Transition from HCCI to PPC: Investigation of the Effect of Different Injection Timing on Ignition and Combustion Characteristics in an Optical PPC Engine

The partially premixed combustion (PPC) concept is regarded as an intermediate process between the thoroughly mixed Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion and compression ignition (CI) combustion. It's a combination of auto-ignition mode, a fuel-rich premixed combustion mode, and a diffusion combustion mode. The concept has both high efficiency and low soot emission due to low heat losses and less stratified fuel and air mixtures compared to conventional diesel CI. The mechanisms behind the combustion process are not yet very well known. This work focuses on the efficiency and the in-cylinder process in terms of fuel distribution and the initial phase of the combustion. More specifically, double injection strategies are compared with single injection strategies to achieve different levels of stratification, ranging from HCCI to PPC like combustion as well as poor (43%) to good (49%) of gross indicated efficiency. The experiments were performed in an optical heavy-duty CI engine. To analyze how the efficiency was affected in a transition from HCCI to PPC, the natural luminosity (N.L.) was captured with high-speed video (HSV). To complement the HSV data, fuel, temperature, and oxygen distribution were explored by Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The results show that the jet-jet and jet-piston interactions can be modified and can reshape the transition trends of gross indicated efficiency and ignition location compared to a single injection. In the transition region, these interactions can improve the efficiency by shaping the fuel-rich region away from cold areas, like the vertical wall of the piston and the squish region, to avoid fuel wetting and incomplete combustion. However, with double injections in the piston bowl (PPC region), jet-jet interaction can unfortunately inhibit the mixing process of the second fuel jet and oxygen due to interaction with the fuel rich region from the first injection, ending up with a lower combustion efficiency.