Diesel Engine Cylinder Head Port Design for Armored Fighting Vehicles: Compromise and Design Features

The cylinder head of diesel engines for armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) should be compact and lightweight and has to operate under severe loading conditions. The cylinder head of a direct-injection (DI) diesel engine has to admit charge to the cylinder and expel the exhaust gas with minimum pumping losses, with required swirl and other properties of charge motion. It must also provide features like mounting of injector, sealing of combustion gases, and maintaining acceptable temperature of the components. The cylinder head is therefore a critical and a complex component in AFV diesel engines. This paper discusses the layout options of intake port and design features that can be applied to the cylinder head of four-stoke direct-injection diesel engines for AFVs. The head layouts followed here can provide more opportunities in positioning of ports and enhance other attributes of the design. The optimized configuration results in improved swirl characteristics, reduced volume and weight along with better cooling with the intake port-generating swirl in two modes, i.e., the directed mode and the helical mode.