ABSTRACT
The electrification of powertrains provides a critical opportunity to change the way that engines are designed and developed, allowing their efficiency to be increased and their cost reduced. Alongside this, sustainable liquid fuels offer the potential for significant greenhouse gas reductions, while using current fuelling infrastructure and addressing the existing vehicle fleet.
This paper draws on ongoing Ricardo projects in the field of dedicated hybrid engines (DHEs). The Magma xEV combustion concept employs very high compression ratio, long stroke architecture, and advanced ignition and knock mitigation technologies, for DHEs requiring the highest efficiency. In the latest research project, a pre-chamber combustion system (with both active and passive operation) has been applied to the Magma xEV engine, to enable the highest levels of charge dilution and further increase brake thermal efficiency. The combustion concept has been developed using virtual product development approaches and validated with a single-cylinder research engine.
A sustainable biomass-to-liquid (BtL) gasoline fuels has also been tested with this engine, and the impact of these fuels on the combustion process has been reported.
