Experimental and numerical investigation of the idle operating engine condition for a GDI engine

The increased limitations to both NOx and soot emissions have pushed engine researchers to rediscover gasoline engines. Among the many technologies and strategies, gasoline direct injection plays a key-role for improving fuel economy and engine performance. The paper aims to investigate an extremely complex task such as the idle operating engine condition when the engine runs at very low engine speeds and low engine loads and during the warm-up. Due to the low injection pressure and to the null contribution of the turbocharger, the engine condition is far from the standard points of investigation. Taking into account the warm-up engine condition, the analyses are performed with a temperature of the coolant of 50°C. The paper reports part of a combined numerical and experimental synergic activity aiming at the understanding of the physics of spray/wall interaction within the combustion chamber and particular care is used for air/fuel mixing and the combustion process analyses. In order to properly describe the engine condition, different injection strategies are investigated. Late and early injection strategies are deeply analyzed and compared in terms of combustion stability and pollutant emissions. UV-visible imaging and spectral measurements are carried out in real engine with wide optical accesses... Measurements are performed in the optically accessible combustion chamber realized by modifying a real engine. The cylinder head was modified in order to allow in the fourth cylinder the visualization of the fuel injection and the combustion process with high spatial and temporal resolution. The 3D-CFD engine simulations are reproduced by means the commercial code Star-CD. Due to the warm-up condition and the many physical sub-models a numerical methodology is implemented and particular care is used to boundaries conditions analyses. CFD analysis is used to find a possible explanation of the high cycle to cycle variability. The experimental and numerical comparisons, in terms fuel mixing and front flame propagation, give an explanation of the idle condition.