Heat release experimental analysis for RCCI combustion optimization

Over the past years, the increasingly stringent emission regulations for Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) spawned a great amount of research in the field of combustion control optimization. Nowadays, optimal combustion control has become crucial, especially to properly manage innovative Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) strategies, usually characterized by high instability, cycle-to-cycle variability and sensitivity to slight variations of injection parameters and thermal conditions. Many works demonstrate that stability and maximum efficiency of LTC strategies can be guaranteed using closed-loop control strategies that vary the standard injection parameters (mapped during the base calibration activity) to keep engine torque and center of combustion (CA50) approximately equal to their target values. However, the combination of standard base calibration and closed-loop control is usually not sufficient to accurately control Low Temperature Combustions in transient conditions. As a matter of fact, to properly manage LTC strategies in transient conditions it is usually necessary to investigate the combustion methodology of interest and implement specific functions that provide an accurate feed-forward contribution to the closed-loop controller. This work presents the experimental analysis performed running a light-duty compression ignited engine in dual-fuel RCCI mode, the goal being to highlight the way injection parameters and charge temperature affect combustion stability and ignition delay. Finally, the paper describes how the obtained results can be used to define the optimal injections strategy in the analyzed operating points, i.e. the combination of injection parameters to be used as a feed-forward for a closed-loop combustion control strategy.