Effect of inhomogeneous mixture properties on CI combustion in a Schnurle-type gasoline DI engine

The authors have performed experiments on compression-ignition (CI) for a single-cylinder Schnurle-type two-stroke gasoline direct injection (DI) engine which employs a variable exhaust port, area, and deduced two presumptions from the experimental results. Firstly, the spatial distributions of fuel concentration and in-cylinder gas temperature are indispensable to enable CI operation under stratified charge conditions, because CI operation is not possible in a DI system although the necessary conditions of the scavenging efficiency and the in-cylinder gas temperature for the initiation of Cl in homogeneous charge conditions are satisfied. Secondly, it is possible that flame propagation occurs in stratified charge CI conditions, because the combustion period in the later stage after 80% mass burned becomes longer than that with homogeneous charge Cl combustion. In this report, in order to verify the above two presumptions deduced from experiments, the gas exchange process and mixture formation process were numerically analyzed, and the initiation conditions of CI were estimated using a CHEMKIN application. As a result, in case of CI with a late injection timing in DI system, it was found that Cl was possible because high temperature but no fuel region and low temperature but rich fuel region exist in the cylinder due to inhomogeneous spatial distributions of fuel and temperature. Also, in case of CI with a late injection timing, the flame propagation was possible in the low-temperature and diluted rich region. Thereby, the two presumptions deduced from the experimental results were validated from the numerical analysis results.