Assessment of cycle-to-cycle variations in hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine

Abstract

Cycle-to-cycle variations in spark ignition (SI) internal combustion engines (ICE) fueled with hydrogen (H₂) were investigated in the context of enhancing combustion stability. In the first part, the effects of boost pressure, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), spark advance (SA), and lambda on cycle-to-cycle variations based on Matekunas plots were investigated. In the second part, the integral of the coefficient of variation of pressure (COV_P) curve (ICOV) by varying SA, equivalence ratio (ER), and volumetric efficiency (VE) were examined and their impacts were evaluated. The experimental data were acquired through a test campaign performed on a single-cylinder PFI-SI ICE for 100 consecutive cycles. The Matekunas plots showed that as combustion stability increases, cycle-to-cycle variations decrease, and vice versa. Additionally, a decrease in cycle-to-cycle variations is accompanied by a decrease in maximum pressure (P_max) values. The increase in the maximum value of COV_P results in the increase of the ICOV with a relatively strong linear relationship demonstrated by correlation coefficient (CC) of 0.62 between ICOV and COV_P. Therefore, it can be concluded that if the COV_P is higher, it results in high cycle-to-cycle variations. The higher values of $P_{\max}$ lead to high COV_P with a strong linear correlation coefficient (CC) value of 0.78 between P_max and COV_P. As SA and VE increase, and ER decreases, cycle-to-cycle variations during combustion duration increase, concluding less repetitive combustion.

Keywords

hydrogen internal combustion engine cycle-to-cycle variation combustion stability combustion duration

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