Comparison of Crankangle Based Ignition Timing Methods on an HCCI Engine

Autoignition timing of a mixture in Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is very dependant and sensitive to the engine operating condition. To characterize combustion timing, different crank angle dependant methods are used but these methods can exhibit inaccurate results at some operating conditions. In this paper, a criterion that divides the engine operating condition into two regions, low and high cyclic variations (unstable operation) is defined. Then, different crankangle based methods for determining the start of combustion inside the cylinder for each of the two regions are compared. The start and duration of combustion are compared for wide range of operating conditions and the relative merits of each method discussed. The methods for characterizing the start of combustion are: CA50 based on the total heat release; the start of combustion from the third derivative of the pressure trace with respect to crank angle; the start of combustion from the third derivative of the pressure trace with respect to crank angle with two limits; CA10 based on total heat release; CA10 based on peak of main stage of combustion. The last method is introduced in this paper and has advantages in terms of accuracy of ignition timing detection and correlation with the start of combustion particularly for high cyclic variation engine operation. A new criterion, defined as the ratio between peak of main stage and the sum of peak of main stage and cool flame stage of heat release, is introduced to more accurately identify the operating region of the engine. This criterion is used to understand the performance of each of those crank angle based methods. The performance of each of those methods is investigated for both the low cyclic variation and the high cyclic variation (unstable) region of the engine.