森吉 泰生

Modern diesel engines have improved engine fuel economy and significantly reduced nitrogen oxides (NO ) and particulate matter (PM) emissions achieved by advances in both combustion and exhaust aftertreatment technologies. Recently, it has been shown that the vehicle emissions can be further improved by several catalytic systems including fuel reformers and aftertreatment systems, such as the Lean NO Trap (LNT). This NO removal system, called LNT, absorbs NO under lean exhaust gas conditions and releases NO under rich conditions. This technology can provide high NO conversion efficiency, but the right amount of reducing agent should be supplied into the catalytic converter under appropriate conditions. In this work, plasma reformer was used to supply a hydrogen-enriched gas as a NO reductant. The plasma reforming is one of the most promising on-board reforming technologies, which allows reformates containing H and CO to feed for LNT catalyst efficiently. Partial oxidation is induced by plasma in the fuel reformer and diesel fuel is converted into a hydrogen-enriched gas. The supplying strategy was focused on the maximization of NO reduction efficiency varying both the total amount of hydrogen-enriched reformate and the ratio of oxygen molecules to in the reformer air-fuel mixture prior to processing at a fixed engine operating condition. The effect of exhaust gas temperature was also studied. The NO reduction efficiency is closely connected to the amount of supplied fuel to the plasma reformer and the ratio of fuel/air feed rate. The LNT can reduce NO efficiently with only a 2.6% fuel penalty. Crown Copyright © 2009. x x x x x x x 2 x x x

本研究では，新たに開発した小型の誘導エネルギー蓄積式パルス電源により生成される，繰り返しパルスを用いることで，効率的に生成した活性化学種雰囲気下の混合気に対して，短パルスアーク放電することにより，希薄燃焼時の着火特性の改善を図る．本論文は第3報であり，EGRを想定した希釈条件下での点火特性を調べた．

In a motorcycle gasoline engine, the port fuel injection system is rapidly spread. Compared to an automotive engine, the injected fuel does not impinge on the intake valve due to space restriction to install the injector. In addition, as the air flow inside the intake pipe may become very fast and has large cycle-to-cycle variation, it is not well found how the injector should be installed in the intake pipe to prepare "good" fuel-air mixture inside the intake pipe. In this study, the formation process of the fuel-air mixture is measured by using ILIDS system that is a 2-D droplets' size and velocity measurement system with high spatial resolution. Experiments with changing conditions such as flow speed and injection direction are carried out. As a result, the effects of injection direction, ambient flow speed and wall roughness on the fuel-air mixture formation process was examined, considering the three conditions of cold start, light to medium load operation and high load operation. Copyright © 2010 SAE International and Copyright © 2010 SAE Japan.

Since ethanol is a renewable source of energy and has lower carbon dioxide (CO ) emissions than gasoline, ethanol produced from biomass is expected to be used more frequently as an alternative fuel. It is recognized that for spark ignition (SI) engines, ethanol has the advantages of high octane and high combustion speed and the disadvantage of ignition difficulties at low temperatures. An additional disadvantage is that ethanol may cause extra wear and corrosion of electric fuel pumps. On-board hydrogen production out of ethanol is an alternative plan. Ethanol has been used in Brazil as a passenger vehicle fuel since 1979, and more than six million vehicles on US highways are flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs). These vehicles can operate on E85 - a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. This paper investigates the influence of ethanol fuel on SI engine performance, thermal efficiency and emissions. The combustion characteristics of hydrogen enriched gaseous fuel made from ethanol are also examined. Ethanol has excellent anti-knock qualities due to its high octane number and a high latent heat of evaporation, which makes the temperature of the intake manifold lower. In addition to the effect of latent heat of evaporation, the difference in combustion products compared with gasoline further decreases combustion temperature, thereby reducing cooling heat loss. Reductions in CO , nitrogen oxide (NOx), and total hydrocarbons (THC) combustion products for ethanol vs. gasoline are described. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 2 2

In order to extend the HCCI high load operational limit, the effects of the distributions of temperature and fuel concentration on pressure rise rate (dP/dθ) were investigated through theoretical and experimental methods. The Blow-Down Super Charge (BDSC) and the EGR guide parts are employed simultaneously to enhance thermal stratification inside the cylinder. And also, to control the distribution of fuel concentration, direct fuel injection system was used. As a first step, the effect of spatial temperature distribution on maximum pressure rise rate(dP/dθmax) was investigated. The influence of the EGR guide parts on the temperature distribution was investigated using 3-D numerical simulation. Simulation results showed that the temperature difference between high temperature zone and low temperature zone increased by using EGR guide parts together with the BDSC system. Experiments were conducted by using a four-cylinder gasoline engine equipped with the BDSC with EGR guide system to investigate the effect of the EGR guide on the heat release rate and the in-cylinder pressure rise rate. Experimental results showed that 50% and 90 % mass fraction burned timing (CA50 and CA90) were delayed and combustion duration became longer when the EGR guide was used to enhance thermal stratification. As a result, the maximum pressure rise rate could be decreased and the HCCI high load limit successfully extended. Meanwhile10 % mass fraction burned timing (CA10) was not affected by the thermal stratification generated by the EGR guide. This is probably because the fuel is also spatially stratified such that the fuel concentration becomes lean in the high temperature zone. Next, the effect of the fuel distribution on high load HCCI operation was investigated. Numerical analysis using a multi-zone combustion model considering detailed chemical reactions was carried out. The simulation results showed that the maximum pressure rise rate was decreased by 27 % when the fuel distribution was uniform with temperature distribution generated by the BDSC with EGR guide system. Then, to obtain a uniform fuel distribution while keeping the temperature distribution generated by the BDSC with EGR guide system, a direct injection system was employed and the effect of fuel direct injection on maximum pressure rise rate was experimentally investigated. As a result, if 20 % of the total fuel was injected directly into the cylinder during the exhaust stroke, the spatial distribution of the fuel concentration (G/F; fuel mass ratio to the total mass of in-cylinder mixture) became more homogeneous and maximum pressure rise rate was decreased by 10%. And also, 20 % of the total fuel directly injected during the compression stroke, maximum pressure rise rate was decreased by 20 %. Finally, a simple method to predict the ignition timing using Livengood-Wu integral and 1-D numerical simulation code was examined. It was found that the proposed method can predict the ignition timing with small deviation around ±2 degrees. Copyright © 2010 SAE International.

A newly developed small-sized IES (inductive energy storage) circuit with semiconductor switch at turn-off action is successfully applied to an ignition system of a small gasoline internal combustion engine. This IES circuit can generate repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges. An ignition system using repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges is investigated as an alternative to a conventional spark ignition system. The present study focuses on the extension of the operational limits for lean and diluted combustion using the repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges. First, in order to investigate the flame kernel formation process when the repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges are used, the initial flame kernel is observed using Schlieren photography with a high speed camera. As a result, the flame kernel generated by repetitive pulse discharges is larger than by a conventional ignition system. Then, an application of repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges to a single cylinder SI engine is conducted and the operational limit of lean combustion is investigated. The result shows that the lean limit is extended from 20 to 23 in A/F at IMEP 440 kPa by replacing the ignition system from a conventional one. Also, the diluted limit is investigated. The result shows that the diluted limit is extended from 17.5% to 22.5% in EGR ratio at IMEP 630 kPa and that thermal efficiency is improved by 5%. The ignition delay and the combustion duration are decreased and the cycle-to-cycle variation of the ignition timing and IMEP are decreased. © 2009 SAE International.

本研究では，新たに開発した小型の誘導エネルギー蓄積式パルス電源により生成される，繰り返しパルスを用いることで，効率的に生成した活性化学種雰囲気下の混合気に対して，短パルスアーク放電することにより，希薄燃焼時の着火特性の改善を図る．本論文は第二報であり，点火機構の解明と実機への応用を試みた．

記事種別: 会議・学会報告・シンポジウム

Direct fuel injection system is getting popular in internal combustion engines due to the superior performance in fuel economy and power. To optimize the fuel-air mixture distribution inside the cylinder, the geometry of nozzle and the mixture formation process must be well designed. To attain this, the numerical simulation will be a good tool, but the prediction ability is not enough for the practical design. In this study, a two-phase flow of fuel and gas including cavitation inside an axi-symmetrical nozzle was evaluated to improve the prediction ability. Two kinds of cavitaion model (quasi-steady dynamic bubble model and discrete bubble tracking model) are proposed and implemented into a commercial code FLUENT 6.4. As a result, the discrete bubble tracking model could obtain converged solutions even for a high differential pressure conditions between the nozzle entrance and the exit up to 100 MPa and predict the cavitaion phenomenon qualitatively.

The analysis of spray characteristics is important to examine the combustion characteristics of DI (Direct Injection) gasoline engines because the fuel-air mixture formation is controlled by spray characteristics and in-cylinder gas motion. However, the mixture formation process has not been well clarified yet. In this study, the characteristics of a fan-shaped spray caused from a slit-type injector, such as the droplet size, its velocity and the droplet distribution were simultaneously measured on a 2D plane by using improved ILIDS (Interferometric Laser Imaging for Droplet Sizing) method. ILIDS method is an optical measurement technique using interference fringes by illuminating a transparent spherical particles with a coherent laser light. In the measurement of the wall-impinging spray, effects of the distance to the wall and the wall temperature on the spray characteristics were investigated. As a result, it was found that the SMD (Sauter Mean Diameter) near the wall surface increased with smaller distance. Meanwhile, in the measurement of spray under a crosswind, the relative velocity of between the droplet and the ambient gas was found influential on the atomization. Additionally, numerical simulation of the spray with a crosswind was examined. The in-nozzle two phase flow was calculated using VOF (Volume of Fluid) model and also the spray formation process was calculated using DDM (Discrete Droplet Model) with mathematical sub-models. As a result, the effects of boundary conditions at nozzle exit, breakup model and drag force model were evaluated comparing with experimental results. Copyright © 2009 SAE International.

The objective of this study is to extend the high load operation limit of a gasoline HCCI engine. A new system extending the high load HCCI operation limit was proposed, and the performance of the system was experimentally demonstrated. The proposed system consists of two new techniques. The first one is the "Blow-down super charging (BDSC) system", in which, EGR gas can be super charged into a cylinder during the early stage of compression stroke by using the exhaust blow-down pressure wave from another cylinder phased 360 degrees later/earlier in the firing order. The other one is "EGR guide" for generating a large thermal stratification inside the cylinder to reduce the rate of in-cylinder pressure rise (dP/dθ) at high load HCCI operation. The EGR guides consist of a half-circular part attached on the edge of the exhaust ports and the piston head which has a protuberant surface to control the mixing between hot EGR gas and intake air-fuel mixture. The experiments were carried out using a 4-cylinder port fuel injection engine with a compression ratio of 12. As a result, HCCI operation at high loads, up to an IMEP of 650 kPa at an engine speed of 1500 rpm, was achieved. Copyright © 2009 SAE International.

DDM (Discrete Droplet Model) is widely used for the numerical analysis of a fuel spray. In order to achieve highly accurate calculations using DDM, many mathematical sub-models such as breakup, drag force and collision are employed with DDM. In the conventional DDM, an isolated droplet (parcel) is assumed and the influence of surrounding droplets is not directly considered. However, it is well known that the state of the wake flow of droplet or the vortex behind droplet changes by the distance between droplets, and the drag coefficient is influenced. Especially, this effect is important in a dense spray. In this study, a newly developed drag force model, containing the drag reduction effect with the droplet spacing as a parameter is adopted and also, the effect on the spray tip penetration and the spray volume is examined. As a result, the spray shape and Sauter mean diameter were found to depend on the mesh size that defines the droplet spacing. The drag force reduction by the droplet number density tends to increase the spray volume. The calculation of a diesel spray at the injection pressure of 133 and 55MPa indicated better agreements with experiments compared to the result using a conventional model.

本研究では、新たに開発した小型の誘導エネルギー蓄積式パルス電源を用いて生成した非平衡プラズマを利用して、予混合気の着火特性を調べる。本研究は、繰り返しパルスを用いることで、効率的に生成した活性化学種雰囲気下の混合気に対して、短パルスアーク放電することにより、希薄燃焼時の着火特性の改善を図る。

A newly developed small-sized IES (inductive energy storage) circuit with semiconductor switch at turn-off action was successfully applied to an ignition system. This IEC circuit can generate repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges. In this paper, the ignition system using repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges was investigated as an alternative to conventional spark ignition systems. The experiments were conducted using spherically expanding flame configuration for C H -air mixtures under various conditions. In conclusions, the ignition system using repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges was found to improve inflammability of lean combustible mixtures, such as extended flammability limits, shorted ignition delay time and extended dilution limits, compared with conventional spark ignition systems. Copyright © 2008 by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. 3 8

A new gasoline combustion engine system with high compression ratio was studied and proposed in order to achieve higher thermal efficiency than that of a conventional SI engine. A special cranking mechanism was adopted which allowed the piston to move rapidly near TDC. Some mechanisms were proposed and two of them were designed and built for the testing. The experimental results showed that knocking was avoided and better indicated thermal efficiency was obtained. An inconstant speed gear mechanism with compression ratio of 14 could be operated up to 2500 r/min and thermal efficiency was improved by 18% compared to a conventional engine with compression ration of 10. Also, a cam mechanism driven by a planetary gear was tested to achieve higher engine speed up to 4000 r/min, but the improvement of thermal efficiency was not so large as much as of the inconstant speed gear mechanism. Copyright © 2008 by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Thermocouples are widely used to measure the local gas temperature due to its accuracy and convenience. However, it is difficult to use thermocouples in a transient phenomenon such as reacting fields. In this study, the unsteady gas temperature inside a combustion chamber was measured by using an improved two-wire thermocouple technique. Based on previous two-wire methods, some modifications were examined. Firstly, numerical analysis of heat transfer between transient flow and thermocouple was performed to see what kind of modification was required. Secondly, a correction term was added to the basic equation, which was validated by experiments using a Rapid Compression and Expansion Machine. Finally, an improved two-wire thermocouple technique was evaluated by measuring the transient gas temperature inside a combustion chamber and compared to the estimated temperature using measured pressure data and assumptions of chemical equilibrium.

A newly developed small-sized IES (inductive energy storage) circuit with static induction thyristor at turn-off action was successfully applied to an ignition system. This IEC circuit can generate repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges. In this paper, the ignition system using repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges was investigated as an alternative to conventional spark ignition systems. The experiments were conducted using spherically expanding flame configuration for CH and C H -air mixtures under various conditions. In conclusions, the ignition system using repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges was found to extend lean flammability limits compared with conventional spark ignition systems. In addition, the ignition system using repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges could shorten ignition delay time. Copyright © 2008 SAE International. 4 3 8

In order to avoid knocking phenomena and also to reduce the cooling loss, the authors have studied a new piston-crank mechanism with various specifications. At first, numerical simulations to predict thermal efficiency and knocking limit were performed using 0-D model to confirm the idea. As a result, high compression ratio operation was found possible with a short combustion period. Next, a model engine was designed and built to evaluate the predicted result. A couple of leaf-shaped gears to move piston faster than usual engine near TDC was chosen to achieve higher thermal efficiency. Experimental results showed that higher indicated and brake thermal efficiency can be obtained and that lower exhaust gas emissions also can be obtained.

In this study, numerical simulation has been conducted for the spray injected from a slit nozzle injector for a direct gasoline engine. The droplets in the spray were investigated by the combination of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Lagrangian Discrete Droplet Model (DDM). Droplets are atomized through the primary breakup induced by the instability of the liquid surface and secondary breakup induced by relative velocity between droplet and surrounding gas. This paper applies three secondary breakup models to an injector spray flow and evaluates their results compared with experimental data.

Ships have many advantages in loading capacities compared with vehicles. If the amount of NOx can be reduced by some way, ships can be equipped with oxygen permeable membranes as an oxygen generator that has recently shown a remarkable improvement in the performance of producing more oxygen for the purpose of PM (Particulate Matter) reduction.<BR>Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the effect of oxygen addition on exhaust gas emissions for marine diesel engines.<BR>In the experiment oxygen was added to the air suction pipe of a pre-combustion chamber type diesel engine. Then oxygen was added to the exhaust gas pipe before DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) .<BR>The results were as follows:<BR>(1) Oxygen addition to the air suction pipe of a pre-combustion chamber type diesel engine decreases both ISF (Insoluble Organic Fraction) and SOF (Soluble Organic Fraction) . Oxygen addition works very well especially at all loads for reduction of ISF with an increase of 2% in oxygen concentration.<BR>(2) Although oxygen addition to the air suction pipe of a pre-combustion chamber type diesel engine increases NOx emission. The NOx emission of a pre-combustion chamber type diesel engine is not so much as that of a direct injection type engine. The increase of NOx emission is saturated with further increasing engine load.<BR>(3) DPF was effective even in an ordinary type engine that has mechanical fuel injection system and no supercharger. The reduction rate was superior in ISF compared to SOF.<BR>(4) Oxygen addition before DPF has almost no effect on PM reduction.

The phenomenon of autoignition is an important aspect of spark ignition engine's knock, hence reliable information on the relationship between the local gas temperature and the autoignition delay in a combustion chamber must be obtained to avoid knock. However, the measurement of local gas temperature, especially near the wall where knock occurs is difficult. A thermocouple is useful to measure local gas temperature even in the vicinity of wall. However, a conventional one-wire thermocouple is not adaptable to measure the in-cylinder gas temperature due to slow response. The issue of response can be overcome by adopting a twowire thermocouple. The two-wire thermocouple is consisted of two fine wire thermocouples with different diameter hence it is possible to determine the time constant using the raw data from each thermocouple. This technique was applied at more engine-like conditions, by developing a RCM (Rapid Compression Machine). Local gas temperature was measured in the combustion chamber near the wall under relatively strong and weak knock conditions. As a result, in the relatively strong knock condition, the heat release timing was found earlier and the temperature gradient neat the wall was steeper than of the weak knock condition.

In the previous study, the authors found that by moving the piston slowly around top dead center, degree of constant volume increased, but thermal efficiency was not improved due to increased heat loss. Consequently, direct injection stratified charge combustion was tested to selectively reduce heat loss, and an improvement of thermal efficiency was achieved at this time. Moreover, when pre-mixed spark ignition combustion is completed in a short time with quick burn, increasing the piston speed around top dead center rather than moving the piston slowly was found favourable to improve thermal efficiency.

In this study, the characteristics of diesel spray droplets, such as the velocity and the diameter were simultaneously measured by using an improved ILIDS (Interferometric Laser Imaging for Droplet Sizing) method on a 2D plane to evaluate the droplet breakup modeling. In numerical analysis, DDM (Discrete Droplet Model) was employed with sub-models such as droplet breakup, droplet drag force and turbulence. Experiments have been performed with an accumulator type unit-injector system and a constant-volume high-pressure vessel under the condition of quiescent ambient gas. The injection pressure and ambient gas pressure were set up to 100 MPa and 0.1 / 1 MPa, respectively. The nozzle orifice diameter was 0.244 mm with a single hole. The measurement region was chosen at 40 ∼ 60 mm from the nozzle-tip. Numerical analysis of diesel sprays was conducted and the results were compared to the measured results. A modification of TAB droplet breakup model was made by introducing statistically determined breakup time. As a result, the profile of droplet diameter distribution could be well predicted even in strongly unsteady regions compared to experimental results. Also, spray predictions under an engine-like condition were carried out. A plausible result was deduced using the modified breakup model compared to of the original breakup model. Copyright © 2007 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc.

The characteristics of a diesel spray, such as the diameter, the velocity and the droplet distribution on a 2D plane were simultaneously measured by using an improved ILIDS (Interferometric Laser Imaging for Droplet Sizing) method. The experiments were performed with an accumulator type unit injector system and a constant-volume high-pressure vessel under the condition of quiescent ambient gas. The injection pressure and ambient gas pressure were set at 60/100 MPa and 0.1/1 MPa, respectively. The injection duration was set at 2ms, and measurements were made at 1.5ms after the end of injection. The orifice diameter of the injector used was 0.24mm with a single hole. The measurement was made at 40-60mm from the nozzle-tip. As a result, the correlations between the droplet size, the velocity and the spatial distribution were found under different injection and ambient gas pressures.

In reciprocating internal combustion engines, the Otto cycle indicates the best thermal efficiency under a given compression ratio. To achieve an ideal Otto cycle, combustion must take place instantaneously at top dead center, but in fact, this is impossible. Meanwhile, if we allow slower piston motion around top dead center, combustion will be promoted at that period; then both the in-cylinder pressure and degree of constant volume will increase, leading to higher thermal efficiency. In order to verify this hypothesis, an engine with slower piston motion around top dead center, using an ideal constant volume combustion engine, was built and tested. As anticipated, the degree of constant volume increased. However, thermal efficiency was not improved, due to increased heat loss. Accordingly more experiments, which achieved a slower piston motion around top dead center by adopting a larger ratio between the connecting-rod length and the crank radius, were carried out using direct injection stratified charge combustion, which allows selective reduction of heat loss. High thermal efficiency was attained, as expected. On the other hand, an engine with a faster piston motion around top dead center, created by decreasing the ratio between connecting-rod length and crank radius, attained high thermal efficiency with quick burn premixed spark ignition combustion.

In reciprocating internal combustion engines, Otto cycle indicates the best thermal efficiency under the same compression ratio. To achieve this, combustion must take place instantaneously at top dead center, but it is actually impossible. Meanwhile, if slower piston motion around top dead center was allowed, both the in-cylinder pressure and degree of constant volume would increase, leading to higher thermal efficiency. In order to verify this idea, an engine with slower piston motion by ideal constant volume comcustion was tested. It was revealed that the thermal efficiency could not be improved nevertheless an increase in degree of constant volume and lower pumping loss. Numerical.analysis deduced that increased heat loss cancelled out the effect of the higher degree of constant volume and that faster piston motion around top dead center rather achieves an improvement of thermal efficiency in a case where rapid combustion was realized.

In reciprocating internal combustion engines, Otto cycle indicates the best thermal efficiency under the same compression ratio among ideal cycles. To achieve this, combustion must take place instantaneously at top dead center, but it is actually impossible. Meanwhile, if a slower piston motion around top dead center was allowed, both the in-cylinder pressure and degree of constant volume would increase, leading to higher thermal efficiency. In order to verify this idea, an engine with a slow piston motion by adopting a large ratio between the connecting-rod length and the crank radius was tested. As expected, while degree of constant volume was increased, thermal efficiency was not improved due to increased heat loss. Further experiments were carried out using a direct injection stratified charge combustion system which allows selective reduction of heat loss, and high thermal efficiency was attained. On the contrary, an engine with a faster piston motion by adopting a smaller ratio between the connecting-rod length and the crank radius attained high thermal efficiency under the quick burn pre-mixed spark ignition combustion.

Planer Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) has been employed to measure the spatial liquid and vapor fuel concentration distributions, although it is generally difficult to achieve quantitatively accurate measurement. The authors devised a 2-D fuel spray concentration distribution measurement method which combines three optical principles; absorption, fluorescence, and scatter. NO gas was used as a fluorescence dopant while Ar laser was employed as a light source by scanning across the cylinder in order to measure the spatial fuel concentration distribution. This technique was applied to gaseous jets and swirl sprays. Quantitative measurement was successfully achieved in both tests. Also, the characteristics of liquid and vapor fuel concentration distribution using a swirl type injector were confirmed. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd. 2 +

Knock phenomenon in SI engines is regarded as an auto-ignition of unburned end-gas, and it has been widely examined by using rapid compression machines (RCM), shock-tubes or test engines. Recent researches point out the importance of the low temperature chemical reaction and the negative temperature coefficient (NTC). To investigate the effects, analyses of instantaneous local gas temperature, flow visualization and gaseous pressure were conducted in this study. As measurements using real engines are too difficult to analyze, the authors aimed to make measurements using a constant volume vessel under knock conditions where propagating flame exists during the induction time of auto-ignition. Adopting the two-wire thermocouple method enabled us to measure the instantaneous local gas temperature until the moment when the flame front passes by. High-speed images inside the unburned region were also recorded simultaneously using an endoscope. As a result, it was found that when knock occurs, the auto-ignition initiation time seems slightly early compared to the results without knock. This causes a higher volume ratio of unburned mixture and existence of many hot spots and stochastically leads to an initiation of knock. Copyright © 2006 by The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.

A new combustion method of high compression ratio SI engine was studied and proposed in order to achieve high thermal efficiency, comparable to that of CI engine. Compression ratio of SI engine is generally restricted by the knocking phenomena. A combustion chamber profile and a cranking mechanism were studied to avoid knocking with high compression ratio. Because reducing the end-gas temperature will suppress knocking, a combustion chamber was considered to have a wide surface at the end-gas region. However, wide surface will lead to large heat loss, which may cancel the gain of higher compression ratio operation. Thereby, a special cranking mechanism was adapted which allowed the piston to move rapidly near TDC. Numerical simulations were performed to optimize the cranking mechanism for achieving high thermal efficiency. An elliptic gear system and a leaf-shape gear system were employed in numerical simulations. Livengood-Wu integral, which is widely used to judge knocking occurrence, was calculated to verify the effect for the new concept. As a result, this concept can be operated at compression ratio of fourteen using a regular gasoline. A new single cylinder engine with compression ratio of twelve and TGV (Tumble Generation Valve) to enhance the turbulence and combustion speed was designed and built for proving its performance. The test results verified the predictions. Thermal efficiency was improve over 10% with compression ratio of twelve compared to an original engine with compression ratio of ten when strong turbulence was generated using TGV, leading to a fast combustion speed and reduced heat loss. Copyright © 2006 KSAE.

Butt-welded fine gauge type-K thermocouples of three different diameters, 25, 50 and 100 μm, were produced according to an original method and used for gas and wall temperature measurement in an uncoated substrate so as to compare durability and detection performance. The results showed that 50 μm diameter thermocouples are suitable for this type of measurement, since these thermocouples have a response performance as quick as that of 25 μm thermocouples, and because of excellent toughness. Composition analysis of the produced thermocouples also showed that poor mixture of alumel and chromel was responsible for the weakness of 25 μm thermocouples. © 2006 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. All rights reserved.

The authors have performed experiments on compression-ignition (CI) for a single-cylinder Schnurle-type two-stroke gasoline direct injection (DI) engine which employs a variable exhaust port, area, and deduced two presumptions from the experimental results. Firstly, the spatial distributions of fuel concentration and in-cylinder gas temperature are indispensable to enable CI operation under stratified charge conditions, because CI operation is not possible in a DI system although the necessary conditions of the scavenging efficiency and the in-cylinder gas temperature for the initiation of CI in homogeneous charge conditions are satisfied. Secondly, it is possible that flame propagation occurs in stratified charge CI conditions, because the combustion period in the later stage after 80% mass burned becomes longer than that with homogeneous charge CI combustion. In this report, in order to verify the above two presumptions deduced from experiments, the gas exchange process and mixture formation process were numerically analyzed, and the initiation conditions of CI were estimated using a CHEMKIN application. As a result, in case of CI with a late injection timing in DI system, it was found that CI was possible because high temperature but no fuel region and low temperature but rich fuel region exist in the cylinder due to inhomogeneous spatial distributions of fuel and temperature. Also, in case of CI with a late injection timing, the flame propagation was possible in the low-temperature and diluted rich region. Thereby, the two presumptions deduced from the experimental results were validated from the numerical analysis results. Copyright © 2006 by The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.

In this study, the characteristics of Diesel spray droplets, such as the velocity, the diameter and the droplet distribution were simultaneously measured by using an improved ILIDS (Interferometric Laser Imaging for Droplet Sizing) method. In numerical analysis, DDM (Discrete Droplet Model)·· model, which is used to calculate the diesel spray was employed. The experiments have been performed with an accumulator type unit injector system and a constant-volume high-pressure vessel under the condition of quiescent ambient gas. The injection pressure and ambient gas pressure were set up to 100 MPa and 0.1/1 MPa, respectively. Injection duration was set at 2 ms and, measurements were made at 1.5 ms after the end of injection. The nozzle orifice diameter was 0.244 mm with single hole. The measurement region was chosen at 40-60 mm from the nozzle-tip. In addition, numerical analysis of diesel sprays was conducted and the results were compared to the measured results. In numerical analysis, calculation of the spray by DDM was carried out to examine the droplets breakup process and to evaluate the breakup modeling. Also, in order to achieve more accurate predictions, investigations and modifications of sub-models and initial boundary conditions have been carried out.