Effect of inlet temperature and equivalence ratio on HCCI engine performance fuelled with ethanol:Numerical investigation

A numerical model is presented to investigate the performance of homogeneous charge compression ignition(HCCI) engines fueled with ethanol. Two approaches are studied. On one hand, two-step reaction mechanisms with Arrhenius reaction rates are implemented in combustion chemistry modeling. On the other hand, a reduced mechanism containing important reactions of ethanol involving heat release rate and reaction rates compatible with experimental data is employed. Since controls of combustion phenomenon and ignition timing are the main issues of these engines, the effects of inlet temperature and equivalence ratio as the controlling factors on the operating parameters such as ignition timing, burn duration, in-cylinder temperature and pressure of HCCI engines are explored. The results show that the maximum predicted pressures for thermodynamic model are about 71.3×10~5 Pa and 79.79×10~5 Pa, and for chemical kinetic model, they are about 71.48×10~5 Pa and 78.123×10~5 Pa, fairly comparable with corresponding experimental values of 72×10~5 Pa and 78.7×10~5 Pa. It is observed that increasing the initial temperature advances the ignition timing, decreases the burn duration and increases the peak temperature and pressure. Moreover, the maximum temperature and pressure are associated with richer mixtures.

Numerical investigations on HCCI engine with increased induction induced swirl and engine speed

Homogeneous charge compression ignition(HCCI) mode of combustion is popularly known for achieving simultaneous reduction of NOx as well as soot emissions as it combines the compression ignition(CI) and spark ignition(SI) engine features. In this work, a CI engine was simulated to work in HCCI mode and was analyzed to study the effect of induction induced swirl under varying speeds using three-zone extended coherent flame combustion model(ECFM-3Z, compression ignition) of STAR-CD. The analysis was done considering speed ranging from 800 to 1600 r/min and swirl ratios from 1 to 4. The present study reveals that ECFM-3Z model has well predicted the performance and emissions of CI engine in HCCI mode. The simulation predicts reduced in-cylinder pressures, temperatures, wall heat transfer losses, and piston work with increase in swirl ratio irrespective of engine speed. Also, simultaneous reduction in CO2 and NOx emissions is realized with higher engine speeds and swirl ratios. Low speeds and swirl ratios are favorable for low CO2 emissions. It is observed that increase in engine speed causes a marginal reduction in in-cylinder pressures and temperatures. Also, higher turbulent energy and velocity magnitude levels are obtained with increase in swirl ratio, indicating efficient combustion necessitating no modifications in combustion chamber design. The investigations reveal a total decrease of 38.68% in CO2 emissions and 12.93% in NOx emissions when the engine speed increases from 800 to 1600 r/min at swirl ratio of 4. Also an increase of 14.16% in net work done is obtained with engine speed increasing from 800 to 1600 r/min at swirl ratio of 1. The simulation indicates that there is a tradeoff observed between the emissions and piston work. It is finally concluded that the HCCI combustion can be regarded as low temperature combustion as there is significant decrease in in-cylinder temperatures and pressures at higher speeds and higher swirl ratios.

Real-time Control Oriented HCCI Engine Cycle-to-cycle Dynamic Modelling

For homogeneous charge compression ignition （HCCI） combustion, the auto-ignition process is very sensitive to in-cylinder conditions, including in-cylinder temperature, in-cylinder components and concentrations. Therefore, accurate control is required for reliable and efficient HCCI combustion. This paper outlines a simplified gasoline-fueled HCCI engine model implemented in Simulink environment. The model is able to run in real-time and with fixed simulation steps with the aim of cycle-to-cycle control and hardware- in-the-loop simulation. With the aim of controlling the desired amount of the trapped exhaust gas recirculation （EGR） from the previous cycle, the phase of the intake and exhaust valves and the respective profiles are designed to vary in this model. The model is able to anticipate the auto-ignition timing and the in-cylinder pressure and temperature. The validation has been conducted using a comparison of the experimental results on Ricardo Hydro engine published in a research by Tianjin University and a JAGUAR V6 HCCI test engine at the University of Birmingham. The comparison shows the typical HCCI combustion and a fair agreement between the simulation and experimental results.

Cylinder Pressure Prediction of An HCCI Engine Using Deep Learning

Engine tests are both costly and time consuming in developing a new internal combustion engine.Therefore,it is of great importance to predict engine characteristics with high accuracy using artificial intelligence.Thus,it is possible to reduce engine testing costs and speed up the engine development process.Deep Learning is an effective artificial intelligence method that shows high performance in many research areas through its ability to learn high-level hidden features in data samples.The present paper describes a method to predict the cylinder pressure of a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition(HCCI)engine for various excess air coefficients by using Deep Neural Network,which is one of the Deep Learning methods and is based on the Artificial Neural Network(ANN).The Deep Learning results were compared with the ANN and experimental results.The results show that the difference between experimental and the Deep Neural Network(DNN)results were less than 1%.The best results were obtained by Deep Learning method.The cylinder pressure was predicted with a maximum accuracy of 97.83%of the experimental value by using ANN.On the other hand,the accuracy value was increased up to 99.84%using DNN.These results show that the DNN method can be used effectively to predict cylinder pressures of internal combustion engines.

OPTIMIZATION OF A REDUCED CHEMICAL KINETIC MODEL FOR HCCI ENGINE SIMULATIONS BY MICRO-GENETIC ALGORITHM

A reduced chemical kinetic model （44 species and 72 reactions） for the homogeneous charge compression ignition （HCCI） combustion of n-heptane was optimized to improve its autoignition predictions under different engine operating conditions. The seven kinetic parameters of the optimized model were determined by using the combination of a micro-genetic algorithm optimization methodology and the SENKIN program of CHEMKIN chemical kinetics software package. The optimization was performed within the range of equivalence ratios 0.2-1.2, initial temperature 310- 375 K and initial pressure 0, 1-0.3 MPa, The engine simulations show that the optimized model agrees better with the detailed chemical kinetic model （544 species and 2 446 reactions） than the original model does.

Control of peak pressures of an HCCI engine under varying swirl and operating parameters

The major advantages of homogeneous charge compression ignition （HCCI） are high efficiency in combination with low NOx-emissions. However, one of the major challenges with HCCI is the control of higher peak pressures which may damage the engine, limiting the HCCI engine life period. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze computationally the effect of induction swirl in controlling the peak pressures of an HCCI engine under various operating parameters. A single cylinder 1.6 L reentrant piston bowl diesel engine is chosen. For computational analysis, the ECFM-3Z model of STAR - CD is considered because it is suitable for analyzing the combustion processes in SI and CI engines. As an HCCI engine is a hybrid version of SI and CI engines, the ECFM- 3Z model with necessary modifications is used to analyze the peak pressures inside the combustion chamber. The ECFM-3Z model for HCCI mode of combustion is validated with the existing literature to make sure that the results obtained are accurate. Numerical experiments are performed to study the effect of varying properties like speed of the engine, piston bowl geometry, exhaust gas recirculation （EGR） and equivalence ratio under different swirl ratios in controlling the peak pressures inside the combustion chamber. The results show that the swirl ratio has a considerable impact on controlling the peak pressures of HCCI engine. A reduction in peak pressures are observed with a swirl ratio of 4 because of reduced in cylinder temperatures. The combined effect of four operating parameters, i.e., the speed of the engine, piston bowl geometry, EGR, and equivalence ratio with swirl ratios suggest that lower intake temperatures, reentrant piston bowl, higher engine speeds and higher swirl ratios are favorable in controlling the peak pressures.