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Engine start timing of series hybrid system is important for quietness in the cabin and comfortable because its engine operation timing is not restricted by vehicle speed and acceleration. There is an opportunity to operate the engine without spoiling quietness if engine sounds could be covered by road noise. Discovering the correlation between road noise and variance of wheel angular acceleration using wheel speed sensor made it possible to estimate road noise. Engine start control based on this road noise estimation algorithm contributes to cabin quietness performance improvement as the result of less frequency of engine operating during smooth road driving.

Dilution combustion with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) has been applied for the improvement of thermal efficiency. In order to stabilize the high diluted combustion, it is important to form an appropriate turbulence in the combustion cylinder. Turbulent intensity needs to be strengthened to increase the combustion speed, while too strong turbulence causes ignition instability. In this study, the factor of combustion instability under high diluted conditions was analyzed by using single cylinder engine test, optical engine test and 3D CFD simulation. Finally, methodology of in-cylinder flow design is attempted to build without any function by taking into account the representative scales of turbulence and premixed combustion.

In order to realize the high compression ratio and high dilution combustion toward improvement in thermal efficiency, the improvement in stability of ignition and initial phase of combustion under the high gas flow field is the major challenge. In terms of the shift on the higher power side of the operating point by downsizing and improvement of real world fuel consumption, the improvement of ignitability is increasingly expected in the wide operating range also including high load and high engine speed region. In this study, the effects of the gas pressure, gas flow velocity near the spark gap at ignition timing, and discharge current characteristics on spark channel formation were analyzed, focusing on restrike event and spark channel stretching in the spark channel formation process. And the relationship between the average discharge current until 1 ms and the EGR combustion limit was considered.

Mechanism of suddenly occurring behavior of low speed pre-ignition (LSPI) in boosted spark ignition (SI) engines was analyzed with various experimental methodologies. Endoscope-visualized 1st cycle of LSPI showed droplet-like luminous flame kernels as the origin of flame propagation before spark ignition. With the oil lubricated visualization engine, droplets flying were observed only after enough accumulation of fuel at piston crevice. Also, it was confirmed that subsequent cycles of LSPI occur only after enough operation time. These results indicated that local accumulation of liner adhered fuel and saturation of oil dilution can be a contributing factor to the sudden occurrence of LSPI.

For better understanding of in-cylinder soot formation processes and governing factors of the number of emitted soot particles of Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines, Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) analysis of morphology and nanostructure of the soot particles sampled in the exhaust should provide useful information. However, the number concentration of the soot particles emitted from GDI engines is relatively low, which was impeding reliable morphological analysis of the soot particles based on a sufficient number of sampled particles. Therefore, in the present study, a water-cooled thermophoretic sampler for simple and direct sampling of exhaust soot particles was developed and employed, which enabled to obtain a sufficient number of particle samples from the exhaust with Particulate Number (PN) 105 #/cc level for quantitative morphology analysis.

For diesel engine, lower compression ratio has been demanded to improve fuel consumption, exhaust emission and maximum power recently. However, low compression ratio engine might have combustion instability issues under cold temperature condition, especially just after engine started. As a first step of this study, cold temperature combustion was investigated by in-cylinder pressure analysis and it found out that higher heat release around top dead center, which was mainly contributed by pilot injection, was the key factor to improve engine speed fluctuation. For further understanding of combustion in cold condition, particularly mixture formation near a glow plug, 3D CFD simulation was applied. Specifically for this purpose, TI (Time-scale Interaction) combustion model has been developed for simulating combustion phenomena. This model was based on a reasonable combustion mode, taking into account the characteristic time scale of chemical reactions and turbulence eddy break-up.

A correct prediction of the initial stages of the combustion process in SI engines is of great importance to understand how local flow conditions, fuel properties, mixture stratification and ignition affect the in-cylinder pressure development and pollutant formation. However, flame kernel growth is governed by many interacting processes including energy transfer from the electrical circuit to the gas phase, interaction between the plasma channel and the flow field, transition between different combustion regimes and gas expansion at very high temperatures. In this work, the authors intend to present a comprehensive, multi-dimensional model that can be used to predict the initial combustion stages in SI engines. In particular, the spark channel is represented by a set of Lagrangian particles where each one of them acts as a single flame kernel.

The objective of this work was to improve the accuracy of the combustion speed estimation in rich fuel condition (φ ≻ 1.2) as in case of Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engine. During rich fuel mixture combustion, the accuracy of calculation of laminar burning velocity deteriorates because of not considering the flame stretch. In the present study, the unstable flame due to the imbalance of the mass diffusion and the temperature diffusion of the fuel (Lewis Number (Le) ≺ 1.0) was modeled. The laminar burning speed model was developed by considering the stretch. It was applied with three-dimensional combustion simulation tools together with the Universal Coherent Flamelet Model (UCFM), a flame propagation model. The model has shown the capability to reproduce the heat generation (heat release rate) at high accuracy in comparison with experimental data.

The objective of this work was to improve the accuracy of the combustion speed estimation in rich fuel condition (φ ≻ 1.2) as in case of Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engine. During rich fuel mixture combustion, the accuracy of calculation of laminar burning velocity deteriorates due to not considering the flame stretch. In the present study, the unstable flame was formed due to the imbalance of the mass diffusion and the temperature diffusion of the fuel (Lewis Number (Le) ≺1.0) was modeled. The laminar burning speed model was developed by considering the stretch. It was applied with three-dimensional combustion simulation tools together with the Universal Coherent Flamelet Model (UCFM), a flame propagation model. The model has shown the capability to reproduce the heat generation (heat release rate) at high accuracy in comparison with experimental data.

This study examined a method of predicting the piston temperature in reciprocating internal combustion engines with the aim of developing lightweight pistons. Since the piston temperature is strongly affected by the in-cylinder temperature distribution and turbulence, it is necessary to consider the effects of flame propagation, cooling by the intake air, temperature rise due to combustion, in-cylinder flow and the combustion chamber shape. A three-dimensional combustion simulation that can take these effects into consideration was run to calculate the heat transfer coefficient from the piston crown surface and the gas temperature. The results were used as the boundary conditions for an analysis of heat transfer from the piston, and a method was thus developed for analyzing the piston temperature.

The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of the mechanism of knocking with respect to flame propagation behavior based on 3D simulations conducted with the Universal Coherent Flamelet Model. Flame propagation behavior under the influence of in-cylinder flow was analyzed on the basis of the calculated results and experimental visualizations. Tumble and swirl flows were produced in the cylinder by inserting various baffle plates in the middle of the intake port. A comparison of the measured and calculated flame propagation behavior showed good agreement for various in-cylinder flow conditions. The results indicate that in-cylinder flow conditions vary the flame propagation shape from the initial combustion period and strongly influence the occurrence of knocking.

Three-dimensional combustion simulation tools together with the Universal Coherent Flamelet Model (UCFM), a flame propagation model, have been applied to SI lean-burn combustion to study the influence of the equivalence ratio on the amount of unburned hydrocarbons (HCs). Unburned HCs from piston-cylinder crevices were taken into the consideration by using a calculation grid incorporating the actual crevice volume and shape and by applying an autoignition model to post-flame phenomena. The calculation results show the general tendencies for the total amount of unburned HCs and their distribution in the combustion chamber.

Combustion in engines involves very complicated phenomena (including flame propagation and knocking), which are strongly affected by engine speed, load and turbulence intensity in the combustion chamber. The aim of this study was to develop a flame propagation model and a knocking prediction technique applicable to various engine operating conditions, including engine speed and in-cylinder turbulence intensity. A flame propagation model (UCFM) has been developed that improved the Coherent Flamelet Model by considering flame growth both in terms of the turbulent flame kernel and laminar flame kernel. A knocking prediction model was developed by implementing the Livengood-Wu integral as the autoignition model. The combined model allows evaluation of both where and when autoignition occurs in a real shape combustion chamber. A comparison of the measured and calculated time for the occurrence of knocking shows good agreement for various operating conditions.

A new auto-ignition combustion model for performing multi-zone engine cycle simulations has been developed to investigate the characteristics of compression ignition combustion in gasoline engines. In this combustion model, the auto-ignition timing is predicted with a modified shell model and combustion speed is calculated with a three-region (burned, ignited and unburned) model. Engine cycle simulations performed with this model were used to analyze the effect of engine operating parameters, i.e., temperature and air-fuel distributions in the cylinder, on combustion characteristics. It was found that the air-fuel distribution in the cylinder has a large impact on combustion characteristics and knocking was prevented by creating a fuel-rich zone at the center of the cylinder under high load conditions. The fuel-rich zone works as an ignition source to ignite the surrounding fuel-lean zone. In this way, two-step combustion is accomplished through two separate auto-ignitions.