CAI combustion of gasoline and its mixture with ethanol in a 2-stroke poppet valve DI gasoline engine

Controlled Auto Ignition (CAI), also known as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), is one of the most promising combustion technologies to reduce the fuel consumption and NOx emissions. Currently, CAI combustion is constrained at part load operation conditions because of misfire at low load and knocking combustion at high load, and the lack of effective means to control the combustion process. Extending its operating range including high load boundary towards full load and low load boundary towards idle in order to allow the CAI engine to meet the demand of whole vehicle driving cycles, has become one of the key issues facing the industrialisation of CAI/HCCI technology. Furthermore, this combustion mode should be compatible to different fuels, and can switch back to conventional spark ignition operation when necessary. In this paper, the CAI operation is demonstrated on a 2-stroke gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine equipped with a poppet valve train. The results shown that the CAI combustion can be readily achieved in the 2-stroke cycle of a poppet valve engine and the range of CAI combustion can be significantly extended compared to the 4-stroke cycle operation. In addition, the effects of ethanol concentration on 2-stroke CAI operational range, combustion process, emissions and efficiencies are studied and presented.