Understanding the effect of operating conditions on thermal stratification and heat release in a homogeneous charge compression ignition engine

The addition of swirl elongates the burn duration by broadening the temperature distribution, with this effect being slightly larger at earlier combustion phasings. However, swirl significantly increases heat transfer losses and reduces efficiencies by as much as 1.8 percentage points. Finally, a load sweep with compensation to ensure constant combustion phasing indicates that higher loads result in increased heat release rates and narrower temperature distributions by as much as 20%.