Investigation of a High Energy Ignition System for EGR Combustion Engine

Abstract

Lean or diluted combustion will be applied for improving thermal efficiency of gasoline engines. Such the engines need high air flow in cylinders to keep combustion stability. One of the issues of the engines is wear of spark plug electrode. We assumed that main factor of wear of spark plug is increase in number of re-strikes during discharge. Based on the assumption, the relationship between time distribution of the discharge energy and number of the re-strike was evaluated. We proposed a new ignition control logic which was able to reduce the number of re-strikes by about 50% compared to the conventional ignition control. This paper will describe results of durability test with and without new ignition control logic.