Twenty-Seventh Symposium (International) on Combustion/The Combustion Institute, 1998/pp.

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A NEW ERA IN SPARK-IGNITION ENGINES FEATURING HIGH-PRESSURE DIRECT INJECTION

YASUO TAKAGI Engine and Powertrain Research Laboratory Nissan Research Center Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Yokosuka 227, Japan

As a result of recent technological advances, direct-injection spark-ignition (S.I.) engines featuring highpressure injection have been shown to be promising next-generation automobile engines, distinguished by their low energy consumption, high power output, and low emissions of substances that affect the environment. These engines can reduce fuel consumption by 20% compared with conventional S.I. engines, as a result of realizing ultralean burn based on stratied charge mixture. They also have the potential to attain other performance improvements, including nearly a 10% improvement in power output while simultaneously reducing cold start unburned HC emissions by approximately 30%. This article reviews characteristics of the combustion process, high-pressure spray used, and mixture formation of direct injection S.I. engines currently developed and implemented in production passenger cars, along with describing the attainment of improved fuel efciency, higher power output, and lower HC emissions. It can also be said that a new era is expected in S.I. engines because these performance improvements have resulted from the challenge undertaken to overcome various technical limitations of conventional S.I. engines, such as pumping losses, knock, and intake port wall wetting, the resolution of which has been a long-cherished wish of engine combustion researchers.

Introduction Approximately 120 years have passed since the appearance of the Otto engine, which was the archetype of todays spark-ignition (S.I.) engines. During the intervening years, great strides have been made in S.I. engine technologies, leading to signicant progress in homogeneous charge S.I. engine technologies and resulting in optimization of the engine design for performance, functionality, and reliability. As a result, these engines have found widespread application, ranging from the motive power source of transportation equipment, especially automobiles, to the power source of household lawn mowers. The global production of S.I. engines for automotive use alone now exceeds 30 million units annually. Meanwhile, there have been rising demands throughout the world to protect the earth from global warming and environmental degradation in order to pass on a healthy planet to future generations. Because S.I. engines are used in such large numbers around the world, researchers and engineers involved with engine combustion have been working vigorously to research and develop technologies for further reduction in fuel consumption so as to arrest global warming and for achieving even lower emissions of substances that affect the environment.

Fortunately, it has been found that a combustion system based on direct injection, where nely atomized fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber, has the potential to overcome a difcult situation by reducing fuel consumption, increasing power output, and reducing unburned hydrocarbon (HC) emissions simultaneously. The attainment has been contributed signicantly by technological advances such as the high-pressure injection system that enabled the supply of nely atomized fuel to the combustion chamber and computer control technology that enabled selection of any injection timings to achieve some different type of combustion processes. Hereupon high pressure mentioned is ranged between 5 and 12 MPa, which is much lower than that used in diesel engines. In addition, it is important to note that in this process, several technical issues, which had been previously recognized as limitations on performance improvement but for which no concrete solutions had been found, have been tackled and partly solved by the use of new combustion processes. These limitations include 1. fuel economy deterioration due to pumping loss during part load operation. 2. limitation on output improvement due to knock, and

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seen in the combustion process of direct-injection diesel engines by using higher pressure injection than that of previous systems, resulting in reduced exhaust emissions. Therefore, it can be said that high-pressure, computer-controlled fuel injection has ushered in a new era of technology in both compression-ignition diesel engines and direct-injection S.I. gasoline engines. History of the Development of DirectInjection S.I. Engines Homogeneous Charge Direct-Injection Engines
Fig. 1. Direct-injection S.I. engine used on MercedesBenz 300SL in 1954 [3].

3. increased HC emissions caused by wall wetting during cold engine operation. With the aim of resolving the problem of reducing pumping losses, charge dilution through the use of a lean mixture and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) has been applied [1]. However, there have been limitations to the improvement of fuel efciency because the A/F ratio or the amount of EGR gas that can be applied has been limited. Stratied charge combustion realized by the injection of fuel directly to the combustion chamber has mitigated the cause of pumping losses. Engineers and researchers of S.I. engines have also struggled endlessly with the problem of knock [2], even though it is now possible to use fuel with an octane number of 100 RON. Despite the adoption of such technology as combustion chamber design with a shorter ame propagation distance, improvement of the in-cylinder airow and reduction of the mixture temperature, the compression ratio most commonly used in S.I. engines today is limited to about 10:1, which means there is still considerable room for improvement. This issue has been resolved by charge cooling achieved with direct injection of fuel into the combustion chamber. Approximately 50% of the unburned HC emissions are emitted during the rst 60 s after a cold engine start for vehicles complying with the lowemission vehicle (LEV) standards enforced in California. This is caused by the emission of unburned HCs before the catalyst reaches its light-off temperature. In addition, engine-out HC emissions are higher due to the supply of excess fuel at engine start owing to the fact that a large portion of the fuel injected into the intake ports adheres to the port walls and cannot follow the intake airow in the initial period after engine start. This wall wetting problem is eliminated by injecting fuel directly into the combustion chamber. Almost the same improvement trends have been

An S.I. engine that injected fuel directly into the combustion chambers was actually used in a ghter plane in Germany in the late 1930s. A famous example is the inverted V-12 DB601A engine made by Daimler-Benz that powered one of Germanys major ghters, the Messerschnitt Me109, in 1937. It would appear that this injection system was adopted from the dual standpoints of the particular requirements of aircraft engines and the absence of any alternative technology, given the technical levels of the day. Compared with the use of a carburetor, which was the mainstream fuel supply system of aircraft engines at that time, direct injection (DI) improved aerial performance, especially at high altitude, by achieving good fuel distribution and eliminating the need to install a throttle in the induction system, by allowing excellent drivability obtained with the absence of a oat and by removing any danger of icing. As an analogy with contemporary technology, the intake port injection systems used in todays automotive engines would seem to be sufcient. In the DB610A engine, fuel was injected in the intake stroke, and stratied charge combustion was not accomplished, but the injection timing was selected to control knock, which was mentioned in the previous section as being one of the limitations on the improvement of S.I. engine performance. That directinjection technology was also subsequently incorporated in automotive engines for racing use, and it found application in mass-production vehicles in 1954 when it was adopted for the Mercedes Benz 300SL sports coupe [3] (Fig. 1). Initial Development of Direct-Injection, Stratied Charge S.I. Engines To the best of the authors knowledge, the rst direct-injection spark-ignition system to be applied to a stratied charge engine was the Texaco Combustion Process (TCP) [4] presented in 1955 (Fig. 2). Through stratied charge combustion achieved by injecting the fuel in the compression stroke, the TCP engine operated at an airfuel ratio of around 50:1 attaining indicated thermal efciency of 38%

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to meet those requirements. By contrast, the MANFM combustion system was somewhat different in that it adopted a stratied charge combustion mode in which the fuel was injected toward the wall of a bowl provided in the piston so as to assist evaporation, and then it was ignited [5]. Because the injection timing was somewhat early, it was categorized as an early injection system. Among these engines, the TCP engine and Ford PROCO (Programmed Combustion) [6] engine were reportedly sold to limited customers around 1980 for use on delivery vehicles for the purpose of reducing fuel consumption. However, in the end, they were never offered for sale to the general public.
Fig. 2. Combustion chamber geometry of the Texaco combustion process (TCP) direct-injection stratied charge engine [4].

Mass Production of Direct-Injection, Stratied Charge S.I. Engines Initially, Mitsubishi Motors [12] launched general sales of their direct-injection stratied charge S.I. engines in 1996, followed by Toyota Motor in the same year [13] and Nissan Motor [13] in 1997, commencing a new era in S.I. engines. The major changes of these engines from ones at an earlier stage shown in Fig. 3 include the installation of a high-pressure injector below the intake port and the provision of a shallow bowl each uniquely shaped piston crown (Fig. 4) in order to provide the required performances. A shallow bowl piston that does not increase the piston weight is used because at high speed these engine have to operate much like conventional passenger car engines. The location of the injector was found to be the best position relative to the spark plug for mixture preparation and transportation of the stratied mixture to the spark plug under the shallow bowl concept. The intake air motion design differs in that the Mitsubishi engine uses reverse tumble while the Toyota and Nissan engines use swirl air motion in the stratied charge combustion mode. Yet, all three engines adopt a similar combustion concept, in which an atomized fuel spray is injected toward the bowl provided in the piston crown and airow in the bowl assists fuel evaporation and formation of a stratied charge, which is then ignited to accomplish stratied charge combustion. Therefore, it can be said that this process successfully adopts the concept of the MAN-FM combustion system that was developed in the initial period. The fact that a combustion concept from the initial development period has been implemented in production engines in recent years can undoubtedly be attributed to regulatory requirements and changed energy circumstances that make such fuel-efcient engines necessary. Yet, in terms of technology, this implementation owes much to the quantum leap advances achieved in two peripheral areas as described later. The rst concerns the progress achieved in the

Fig. 3. Design of direct-injection stratied charge engines previously researched [11] (referred from Ref. [5]; Texaco-TCP, Ref. [6]; White L-163-S, Ref. [7]; Ford-Proco, Ref. [8]; Mitsubishi-MCP, Ref. [9]; MAN-FM, Ref. [10]; GM-DISC).

with the technology available at that time. Because the system did not require a carburetor, it was also insensitive to fuel properties and attracted great attention as a multifuel engine. Subsequently, many stratied charge engines were developed, as indicated in Fig. 3. As can be seen in the gure, nearly all of these engines shared the same basic concepts with respect to the mixture formation, ignition, and combustion processes. They were categorized as socalled late injection systems whereby the fuel was injected in the latter half of the compression stroke and immediately ignited. The relative positions of the fuel injector and spark plug were arranged so as

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Fig. 4. Combustion chamber conguration and layout of peripheral components of mass production DI gasoline engines launched from Mitsubishi in 1996 [16], Toyota in 1996 [13,20], and Nissan in 1997 [14].

fuel supply system. All the engines in the initial development period, including the TCP and MAN-FM engines, used a high-pressure injection system in which the injection pressure was raised intermittently. That was the only system available at the time, and it was similar to the technology used for diesel engines. However, because the lubricity of gasoline is vastly lower than that of diesel fuel, it was not possible to ensure high reliability with the technology that was available in those days. This problem was resolved by the combined adoption of the common rail system employing solenoid-driven injectors, which were considerably improved in applications to port injection S.I. engines, and a high-pressure pump achieving enhanced performance as a result of advances made in materials and in machining technologies. As a result, todays injection systems are capable of providing injection pressure up to 12 MPa [13]. The second peripheral area that has contributed substantially to the implementation of this combustion concept is computer-controlled technology. Direct-injection S.I. engines do not actually use the stratied charge combustion mode under all operating conditions. Stratied charge combustion is used only under low- and light-load operating conditions where further reduction of fuel consumption is required and is not used under high-load operation because of smoke generation stemming from the presence of an excessively rich mixture in the ammable mixture region. Therefore, homogeneous charge combustion, similar to that used in conventional S.I. engines, is employed at high-load operating conditions to suppress the generation of smoke. In this mode, fuel is injected in the intake stroke, making the injection timing greatly different from that used for stratied charge combustion. Many other injection timings are also used to meet

the performance required by the engine or the vehicle under a variety of conditions. The technologies that have made such exible injection timing possible are the common rail fuel supply system and computer-control technology that allows the injection timing to be freely selected. The other large contributions have also been made, in the authors opinion, by visualization and simulation techniques [15,21,25]. Experimental visualization and computational simulation have provided the information that has enabled engine designers to implement the stratied charge combustion concept in production engines. These advances, combined with the application of precise, high-pressure, computer-controlled fuel injection have all occurred since the early work of the 1970s. The mass production of direct-injection S.I. engines is the result of the combination of various technological advances. Characteristics of Mixture Formation, Combustion, and Spray in Current DirectInjection S.I. Engines Mixture Formation Process The new generation direct-injection S.I. engines eschew the deep piston bowl that was used in earlier engines but which increased the piston weight, in order to operate at high speeds similar to conventional passenger car engines as is compared in Figs. 3 and 4. In the shallow bowl concept, a combination of optimized air motion, piston bowl geometry, and spray is required to stabilize the stratied charge combustion. As one of the concepts of cylinder air motion, the use of horizontal swirl has been proposed [1315]. In this concept, fuel is injected in the

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Fig. 5. Behavior of evaporated fuel in the combustion chamber with horizontal swirl and forward tumble air motion as visualized by LIF [15].

quartz windows are installed in a pentroof section of the combustion chamber of the test engine to visualize mixture formation in the combustion chamber. Although special care was taken to visualize the gaseous phase fuel [15], the photographs in the gure show both liquid and gaseous phases, as separation of the images obtained for each phase was not considered. It is seen that evaporated fuel is transported to the spark plug by way of piston bowl (not shown in the gure), where fuel is fully evaporated, from around a crank angle of 35 deg.BTDC. Because no uorescence is observed around the evaporated fuel cloud, it is understood that stratied charge was formed in the chamber. The transportation of evaporated fuel is promoted by a vertically rotating motion inside the bowl that was generated by the presence of horizontal swirl to assist the upward motion of the mixture toward the spark plug. This vertical ow is a resultant vector of swirling air motion and squish motion generated by the piston crown geometry, as shown in Fig. 6. The air-to-fuel ratio around the spark plug electrode tip at the timing of spark measured by IR absorption method in this air motion concept was about 510% richer than stoichiometry [26]. On the other hand, in the case of forward tumble motion, which is the natural air motion generated in the cylinder in conventional automobile engines equipped with four-valve cylinder heads, the injected spray is pushed directly upward to the spark plug, as is seen between crank angles of 35 and 45 in the series of photographs on the left side of Fig. 5. In this case, high cycle-to-cycle uctuations occur because the injected spray contains large amounts of droplets owing to insufcient evaporation. Another type of intake air motion used in the shallow bowl concept is reverse tumble [12], which is created as a result of modifying the intake port geometry from the horizontal orientation commonly used in conventional engines to an upright orientation (left-hand side example in Fig. 4). Reverse tumble motion transports the evaporated fuel along with the surface of the piston bowl to the spark plug (Fig. 7). Characteristics of High-Pressure Spray The spray produced by the swirl injector in the new-generation direct-injection S.I. engines is characterized as having a hollow cone with a fairly wide spray cone angle of approximately 7080 under atmospheric pressure like the spray patterns shown in Fig. 8 [12,15,2729]. With a swirl injector, a wider cone angle is preferred for better atomization and for more uniform spatial distribution of the injected fuel in the combustion chamber. This is especially true under wide open throttle operation when suppression of smoke generation is one of the main issues under homogeneous mixture operation because

Fig. 6. Flow eld and distribution of evaporated fuel in the combustion chamber in a DI gasoline engine obtained by CFD-based simulation [15,21] (operating conditions: same as those in Fig. 5).

latter half of the compression stroke toward the piston bowl, where evaporation and mixing with local air are promoted, resulting in the formation of a stratied charge. The series of photographs in Fig. 5 show the mixture formation process as visualized by laser-induced uorescence (LIF). To facilitate LIF measurement,

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Fig. 7. Liquid and gaseous fuel behavior of the fuel spray in the cylinder in reverse tumble air motion achieved by upright intake port [16] (engine speed, 1000 rpm; injection amount, 15 mm3/St.; injection, 50 deg. BTDC).

a large amount of fuel has to be injected to produce high power output. However, this requirement is not compatible with stratied charge combustion in which a compact spray relative to the piston bowl size has to be supplied in the compression stroke. Fortunately, the reduction of the penetration distance and the cone angle that occurs in the presence of high back pressure in the latter half of the compression stroke can be utilized to good advantage in the stratied charge combustion mode to keep the fuel spray within the piston bowl. The changes in the spray cone angle and the penetration distance under high back pressure are also seen in Fig. 8. The reason for this is that the pressure difference between the cone interior and exterior is proportional to the product of the density and square of the velocity inside the cone. Therefore, a higher back pressure with a higher air density increases this pressure

difference, causing the spray to be squeezed inwardly. The spray particle size is on the order of 15 20 lm Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) under injection pressure in a range of 715 MPa. A solid cone spray like that shown in Fig. 9 is also used [13]. This spray has a fairly narrow cone angle, generated by higher injection pressure of 12 MPa, compared with that of the hollow cone mentioned earlier. As is seen in the gure, this spray has an inclined orientation from the center of the injector to optimize the direction of injected fuel to the piston bowl, which has a compound geometry previously shown in the middle picture of Fig. 4. The droplet diameter is sensitive to the injection pressure up to about 13 MPa. The effect of the injection pressure on fuel consumption improvement with this spray is shown in Fig. 10. It is clear that for engine speeds of 1600 to 2400 rpm, fuel consumption improves as the injection pressure increases; however, at 1200 and 800 rpm, the best efciency is obtained around 8 MPa. At lower engine speeds, it is thought that the lower injection pressure produces a longer droplet traveling time that promotes evaporation, at higher speeds, it is thought that the higher injection pressure produces a shorter injection duration that results in a well stratied mixture. In the process of selecting the spray, the spray characteristics of a four-hole nozzle (Fig. 11) were also evaluated [17]. However, a solid cone swirl injector was found to be preferable because it provides higher atomization, meets the lower injection pressure requirement, and disperses the fuel better. A development of air-assisted injector is also reported aiming the use for four-stroke automobile engines [30]. The spray characteristics created by this

Fig. 8. Axial and radial cross-sectional shape and the effect of back pressure of high-pressure hollow cone spray used in direct-injection S.I. engines [15].

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Fig. 9. Shape of solid cone spray taken under atmospheric pressure and 3 ms after injection start and effect of injection pressure on droplet diameter [13].

Fig. 10. Effects of injection pressure on fuel consumption improvement in solid cone spray [13].

Fig. 12. Spray geometry and particle size distribution of air-assisted injector (denoted as low-pressure dual uid).

Fig. 11. Spray of four-hole nozzle [17].

injector is that much smaller droplet is generated with the assistance of pressurized air of up to 600 kPa in spite of a lower fuel injection pressure of 720 kPa than that generated by the high-pressure singleuid injector as shown in Fig. 12. Characteristics of Combustion Process Two different combustion processes are used in a new generation of a direct-injection S.I. engine. One is that of homogeneous charge including stoichiometric and lean mixture that is the same as that of conventional homogeneous charge combustion because fuel is injected in the intake process to form a

homogeneous mixture, as mentioned in the previous section. The other is stratied charge combustion in which combustion occurs under much richer air-tofuel ratio than that of the supplied one called superlean burn. Figure 13 shows the spontaneous spectrum of ame luminescence obtained with a high-speed optical multichannel analyzer for stratied and uniform mixture combustion [16]. With early injection in which a homogeneous mixture was formed, luminescence radiation is attributed to OH and CH chemiluminescence as well as CO-O recombination emission. Luminescence in the longer wavelength region is not observed. This is a typical characteristic of premixed lean or stoichiometric ames. With late injection in which a stratied charge was formed, the major component of the luminescence radiation consists of a continuous solid emission from the soot

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Fig. 13. Flame radiation and spectrum of the visible emission from early and late direct injection SI engine [16] (engine speed, 1500 rpm; injection amount, 15 mm3/ stroke).

generated in the combustion chamber. This is a distinctive characteristic of stratied charge combustion. However, this luminescence radiation was attenuated in a short time, as the soot was burned up because sufcient air had been entrained into the fuel before ignition. Potential for Performance Improvements with Direct-Injection S.I. Engines Substantial Reduction in Fuel Consumption With the aforementioned specications mentioned in the previous section, this direct-injection engine achieves stable combustion of a lean stratied charge combustion even at an airfuel ratio as lean as 40:1, as indicated in Fig. 14. As a result, fuel consumption is reduced by 20% compared with that of conventional port injection engines operated at a stoichiometric airfuel ratio. In a lean burn S.I. engine, factors to contribute to fuel consumption improvement are analyzed and reported to be a reduction of pumping losses caused by charge dilution, heat losses to the cylinder walls caused by reduced burned gas temperature, and increased transfer of burned energy to working gas in the cylinder caused by modied gas property [31]. In the direct-injection stratied charge engine, the major reason for this improvement is the reduction of pumping loss, as indicated by the reduced intake depression seen in the gure. Because much of the mixture is burned near the stoichiometric airfuel ratio, emission level of nitrogen oxides (NOx) are relatively higher than for the conventional mixture burning. However, the application of EGR reduces NOx emissions to the target level, as seen in the gure, to meet the current emission standard enforced in Japan, within the allowable engine stability limit dened by coefcient of variation of indicated mean effective pressure pi

(COV-pi). Unburned HC emissions are somewhat higher than the levels for conventional homogeneous charge combustion, which, among other reasons, is due to quenching of the ame when a lean mixture exceeds the ame propagation limit, as has been noted by many researchers before [7]. However, the level is within the range where it can be reduced by improved oxidation capability of a catalyst, for which remarkable advances have been achieved in recent years. The combustion process realized with this stratied charge makes it possible to control engine output by regulating only the fuel injection amount, without throttling the intake air at low loads. Effect on Improved Power Output As mentioned earlier, direct-injection engines operate in the homogeneous charge mode when high power output is demanded. In this case, because nely atomized fuel is supplied directly to the combustion chamber, latent heat of fuel evaporation works to cool the intake air for improved charging efciency. As shown in Fig. 15, it has the effect of improving charging efciency by 3% in the low rpm range. Simultaneously, the lower intake air temperature helps to suppress knock, with the result that the ignition timing can be advanced by approximately 2 deg.CA. Together with the improved charging efciency, this has the effect of increasing brake torque by more than 6% under the operating conditions noted in the gure. An improvement in engine output of between 6 and 9% can be obtained compared with conventional port injection engines in all engine speed ranges. These results indicate that direct injection also plays a role in reducing knock, which was noted earlier as one of the unfortunate characteristics of homogeneous charge S.I. engines.

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Fig. 15. Effect of increased charging efciency and suppression of knock on improvement in torque output [15].

Fig. 14. Reduction in fuel consumption by stratied charge combustion [15] (A/F and G/F denote the ratio of air and air plus EGR gas to the fuel, respectively).

Reduction of Cold-Start HC Emissions In direct-injection engines, nely atomized fuel can be supplied directly to the combustion chamber even under cold-engine operation, making it possible to avoid wall wetting at cold starts, which was mentioned earlier as one of the limitations of improving performance of S.I. engines. A comparison of the photographs visualized by LIF in Fig. 16 clearly indicates that fuel behavior in direct-injection engines is vastly different from that observed in conventional port injection engines. This difference in fuel behavior makes it possible to suppress the unburned HC emission peak that occurs after engine cold start due to wall wetting in conventional port

injection engines (Fig. 17). This results from the fact that direct-injection engines can be started readily without any increase in the fuel supply as is also illustrated in Fig. 17. The reduction in cold-start HC emissions shown in Fig. 17 corresponds to 30% of the total quantity emitted for vehicles complying with low-emission vehicles (LEV) standards enforced in California. Reduction of cold-start HC emissions has also been achieved by applying high-pressure direct injection to overcome the limitations of conventional S.I. engines. Potential for Eliminating Other Limitations At the outset, this review emphasized the effect of direct-injection S.I. engines on overcoming various limitations that have held back performance improvements in conventional S.I. engines. Some of these limitations have been mitigated or partly resolved, as discussed in the previous sections. However, this engine still faces other limitations on performance improvement: 1. limitations due to xed valve events,

Fig. 16. Comparison of fuel behavior in intake process under cold engine conditions visualized by LIF [15] (sapphire cylinder optical engine is used under ring operation).

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delivery of air by late exhaust valve closing could be successfully utilized. As for the strong dependence on fuel properties, development work on direct-injection engines originally started from the concept of a multifuel engine, that is, low sensitivity to fuel properties, so further research work can be expected to shed some light on this issue. It is also expected that innovative work will be undertaken to tackle the issues of reducing cylinder-to-cylinder and cycle-tocycle variations and heat loss. Outgrowth of Direct Injection Increased Controllability of Mixture Formation Because the new generation of direct-injection S.I. engines incorporates a fully electronically controlled fuel injection system, a combination of combustion processes is being used under different operating conditions. As mentioned earlier, stratied charge combustion and homogeneous charge combustion are used under low-load operating conditions and high-load conditions, respectively. In addition, as shown in Fig. 18, these engine systems use a variety of combustion process derived from different mixtures, namely, lean homogeneous mixture combustion and two-stage mixture combustion, under transitional conditions to and from stratied and homogeneous charge combustion modes [13]. Lean homogeneous charge combustion is used to enhance improvement of fuel consumption. Two-stage injection, in which the fuel is injected rst in the intake stroke and then again in the compression stroke, is employed in order to minimize torque discontinuities in the transition between stratied charge combustion and homogeneous charge combustion by extending the range of stratied charge combustion, as shown in Fig. 19 [13]. This effect is achieved by suppressing smoke generation under middle range operating conditions. Another two-stage combustion used for the quick warming up of the under oor catalyst is proposed [23]. In this combustion, a supplementary injection is performed during the later stage of the expansion stroke, while the engine is operated lean, adopting the late injection mode under cold conditions. As a large amount of air exists in the burned gas and the gas temperature is sufciently high, supplementary supplied fuel is ignited to increase the exhaust gas temperature resulted in reducing light-off temperature of the catalyst up to 200 s. Improvement in Catalyst Technology To comply with much more stringent emission regulations set to be enforced in the United States, EU, Japan, and other countries, it will be necessary to use a lean-NOx catalyst system that reduces both

Fig. 17. Reduction of cold-start HC emissions under LA4 vehicle driving mode [15].

Fig. 18. Combustion strategy used in the direct-injection S.I. engine system [13].

2. dependence of engine performance on fuel properties, 3. cylinder-to-cylinder variations, 4. cycle-to-cycle variations, and 5. heat losses associated with ame impingement on wall. Experimental results relating to these issues have not always been clear or reported in the literature so far. However, combining a system for variable valve timing and lift, such as a phase shifter and a cam prole selector [22], with direct injection could expand the range of the variable system. For instance, because the intake air does not contain any fuel, the benet of late intake valve closing or the

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Fig. 19. Effect of two-stage injection on smoke suppression under 1200 rpm [13].

HC and NOx emissions simultaneously even at lean airfuel ratios in place of the conventional three-way catalyst system. To meet this requirement, two kinds of lean-NOx catalyst have been proposedthe NOx storage catalyst and the selective reduction catalyst [23]. As its name implies, the NOx storage catalyst stores NOx during lean operation, and the stored NOx are reduced to nitrogen during a short stoichiometric or rich excursion period, as illustrated in Fig. 20 [13]. Selective reduction catalysts make use of the direct reduction reaction of NOx by hydrocarbons. As has been reported [23] and shown in Fig. 21, an NOx storage catalyst shows higher reduction efciency than a selective catalyst under fresh catalyst conditions. However, the NOx storage catalyst is susceptible to sulfur poisoning and shows a greater loss in activity than the selective catalyst over a short driving mileage where gasoline containing 200 ppm sulfur is used as the fuel, as shown in Fig. 21. Therefore, improvement of the reduction performance of the selective type catalyst and resolution of the sulfur poisoning problem of NOx storage catalyst by sulfur trapping [24] or sulfur regeneration of the poisoned catalyst are still high priority issues in catalyst technology development. Effect of High-Pressure Injection on DI Diesel Engine Performance Because of their lower fuel consumption, DI diesel engines are increasingly being used even in small automobile engine applications in place of indirectinjection (IDI) diesel engines that have an auxiliary chamber into which the fuel is injected. A great deal of research has been done on technologies for reducing emissions of NOx, soot, and other substances affecting environment from DI diesel engines, because reduction of emissions has been one technical issue of concern for these engines. One approach being pursued toward this end is to use high-pressure injection similar to the technology applied to S.I. engines. Recently, a new combustion concept called modulated kinetics concept (MK concept) combustion, which simultaneously reduces both NOx and PM emissions, as shown on the left side of Fig. 22, has been developed by Nissan Motor. It is planned to implement this concept in a wide range of production engines [18,19]. The MK combustion concept is based on a more homogeneous charge combustion process than that of conventional DI diesels. This is accomplished by optimizing the combustion chamber geometry, strengthening in-cylinder air motion, applying cooled EGR gas, and also by retarding the injection timing, all of which contribute to stable combustion while increasing the degree of premixed combustion of the injected fuel. Figure 23 compares MK combustion and ordinary diesel combustion in

Fig. 20. Mechanism showing NOx storage and reduction [13].

Fig. 21. Durability of lean-NOx catalyst [23].

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Fig. 22. Effect of MK combustion concept on reducing NOx and particulate emissions of direct-injection diesel engines and effect of high-pressure injection on extending operating conditions [18,19].

Fig. 24. High-pressure spray used in MK combustion concept direct-injection diesel engine visualized 1.0 ms after injection start.

Fig. 23. High-speed photographs and heat release to show characteristics of MK combustion process [18].

terms of the heat release rate and combustion process as visualized with high-speed cinematography. It can be seen that in the MK concept, most of the injected fuel burned with premixed combustion because none of the bright luminescence that is typical of diffusion ame is not observed in the gure. Highpressure injection is used in order to apply MK combustion even at higher engine loads, where it is already known that it would be hard to use this new combustion process at a conventional injection pressure of, say, 30 kPa. It has been common knowledge

so far that the use of a high-pressure spray in a DI diesel engine reduces emissions of soot and particulate matter (PM), but on the negative side, NOx emissions increase, as indicated in Fig. 22. In contrast, by combining the MK concept with high-pressure injection using the spray geometry shown in Fig. 24, simultaneous reduction of NOx and PM emissions can be achieved, something that has not been possible hitherto with a high-pressure fuel spray in a conventional combustion system at high engine loads, as shown on the right side of Fig. 22. It can be concluded that high-pressure injection can be expected to reduce the fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of diesel engines.

Conclusion It was shown that direct-injection S.I. engines, which have been developed at a rapid pace in recent years, have potential to attain major performance

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improvements simultaneously, including a reduction in fuel consumption of around 20%, improved output of from 6 to 10%, and a substantial reduction in cold-start unburned HC emissions. These improvements result from the adoption of a new combustion system, featuring direct injection of nely atomized fuel into the combustion chamber, which is supported by a number of new technologies such as high-pressure injection, computer-control technology, a new lean-NOx catalyst system, and diagnostic and simulation techniques regarding combustion. It can also be said that these improvements are achieved by overcoming various limitations previously thought to be hopelessly unresolvable in S.I. engines. As further improvements are expected by using direct injection at high-injection pressures, it can be said that a new era in S.I. engines is anticipated, especially in order to improve performance regarding the exhaust emissions of substances that affect the environment and contribute to global warming. The same tendency is seen in the application of a high-pressure injection to DI diesel engines in order to achieve a further reduction of emissions such as NOx and particulate that are major issues for this type of engine. It is hoped that high-pressure fuel injection technology will be a new approach to further improving the performance of both S.I. engines and DI diesel engines.
Acknowledgments The author would especially like to thank Dr. H. Ando of Mitsubishi Motor Corp. and Mr. D. Sawada of Toyota Motor Corp., who kindly provided some of the original data. Thanks are also due the research engineers of the Nissan Research Center for providing excellent data suitable for this article, especially Mr. S. Kimura, who furnished data on the MK concept DI diesel engine, and Mr. T. Fujii, who provided information concerning the history of direct-injection S.I. engine development.

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