Experimental investigation about effect of glow intensity on combustion characteristics for a micro IC engine with platinum wire glow-ignition

• Enhancing glow intensity to get better in-cylinder micro combustion was proposed.
• A miniature IC engine of 0.99 cc displacement was modified, reassembled and tested.
• Increasing glow intensity has no remarkable improvement for normal combustion.
• Enhancing glow intensity contributes to abating misfiring for abnormal combustion.
• Electrical heating glow-ignition is an underlying way for meso-scale IC engines.

Combustion efficiency and combustion stability in micro space are the key constraints to scale down the structure of the miniature internal combustion engines from small-scale to meso-scale. For the glow-ignition combustion mode of the miniature internal combustion engines, enhancing the glow intensity of platinum wire by additional electrical heating to get better combustion characteristics was proposed. An experimental platform for combustion test was set up, and glow-ignition combustion characteristics of a miniature internal combustion engine with displacement of 0.99 cc were diagnosed. It is indicated that improvement of in-cylinder combustion characteristics due to enhancing the glow intensity is not obvious under normal combustion condition; instead, with the increasing of the glow intensity, cyclic variations as well as misfiring phenomenon have a tendency of deterioration. However, under severe partial burning and misfiring conditions, enhancing the glow intensity can remarkably decrease the high rate of misfiring, get better combustion stability and broaden the limiting combustion regime, showing a real effect at least partly to advance the starting time of combustion and shorten the combustion duration. Electrical heating glow-ignition combustion can be considered as one of underlying approaches to extend the limit of combustion stability for prospective meso-scale internal combustion engines.

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