The purpose of this study is to verify the effects of a port throttling and 1/4 diagonal port masking of an intake port of an SI engine. The fuel consumption rate increased with port throttling and masking under all operating conditions. However, the rapid combustion effect was increased in all operating conditions. It is consider that this is more influential on the suction resistance than the combustion efficiency increase through intake control. In addition, the increase in the burning velocity indicates that the flame propagation speed is increased by increasing the swirl moment during combustion.

In this study, we investigated the effects of EGR rate and engine load on the emission characteristics in a 4-cylinder common rail direct injection diesel engine fueled with canola oil biodiesel (BD) blended fuel. The biodiesel blend fuel, BD20 (20 vol.% biodiesel and 80 vol.% ULSD blend) was used at an engine speed of 1,500rpm. The experimental results showed that with the increasing of EGR rate, the combustion pressure and rate of heat release (ROHR) of three test fuels were decreased, and the ignition delay was extended, the carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM) emissions increased slightly, but the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission decreased clearly. On the other hand, with the increasing of engine load, the combustion pressure and ROHR were increased, and the CO and PM emissions decreased. However, the NOx emission was increased due to the rise of the combustion temperature.

When an engine connecting rod is designed, it’s important to consider the buckling strength as well as deformation and durability of the rod. The buckling strength of a rod is mainly affected by the shape and area of shank cross-section and boundary conditions of its small and big ends. Buckling analysis by finite element method was carried out to evaluate the elastic buckling strength of a connecting rod that has non-uniform cross section areas. And the Merchant-Rankine formula was applied to predict the inelastic critical buckling load by considering the plastic buckling strength. Finally, the maximum allowable compressive load, which has 56.57kN, was predicted by considering the 1.7 buckling safety factor. It represents an approximately 40% greater than the maximum firing pressure.