Experimental study of the effect of gasoline injection start position on cyclic variation of a single cylinder research SI engine

Fuel metering system and controlling fuel-air mixture of spark ignition engines have been the major goals for the researcher. Management in mixture quality and fuel economy have resulted in changing carburetor systems to injection systems. Start of fuel injection position and injection duration play important role in engine performance. In the current work a single cylinder research engine with capability of adjusting spark timing and controlling gasoline injection start position and duration was utilized. Compression ratio, engine speed and injection start position were adjusted to 8, 1800 rpm and breathing top dead center (BTDC), respectively. Injection duration and spark timing were controlled so that to achieve maximum output torque at equivalence ratio of 0.90. Fixing them, the start of injection was only changed in the range of -180 to 180°CA relative to BTDC with a 30°CA increment. For each case, cylinder pressure of 500 successive cycles were recorded and stored. The obtained results showed that the dispersion of indicated mean effective pressure (imep) data of the cases with injection position start after BTDC were higher than those of the cases with injection position start before BTDC. Also, the average values of imep and peak pressure and their coefficient of variation changed with varying fuel injection start position; and for the cases of high dispersion in imep data, the average values of imep and isfc appeared to be high and low respectively.