Evaluation of the Performance of a Boosted HCCI Gasoline Engine with Blowdown Supercharge System

HCCI combustion can realize low NOx and particulate emissions and high thermal efficiency. Therefore, HCCI combustion has a possibility of many kinds of applications, such as an automotive powertrain, general-purpose engine, motorcycle engine and electric generator. However, the operational range using HCCI combustion in terms of speed and load is restricted because the onset of ignition and the heat release rate cannot be controlled directly. For the extension of the operational range using either an external supercharger or a turbocharger is promising. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of the intake pressure on the HCCI high load limit and HCCI combustion characteristics with blowdown supercharging (BDSC) system. The intake pressure (Pin) and temperature (Tin) were varied as experimental parameters. The intake pressure was swept from 100 kPa (naturally aspirated) to 200 kPa using an external mechanical supercharger. The experimental results showed that the maximum load successfully increased with increasing the intake pressure. The highest load in this study was 935kPa in IMEPg at the condition of 200 kPa in Pin and 32 °C in Tin. The maximum load of boosted BDSC-HCCI engine can be achieved comparable to the full load of naturally aspirated SI engine. In addition, for conditions with above 200 kPa in Tin, A/F and G/F could be almost the same. The comparison of heat release rate between with and without BDSC showed that the peak value of heat release rate decreased and the combustion duration was prolonged with BDSC by thermal stratification. Not only the pressure rise rate but also the peak cylinder pressure could be reduced by BDSC system. Moreover, the intake temperature was decreased while maintaining the conditions of G/F and intake pressure to investigate the intake temperature on heat release. The results showed that the dP/dθ max is reduced with Tin less than 50 °C.