Reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) is a dual fuel combustion method that relies on the significant difference in reactivity of the fuels involved. RCCI had a low performance at high engine speed due to its high tendency on knocking and high pressure rise rate. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of the fuel stratification on the RCCI combustion and its extended to the interaction of two low reactive fuels, gasoline and compressed natural gas (CNG), in the RCCI combustion system. The investigation was experimentally performed on a single cylinder engine and constant volume chamber. The stratification was created by varying injection timing in the engine by injecting CNG at 80° and 120° before top dead center (BTDC) and varying injection gap in the constant volume chamber with the gaps between two fuel injection timing were varied between 0 ms to 20 manuscript The results in the engine experiment show that proportions of gasoline and CNG and degree of stratification of CNG were found to be effective means of combustion control within certain limits of engine load and HC and CO emissions could be significantly reduced. While in constant volume chamber it has a significant effect on the combustion phasing. Stratified mixture produces shorter combustion duration while homogeneous mixture produces longer duration.

This research will demonstrate that Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) has several advantages over other LTC concepts in regards to fuel flexibility and combustion controllability. RCCI is a dual-fuel partially premixed combustion concept. In this strategy, a low reactivity fuel, such as gasoline or an alcohol fuel, is premixed via port fuel injection (PFI) and a high reactivity fuel, such as diesel fuel, is direct injected (DI) during the compression stroke. Once it was clear that dual-fuel RCCI operation had great potential in terms of combustion controllability, which is a great challenge for LTC strategies, the study focused on alternative fuels with RCCI combustion. The light-duty engine was used to study two different fuel combinations: gasoline/diesel and methanol/diesel. In addition to the fuels comparison, a modified piston bowl geometry was studied and compared to the stock re-entrant bowl. The modified piston featured a wide/shallow bowl with a matched geometric compression ratio to the stock piston of ~17.3. Using the modified piston, the gross indicated efficiency of RCCI combustion was significantly improved at light loads due to increases in combustion efficiency and decreases in heat transfer losses. At higher loads the modified piston also performed better than the stock piston, but the improvements were not as significant. The final portion of this research looks at the effects of cetane improvers on gasoline, ethanol, and methanol's fuel reactivity and the implications for RCCI combustion. In all three base fuels it was found that 2-ethylhexyl nitrate is more effective at increasing fuel reactivity (i.e., suppressing the octane number) compared to di-tert-butyl peroxide. However, 2-ethylhexyl nitrate has a potential disadvantage due its nitrate group, which can manifest itself as NOx emissions in the exhaust. The relationship between the fuel-bound nitrate group and the engine-out NOx emissions was extensively characterized. It was also observed that methanol's response to cetane improvers was better than that of ethanol, in spite of the fact that they have similar reactivities in their neat form.

Abstract : Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) is a combustion strategy that burns fuel at lower temperatures and leaner mixtures in order to achieve high efficiency and near zero NOx emissions. Since the combustion happens at lower temperatures it inhibits the formation of NOx and soot emissions. One such strategy is Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI). One characteristic of RCCI combustion and LTC com- bustion in general is short burn durations which leads to high Pressure Rise Rates (PRR). This limits the operation of these engines to lower loads as at high loads, the Maximum Pressure Rise Rate (MPRR) hinders the use of this combustion strategy. This thesis focuses on the development of a model based controller that can control the Crank Angle for 50% mass fraction burn (CA50) and Indicated Mean Effective Pressure (IMEP) of an RCCI engine while limiting the MPRR to a pre determined limit. A Control Oriented Model (COM) is developed to predict the MPRR in an RCCI engine. This COM is then validated against experimental data. A statistical analysis of the experimental data is conducted to understand the accuracy of the COM. The results show that the COM is able to predict the MPRR with reasonable accuracy in steady state and transient conditions. Also, the COM is able to capture the trends during transient operation. This COM is then included in an existing cycle by cycle dynamic RCCI engine model and used to develop a Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) representation of an RCCI engine using Data Driven Modeling (DDM) approach with Support Vector Machines (SVM). This LPV representation is then used along with a Model Predictive Controller (MPC) to control the CA50 and IMEP of the RCCI engine model while limiting the MPRR. The controller was able to track the desired CA50 and IMEP with a mean error of 0.9 CAD and 4.7 KPa respectively while maintaining the MPRR below 5.8 bar/CAD.

A computational investigation of methods to extend the upper limit of power output of reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) engines was performed. The study utilized two approaches. The first approach is to increase the engine speed while maintaining a medium load. The second approach is to operate at higher loads without changing the engine speed. Iso-octane and n-heptane were used to represent the low-reactivity fuel and high-reactivity fuel, respectively. A light-duty diesel engine was modeled for the high speed dual-fuel RCCI combustion study. With high-speed operation several benefits were identified. Firstly, the peak pressure rise rates (PPRR), both crank angle-based and time-based, were reduced compared to those with low-speed operation. Secondly, at high speed the NO formation residence time became short, leading to reduced NOx emissions. Lastly, a frictional penalty analysis of high-speed operation using the Chen-Flynn model was conducted, which showed only 0.5 bar FMEP increase compared to that at low-speed. These findings indicate that high-speed RCCI is a very promising path for high-power output operation. For the high-load operation study use of dual direct-injectors was explored in order to direct-inject both fuels. Analysis of the optimum injection strategy revealed two main physical mechanisms enabling high-load operation with dual direct-injectors. The first exploited local evaporative cooling from the iso-octane injection, which delayed the iso-octane ignition. The second mechanism was related to the shorter chemical residence time of the iso-octane due to its late delivery into the cylinder. It was also noted that n-heptane's role as an ignition source could not be achieved with just iso-octane. Finally, the co-axial injector location assumption was removed by using an actual dual-injector layout. Unlike results with the co-axial injector design, the actual dual-injector layout exhibited soot and CO emission problems. In order to attempt to accommodate off-center injector locations, various injector hole patterns were tested. Although these unconventional injector hole patterns improved the emissions, it is concluded that the development of a co-axial dual-fuel injector is imperative in order to achieve clean RCCI combustion at high load.