Motorsport has always represented a fairly unique but equally challenging environment for engineers to develop exceptional solutions for the technical problems at the time and undoubtedly helped to pave the way for a successful transfer to modern production engines. Over the past few years, this transfer of innovative technologies has even strengthened due to fundamental changes in the technical regulations. Ever since, terms such as downsizing, turbocharging, and direct fuel injection, alongside with electrification, were introduced to a wide range of motorsport applications such as Formula 1, World Endurance Championship, and World Rally Championship. Consequently, today’s motorsport departments have qualified to meet the stringent requirements for the development of both race engines and series production engines.
For spark ignited engines with direct fuel injection an increased degree of inhomogeneity due to insufficient mixture-formation processes at high engine speeds and / or engine loads leads to severe implications on engine performance by means of a considerable decrease of the knock limit. Hence, with regard to motorsport applications, improving upon the corresponding sub-processes of mixture-formation, i.e. metering, preparation, transport, and distribution of the air-fuel mixture becomes increasingly important for the subsequent combustion process. Accordingly, an optimisation of engine performance may be achieved by either an advanced quality of the above sub-processes of mixture-formation or by an extended period of time available for generating a preferably homogeneous air-fuel mixture.
Due to the remarkably smaller mean droplet diameter, hollow cone injectors show potential in enhancing the quality of mixture-formation in comparison with conventional multi-hole injectors and hence raise the knock limit. In order to minimize the drawbacks of direct fuel injection, a combination of port fuel injection and direct fuel injection has been investigated in former scientific work. This particular injection strategy presumably leads to a reduction of local inhomogeneities due to a small fraction of fuel being injected into the intake ports. Most of the fuel mass, however, is injected directly into the combustion chamber and thus can make use of the specific advantages associated with direct fuel injection. Therefore, combined injection strategies may well be interpreted as an extended amount of time available for the corresponding processes of mixture-formation.
As a matter of fact, continuously increasing engine loads require a profound knowledge of the underlying processes of mixture-formation, ignition, and combustion. For that reason, the aim of the present thesis is a fundamental assessment of the potential raise in engine performance by either of the above methods and hence may be regarded as a continuative contribution to the general understanding of mixture-formation in spark ignited engines. Both theoretical and experimental studies allow a classification of direct fuel injection as well as combined injection strategies for applications in motorsports.
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Motorsport has always represented a fairly unique but equally challenging environment for engineers to develop exceptional solutions for the technical problems at the time and undoubtedly helped to pave the way for a successful transfer to modern production engines. Over the past few years, this transfer of innovative technologies has even strengthened due to fundamental changes in the technical regulations. Ever since, terms such as downsizing, turbocharging, and direct fuel injection, alongsid...
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