multi-point ignition of the lean
mixture beyond flammability limits [1,2] can be used. At the same time as it has been shown in
[3] using the nanosecond pulsed discharge we can get a reduction of the fuel consumption as
well as the engine emissions reduction. The nonthermal plasma ignition system used in the
experiments in [3] has been configured as separate blocks for the each cylinder and the ignition
circuit has been designed in such a way to deliver energy in the breakdown phase of the
discharge. It is referred to as breakdown ignition systems. As an alternative way we proposed to
increase a signal frequency staying in the same nanosecond range without accumulation of
energy in the capacitor and taking into account that any new ignition device being implemented
in the internal combustion engine should be reliable as well as compact and small due to lack of
space in a vehicle. At the same time to deal with the small separate blocks for each cylinder we
need a small-sized generator of nanosecond pulses. As a way of the problem solution we have
oriented on the Drift Step Recovery Diodes (DSRD) as a new type of semiconductor “opening
switches” designed in the Ioffe Institute [4].

Fig. 1. One unit for one cylinder.

 A generator of high-voltage nanosecond pulses is presented in the form of several
systems: a voltage converter, the pulse generator and an output cascade. This assembly allows us
to generate a pulse frequency of 400 Hz to 10 kHz through timing RC-chain on one of the multi-
vibrators. The output cascade of the generator consists of the switching transistor and a coil with
the mounted Drift Step Recovery Diode. These diode allows forming nanosecond pulses of
amplitudes from 100 kV to 10 kV and capable to provide the switching speed of 103 B / ns on
one p-n-transition. One unit for one cylinder of the internal combustion engine is presented in
Fig.1. A combination of four such units forms the nanosecond pulsed discharge igniter for the
four-cylinder internal combustion engine. A signal formed by the igniter is shown in Fig.2. Main
parameters of this ignition system are as follows: a pulse duration is 10-20 ns, a maximum
frequency is 10 kHz, output energy can vary depending on the amplitude, a maximum voltage is
about 30 kV, a rise time is about 2 ns, and an input voltage is 12 V (a negative-ground
automotive system).

Fig. 2. A signal formed by the igniter.

Organization and adaptation of the advanced ignition system based on high-voltage

nanosecond pulses in a vehicle also included works related to implementation of this system to
the vehicle. A special control unit has been developed, which operates with four channels of the
generator and allow adjusting the pulse duration frequency, the signal amplitude and ignition
timing. The comparative analysis of the standard spark ignition system and the advanced ignition
system on the basis of the nanosecond pulsed discharge has been carried out for the four-cylinder
engine MeMZ-307 at different loads and speed. It has been obtained that using of the advanced
ignition system considerably improves the cyclic stability of the engine and increases the identity
of the combustion process in successive cycles. At the same time, an organization of such
ignition also allows reduction of nitrogen oxides in the exhaust gases of the engine compared
with the case of the standard spark ignition.
From the theoretical point of view creating a nonequilibrium plasma of the nanosecond pulsed
discharge gives us a possibility to fill the inter electrode gap by electronically and vibrationally
excited particles, which are promoters of the ignition process with the minimum energy loss on
the electrodes heating and shock wave formation. We could name two main consequences of the
nanosecond pulsed discharge action on the fuel-air mixture such as a formation of ions and
radicals. It has been found by numerical modeling that the formation of ions could not cause the
observed reduction of the nitrogen oxides content. Another long-lived main components formed
 by the discharge are oxygen atoms and radicals OH or CH. To determine a contribution of each
species we run equilibrium calculations putting them into the stoichiometric or lean mixture at
definite temperature and pressure.

Fig.3. A nanosecond pulsed discharge in the automotive spark plug.

1 - without the discharge, the discharge has been modeled as
2- a source of oxygen atoms, 3 - a source of OH radicals, 4 - a source of CH radicals.

The modeling results are presented in Fig.3 for a case of the stoichiometric (case a) and
lean methane-air mixture with the air excess coefficient α=1.2 (case b). For both cases an
equilibrium nitric oxide concentration is decreased with the discharge action in the pressure
range which is characteristic for the combustion processes in engines.

Literature

1. G. Kroupa, G. Franz, E. Winkelhofer,” Novel miniaturized high-energy Nd-YAG laser for

spark ignition in internal combustion engines”, Optical Engineering, vol.48, pp.014202-
014219, 2009.
2. J. B. Michael, A. Dogariu, M. N. Shneider, R. B. Miles, “Subcritical Microwave Coupling
to Femtosecond and Picosecond Laser Ionization for Localized, Multipoint Ignition of
Methane/Air Mixtures,” J. Appl. Phys, vol.108, pp.093308-093308-10, 2010.
3. A.A. Tropina, L. Lenarduzzi, S.V. Marasov, A.P. Kuzmenko, “Comparative analysis of
engine ignition systems”, IEEE Trans. on Plasma Science, vol. 37, no.12, pp.2286-2292,
2009.
4. A.G. Lyublinsky, S.V. Korotkov, Yu.A. Aristov, D.A. Korotkov, “Pulse power nanosecond
range DSRD based generators for electric discharge technologies”, IEEE trans. on Plasma
Sci., 2013, Vol/41, Issue 10, p 2625 – 2629.

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