A computational study of direct injection gasoline HCCI engine with secondary injection

The detailed intake, spray, combustion and pollution formation processes of compression ignition engine with high-octane fuel are studied by coupling multi-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code with detailed chemical kinetics. An extended hydrocarbon oxidation reaction mechanism used for high-octane fuel was constructed and a modeling strategy of 3D-CFD/chemistry coupling for engine simulation is introduced to meet the requirements of execution time acceptable to simulate the whole engine physicochemical process including intake, compression, spray and combustion process. The improved 3D CFD/chemistry model was validated using the experimental data from HCCI engine with direct injection. Then, the CFD/chemistry model has been employed to simulate the intake, spray, combustion and pollution formation process of gasoline direct injection HCCI engine with two-stage injection strategy. The models account for intake flow structure, spray atomization, droplet evaporation and gas phase chemistry in complex multi-dimensional geometries. The calculated results show that the periphery of fuel-rich zone formed by the second injection ignited first, then the fuel-rich zone ignited and worked as an initiation to ignite the surrounding lean mixture zone formed by the first injection. The two-zone HCCI leads to sequential combustion, this makes ignition timing and combustion rate controllable. In addition, HCCI load range can be extended. However, the periphery of fuel-rich zone leads to fierce burning, which results in slightly high NOx emissions.