The development of four-stroke, spark-ignition engines that are designed to inject gasoline directly into the combustion chamber is an important worldwide initiative of the automotive industry. The thermodynamic potential of such engines for significantly enhanced fuel economy, transient response and cold-start hydrocarbon emission levels has led to a large number of research and development projects that have the goal of understanding, developing and optimizing gasoline direct-injection (GDI) combustion systems. The processes of fuel injection, spray atomization and vaporization, charge cooling, mixture preparation and the control of in-cylinder air motion are all being actively researched, and this work is reviewed in detail and analyzed. The new technologies such as high-pressure, common-rail, gasoline injection systems and swirl-atomizing gasoline fuel injectors are discussed in detail, as these technologies, along with computer control capabilities, have enabled the current new examination of an old objective; the direct-injection, stratified-charge (DISC), gasoline engine. The prior work on DISC engines that is relevant to current GDI engine development is also reviewed and discussed.

The fuel economy and emission data for actual engine configurations are of significant importance to engine researchers and developers. These data have been obtained and assembled for all of the available GDI literature, and are reviewed and discussed in detail. The types of GDI engines are arranged in four classifications of decreasing complexity, and the advantages and disadvantages of each class are noted and explained. Emphasis is placed upon consensus trends and conclusions that are evident when taken as a whole. Thus the GDI researcher is informed regarding the degree to which engine volumetric efficiency and compression ratio can be increased under optimized conditions, and as to the extent to which unburned hydrocarbon (UBHC), NOx and particulate emissions can be minimized for specific combustion strategies. The critical area of GDI fuel injector deposits and the associated effect on spray geometry and engine performance degradation are reviewed, and important system guidelines for minimizing deposition rates and deposit effects are presented. The capabilities and limitations of emission control techniques and aftertreatment hardware are reviewed in depth, and areas of consensus on attaining European, Japanese and North American emission standards are compiled and discussed.

All known research, prototype and production GDI engines worldwide are reviewed as to performance, emissions and fuel economy advantages, and for areas requiring further development. The engine schematics, control diagrams and specifications are compiled, and the emission control strategies are illustrated and discussed. The influence of lean-NOx catalysts on the development of late-injection, stratified-charge GDI engines is reviewed, and the relative merits of lean-burn, homogeneous, direct-injection engines as an option requiring less control complexity are analyzed. All current information in the literature is used as the basis for discussing the future development of automotive GDI engines.

Automotive Spark-Ignited Direct-Injection Gasoline Engines

Knocking combustion in spark-ignition engines

The Extended Coherent Flame Model of Colin et al. (2003) developed to model combustion in perfectly or partially mixed mixtures is adapted to also account for unmixed combustion. The ECFM model is based on a flame surface density equation which takes into account the wrinkling of the flame front surface by turbulent eddies and a conditioning averaging technique which allows precise reconstruction of local properties in fresh and burned gases even in the case of high levels of local fuel stratification. This model has been used with success in gasoline engines (Duclos et al., 1996; Duclos and Zolver, 1998; Lafossas et al., 2002; Henriot et al., 2003; Kleemann et al., 2003). In order to adapt the model to unmixed combustion for Diesel application, a description of the mixing state has been added. It is represented by three mixing zones: a pure fuel zone, a pure air plus possible residual gases zone and a mixed zone in which the ECFM combustion model is applied. A mixing model is presented which allows progressive mixing of the initially unmixed fuel and air. This new combustion model, called ECFM3Z (3-Zones Extended Coherent Flame Model), can therefore be seen as a simplified CMC (Conditional Moment Closure) type model where the mixture fraction space would be discretized by only three points. The conditioning technique is extended to the three mixing zones and allows to reconstruct, like in the ECFM model, the gas properties in the unburned and burned gases of the mixed zone. Application of the model to internal combustion engine calculations implies the necessity of auto-ignition modelling coupled to premixed and diffusion flames description. Auto-ignition is modelled following (Colin et al., 2004), while the premixed turbulent flame description is given by the ECFM. The diffusion flame is now accounted for thanks to the three zones mixing structure which represents phenomenologically the diffusion of fuel and air towards the reactive layer, that is the mixed zone. The ECFM3Z combustion model has already been presented (Beard et al., 2003) in a comparative work between Diesel experiments and corresponding calculations covering different engine operating points. Here, the model is presented in all its details and its behavior is analysed when the relative duration of injection and auto-ignition delay are varied in a direct injection Diesel engine. It is shown that the model is able to reproduce the relative importance of auto-ignition and diffusion flame on the total heat release, depending on the engine operating point considered.

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The 3-Zones Extended Coherent Flame Model (Ecfm3z) for Computing Premixed/Diffusion Combustion

The engine knock analysis – An overview

A review of using large-eddy simulation (LES) in computational fluid dynamic stud- ies of internal combustion engines is presented. Background material on turbulence model- ling, LES approaches, specifically for engines, and the expectations of LES results are discussed. The major modelling approaches for turbulence, combustion, scalars, and liquid sprays are discussed. In each of these areas, a taxonomy is presented for the various types of models appropriate for engines. Advantages, disadvantages, and examples of use in the litera- ture are described for the various types of models. Several recent examples of engine studies using LES are discussed. Recommendations and future prospects are included.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1468087411407248

Large-eddy simulations for internal combustion engines – a review

Development and Validation of a Knock Model in Spark Ignition Engines Using a CFD code

An Experimental and Computational Analysis of the Flow Field in a Four-Valve Spark Ignition Engine-Focus on Cycle-Resolved Turbulence

Three Dimensional Modelling of Flow and Turbulence In a Four-valve Spark Ignition Engine - Comparison with LDV Measurements

Advanced Tools for Analysis of Gasoline Direct Injection Engines

A methodology has been developed to determine, for every cycle on which significant knock is detected, the area in which self-ignition occurs. This methodology is based on the exploitation by a dedicated algorithm of a minimum of 4 simultaneous combustion chamber pressure measurements. The algorithm has been first tested on the results of engine knocking simulation, then applied with success on a single-cylinder engine equipped with classical pressure transducers and with an instrumented cylinder head gasket developed for this application. The results obtained with these two kinds of transducers on several engine configurations and tunings are similar. If the timing and intensity of knock events depend on all engine parameters, its location is especially sensitive to such design parameters as fluid motion into the combustion chamber and shark plug position.

S. Henriot

Papers

Development and Validation of a Knock Model in Spark Ignition Engines Using a CFD code

An Experimental and Computational Analysis of the Flow Field in a Four-Valve Spark Ignition Engine-Focus on Cycle-Resolved Turbulence

Three Dimensional Modelling of Flow and Turbulence In a Four-valve Spark Ignition Engine - Comparison with LDV Measurements

Advanced Tools for Analysis of Gasoline Direct Injection Engines

New knock localization methodology for SI engines