Search Results

This paper presents an experimental study on a 2-stroke SI engine, used on small portable tools for gardening or agriculture, aimed to identify possible correlations between parameters related to ionization current and air/fuel mixture richness, considering different fuels and spark plug wear. This, to realize a simple system to control the engine parameters and adapt them to engine aging and fuel type changing. The engine was fed with commercial gasoline, low octane number gasoline, alkylate gasoline and a blend of 80% gasoline and 20% ethanol. In all tests carried out with varying engine speed and spark advance the ionization signal was characterized by a single peak, resulting in the impossibility of distinguishing chemical and thermal ionization. All data collected were analyzed looking for correlations between all the available data of CO emissions and several characteristic parameters obtained from the ionization signal.

Many two stroke engine for hand-held applications are equipped with muffler that contain a catalyst in order to reduce emissions. However, one of the main problems, is to mantain the performances of the catalyst over time; this often leads to the adoption of systems with increased culling oversized issues related to weight, dimensions and temperature. One of the major causes of degradation of the catalyst is derived from elements of poison present in the oil mixture. This study showed the results obtained by comparing different types of oils of mixture, through durability tests carried out on an engine of a brush cutter.

Still today, two-stroke engine layout is characterized by a wide share on the market thanks to its simpler construction that allows to reduce production and maintenance costs respecting the four-stroke engine. Two of the main application areas for the two-stroke engines are on small motorbikes and on handheld machines like chainsaws, brush cutters, and blowers. In both these application areas, two-stroke engines are generally equipped by a carburettor to provide the air/fuel mixture formation while the engine cooling is assured by forcing an air stream all around the engine head and cylinder surfaces. Focusing the attention on the two-stroke air-cooling system, it is not easy to assure its effectiveness all around the cylinder surface because the air flow easily separates from the cylinder walls producing local hot-spots on the cylinder itself. This problem can be bounded only by the optimization of the cylinder fin design placed externally to the cylinder surface.

The improvement in engines efficiency and reduction of emissions is the permanent aim of engine industry in order to meet European standards regulation. To optimize small internal combustion engines it is necessary to improve the basic knowledge of thermo-fluid dynamic phenomena occurring during the combustion. This paper describes the combustion process in an optically accessible two-stroke spark-ignition engine used in a commercial 43 cm3 chainsaw. Two different feeding systems were tested: standard and CWI one. The engine head was modified in order to allow the visualization of the combustion using endoscopic system coupled with a high spatial resolution ICCD camera. Flame front propagation was evaluated through an image processing procedure. The image visualization and chemiluminence allowed to follow the combustion process from the spark ignition to the exhaust phase at high engine speed. All the optical data were correlated with engine parameters and exhaust emissions.