The thermal efficiency of an efficient gasoline engine is only about 40% and it will produce a large number of harmful products. Curbing harmful emissions and enhancing thermal efficiency have always been the goals pursued and emission regulations are also being tightened gradually. As one of the main consumers of fossil fuels, automobile engines must further reduce fuel consumption and emissions to comply with the concept of low-carbon development, which will also help them compete with electric vehicles. Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion combined with variable valve actuation (VVA) technology is one of the important ways to improve engine emissions and economy. HCCI combustion based on VVA can only be realized at small and medium loads. The actual application on the entire vehicle needs to be combined with spark ignition (SI) combustion to achieve full working condition coverage. Therefore, HCCI combustion needs fast valve response characteristics; however, the valve lift and timing of the existing VVA mechanisms are mostly controlled separately, resulting in poor valve response. In order to solve this problem, the cam driven hydraulic variable valve actuation (CDH-VVA) mechanism was designed. The valve lift and timing can be adjusted at the same time and the switching of valve lift and timing can be completed in 1~2 cycles. A set of combustion mode switching data is selected to show the response characteristics of the CDH-VVA mechanism. When switching from spark ignition (SI) to HCCI, it switches to HCCI combustion after only one combustion cycle and it switches to stable HCCI combustion after two combustion cycles, which proves the fast response characteristics of the CDH-VVA mechanism. At the same time, the CDH-VVA mechanism can form the intake port exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), as one type of internal EGR. This paper studies the HCCI combustion characteristics of the CDH-VVA mechanism in order to optimize it in the future and enable it to realize more forms of HCCI combustion. At 1000 rpm, if the maximum lift of the exhaust valve (MLEV) is higher than 5.0 mm or lower than 1.5 mm, HCCI combustion cannot operate stably, the range of excess air coefficient (λ) is largest when the MLEV is 4.5 mm, ranging from 1.0~1.5. Then, as the MLEV decreases, the range of λ becomes smaller. When the MLEV drops to 1.5 mm, the range of λ shortens to 1.0~1.3. The maximum value of the MLEV remains the same at the three engine speeds (1000 rpm, 1200 rpm and 1400 rpm), which is 5.0 mm. The minimum value of the MLEV gradually climbs as the engine speed increase, 1000 rpm: 1.5 mm, 1200 rpm: 2.0 mm, 1400 rpm: 3.0 mm. With the increase of engine speed, the range of indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) gradually declines, 3.53~6.31 bar (1000 rpm), 4.11~6.75 bar (1200 rpm), 5.02~6.09 bar (1400 rpm), which proves that the HCCI combustion loads of the intake port EGR are high and cannot be extended to low loads. The cyclic variation of HCCI combustion basically climbs with the decrease of the MLEV and slightly jumps with the increase of the engine speed. At 1000 rpm, when the MLEV is 5.0 mm, the cyclic variation range is 0.94%~1.5%. As the MLEV drops to 1.5 mm, the cyclic variation range rises to 3.5%~4.5%. Taking the maximum value of the MLEV as an example, the cyclic variation range of 1000 rpm is 0.94%~1.5%, 1200 rpm becomes 1.5%~2.3% and 1400 rpm rises to 2.0%~2.5%.
Experimental investigation into the feasibility of using a variable conductance heat pipe for controlled heat release from a phase-change material thermal store
