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This paper describes a stratified scavenging system of two–stroke cycle engine, developed to reduce HC (hydrocarbon) emission caused by short–circuiting mixture at scavenging process. The fact, the maximum short–circuiting of fuel–air mixture occurs at the timing soon after the scavenging port open, led us to the idea of stratified scavenging, that is, first stage of scavenging by air without fuel, then second stage by air–fuel mixture. The stratified scavenging system consists of long passages from crankcase to scavenging ports, and the supplemental air intake system directly to the scavenging port. The newly developed stratified scavenging two–stroke cycle engine cuts HC emission to about 1/4 of conventional two–stroke, and can meet the CARB Tier 2 emission regulation.

Stratified scavenging has been applied to two-stroke engines to improve fuel consumption and reduce exhaust emissions. To evaluation how this is achieved a stratified scavenging process was simulated using a three-gas single-cycle scavenging apparatus. The experiment simulated the fuel stream entering the rear transfer port of a five port cylinder and air streams entering the remaining ports. The scavenging efficiency and fuel trapping are calculated after the cycle by examining the cylinder contents. The design of the apparatus is particularly suited to investigating cylinder design changes during the prototype stage of engine development. A simulation of the stratified scavenging experiment using the Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) code VECTIS, showed good correlation with measured results. The simulation provides a real insight into the cylinder flow behaviour of the separate fuel and air streams entering the cylinder.

The advantages of high power to density ratio and low manufacturing costs of a two-stroke engine compared to a four-stroke unit make it currently the most widely used engine type for 50cc displacement 2-wheelers. This dominance is threatened by increasingly severe exhaust emissions legislation, forcing manufactures to develop their two-stroke engines to comply with the legislation. This paper describes a simple solution to reduce these harmful emissions in a cost effective manner, for a scooter application. The method of stratified scavenging is achieved by delivering the fuel into the rear transfer passage from a remote mechanical fuel metering device, operated by intake manifold pressure. Air only is delivered into the cylinder from the remaining transfer passages which are directed towards the rear transfer port, thus impeding the fuel from reaching the exhaust during the scavenging process.

A waterjet propulsor has come to be used more popularly for high speed watercrafts such as personal watercrafts. The most difficult problem for designing the waterjet system is that a tradeoff is required to properly determine the best parameters for the waterjet pump and subsequently the best overall propulsion system. This paper presents the design method and performance improvement of the waterjet propulsor used for personal watercrafts. The authors have clarified the performance of the individual component in the waterjet propulsor and improved the component efficiency empirically, and established the method to estimate the thrust and power characteristics of the propulsor on board from the component test results and other design parameters, which enables the optimization of the waterjet system.

The uniform lean gasoline-air mixture was provided to the diesel engine and was ignited by the direct diesel fuel injection. In this study, the internal EGR is add to this ignition method in order to activate the fuel in the mixture before the ignition. It is confirmed that the lean mixture of air-fuel ratio between 150 and 40 could be ignited and burned by this ignition method when the back pressure of 80 [kPa] is added, and the burning period is shorted by internal EGR. However, as the back pressure increases, NOx concentration is increased by the high temperature residual gas.

The goal of this research is to determine the feasibility of a catalytic compression-ignition engine running on aqueous ethanol fuel. A naturally aspirated, three-cylinder, direct-injection diesel engine manufactured by Yanmar has been modified to operate as a homogeneous-charge, compression-ignition engine. This involved removing the fuel injectors, replacing them with catalytic elements located inside a small pre-chamber, and installing a pulse width modulated fuel injection system. The fuel is 35% water and 65% ethanol by volume. The catalytic igniters allow the engine to operate continuously at various load levels corresponding to a broad range of air/fuel ratios. To adjust ignition timing and monitor in-cylinder combustion, the engine has been instrumented with a piezoelectric pressure transducer and a crankshaft encoder. Pressure traces are quite repeatable from cycle to cycle and resemble combustion patterns in typical Otto cycle engines.

The effects of recirculated exhaust gas on the characteristics of NOx and soot emissions under a wide range of engine loads are experimentally investigated using a four-stroke, four-cylinder, indirect injection, water-cooled marine diesel engine operating at two engine speeds. The aim of this study is to develop the EGR control system for reducing NOx and soot emissions simultaneously in diesel engines. The EGR system is used to reduce NOx emissions. And a novel diesel soot-removal device with a cylinder-type scrubber for the experiment system is specially designed and manufactured to reduce soot contents in the recirculated exhaust gas to the intake system of the engine. It is found that NOx emissions decrease markedly, especially at higher loads, while soot emissions increase owing to the drop of intake and exhaust oxygen concentrations, and the rise of equivalence ratio as the EGR rate is elevated.

Vehicle structural resonance modes are classified generally into rigid and flexible (non–rigid) body modes. During motorcycle testing and development for design validation, it is often useful to understand these modes of vibration. Understanding rigid and flexible body modes helps to improve the ride and handling performance. Understanding the flexible body modes helps to isolate noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) problems. It can also help to find the root causes of structural durability failures. Flexible body modes can also be annoying or unsafe to the operator. For example, handlebar vibrations may cause numbness in the hands or arms. Flexible body modes also can contribute to motorcycle dynamic instability modes such as the weave instability. Similarly, the rider's ability to see approaching traffic from the rear may be reduced if mirrors are vibrating due to a flexible body mode in the handlebars, frame, or front fork.

When a motorcycle runs with hands free riding, the change of the handle deflection angle is interlocked with the vehicle body (frame) bank angle, which is operated by the rider lean angle and caused by the disturbance of road surface. In this report, the motion of the rider who maintains the upright stability of a motorcycle in hands free and hold grips running at low speeds was studied from the experiment with measuring the vehicle frame bank angle, the rider's lean angle and the handle deflection angle, and the rider's feeling evaluation concerning the stability.

The Emission Regulations for Motorcycles in Japan was put into effect in October 1998 with the goal of reducing the total hydrocarbon emissions from motorcycles in the country to around 50% of the present amount. These regulations initiated a need to develop emission-converting catalysts, having the three characteristics written below, for two-stroke engines that historically have produced more hydrocarbons than four-stroke engines: 1 High performance of hydrocarbon conversion 2 High light-off performance 3 High thermal stability under high temperature Among a number of catalytic adjustment methods, the loading method of precious metals and the washcoat preparing method were modified to realize mass production of high-performance, low-cost catalysts.

The development history of a 30cc 2-stroke engine power unit in the covered rear wheel for retrofit into standard bicycle chassis. The rear wheel acts as cooling fan for the air cooled long stroke engine with catalyst exhaust system, autochoke carburetor, autolube oil pump, electric start and inertia start, single speed automatic transmission and 7 speed hub final drive. The space in the rear wheel contains intake air filter, exhaust system, fuel tank, oil tank and engine with drive train, the complete engine being only 94mm wide. The complete covered power unit is nearly undetectable as the rear wheel covers resemble road racing bicycles. There is very low stationary and pass-by noise (64 db[A]), no exhaust gas opacity or smell, very low vibration level and very good fuel economy up to 133 km/l.

ATAC (Active Thermo-Atmosphere Combustion) is autoignition combustion in two stroke engines, which occurs by diluting trapped Fuel-Air mixture with residual gas to maintain a high temperature at low load operation. In this study, two-stroke ATAC engine testing was carried out to obtain fundamental knowledge for controlling the autoignition and combustion characteristics in this premixed charge compression-ignition combustion engine. The influences of delivery ratio, equivalence ratio and enginespeed (i.e. compression speed) on autoignition timing, autoignition temperature and combustion duration were investigated. It was found that the ATAC autoignition temperature and combustion duration did not depend on the delivery ratio and equivalence ratio, but were determined by the individual fuel characteristics. Increasing the compression speed reduced the ATAC autoignition temperature a little.

In two-stroke S.I. engines, direct fuel injection prevents fuel short-circuiting from the exhaust port, however it does not solve per se combustion problems at light loads due to excessive ratio of residual-to-fresh gas. These problems can be solved by ATAC (Active Thermo Atmosphere Combustion), since residual-gas thermal energy is used to prime the combustion of fresh gas. Experimental results of a small two-stroke S.I. engine with medium-pressure air-assisted fuel injection, operating on ATAC at light loads are shown and prove the possibility to combine the two solutions.

A hybrid system combining a 4-stroke, 50cc-gasoline-engine with an electric motor was developed, and the maximum vehicle speed achieved by the electric motor is 30 km/h. Either an electric motor or engine is selected as the power source according to the running condition, and it is switched automatically. A parallel hybrid system, the Modulated Hybrid System (MHS), was adopted. Therefore, the energy source of the electric motor can be charged by an external or an internal power source. The switch mechanism of the driving power source is simple by using a one-way-clutch. The driving force, the vehicle speed, and the remaining battery energy are the parameters for switching control of the driving power sources. In order to achieve smooth switching and quick responses, the electric motor output is controlled by the feedback of the driving torque.

An analytical approach to developing motorcycle suspensions is presented. Typical uncontrolled and subjective evaluations that place limits on suspension development are curtailed through the use of a laboratory-based road simulation technique, which evaluates vehicle ride quality. Ride comfort is calculated using a specifically tailored NASA model after primary and secondary frequency regimes have been established for this type of motorcycle. Correlation between road and laboratory simulation is measured and compared to the road data variance. A designed experiment evaluates changes in ride quality as a function of suspension and tire pressure adjustments. Various suspension settings are repeated on the simulator and corresponding ride numbers are calculated for both environments. An analysis is performed to correlate ride quality improvements on the simulator with ride quality improvements in the field.

When the detonation caused by pre-ignition and post-ignition, it is generally known that strong vibrations from the combustion chamber develop from impact of that combustion pressure. This will affect the engine. Methods to accurately measure the strength of this detonation and its usage are being considered and used from various viewpoints. We measure this detonation quantitatively by the detonation counter. This is done in order to bring out optimum performance of the engine, specifically the spots, carburetor settings, and ignition timing. Where adjustments must be made and it is useful as a tool for judging, conducting, and setting adjustment directions and volume quickly and accurately. Furthermore, simplification of this system has the enable it to be sold on the market. As a result of this, it now has spread to and is being used for racing base.

There are several anomalous combustion phenomena that cannot be explained by current theories. One of them is the stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, known as Brown's gas. Dr. Randell Mills developed “hydrino” theory starting in 1986 that can explain excess heat in the absence of nuclear products in the research of cold fusion. It was applied to explain this anomalous combustion, by replacing potassium ion with atomic oxygen. It was found out that hydrino theory can explain this anomalous combustion phenomenon including abnormal heat generation from combustion of emulsified fuels. It was suggested that this technology can be utilized for the improvement of future internal combustion engines.

The authors have experimentally produced a new type of Rotary Valve (ca11ed R.V.) which has a unique gas sealing mechanism. In this study, first, the mechanical loss in the valve train was measured comparing to that of the poppet valve drive train, and it was found that the mechanical loss of rotary valve train is much lower level. Secondary, three dimensional numerical calculation of the flow field from the intake-port to in-cylinder during the intake stroke was carried out. As a result, it was found that the flow field is very complicated due to the interaction between the moving piston and valve and that the profiles of “valve notch” and intake port affect the flow field and then, the modification of profile with a round edge form of the “notch” enables higher mass flow rate.

Experiments were conducted on a small SI engine with the objective to investigate the relationship between air/fuel-ratio and the ionic current signal measured across the spark plug electrodes. The propane-operated, single-cylinder engine has been equipped with sensors to monitor its operating conditions and a CDI ignition system with a built-in ionic current sensing circuit. More than 50 features of the ionic current signal have been examined in a preliminary analysis. Three features of the cycle-averaged signal (signal peak, signal integral in a crank angle window around the peak position, signal amplitude after a preset delay) were found to correlate reasonably well with air/fuel-ratio for the full range of operating conditions. After an evaluation of cycle-to-cycle variations of these features, simple algorithms for an application of the ionic current - mixture strength relationship are introduced.

With emergence of fuel cells which have much better thermal efficiency than internal combustion engines (later abbreviated as ICE), ICE has to improve its thermal efficiency to the level of 50%. One of the ways to improve the thermal efficiency of ICE is to utilize ultra-lean combustion and several technical papers have been published. But it seems the thermal efficiency has not been improved as the theory predicts. The test data of these technical papers were re-examined and it was concluded that the thermal dissociation of burned gas and NOx formation is the key factor of a discrepancy between the theory and the actual test data. In order to prevent an occurrence of thermal dissociation, emulsified fuels (mixture of carbonaceous fuels with water) was proposed.