METHOD FOR OPERATING A PISTON PISTON COMBUSTION ENGINE AND PISTON PISTON COMBUSTION ENGINE FOR CARRYING OUT THIS METHOD

摘要

1. A method of operating a reciprocating-piston internal combustion engine having a combustion chamber (17), in which air is compressed by the stroke of the piston (1), into which fuel is injected through an injection nozzle (4) arranged in alignment with the cylinder axis and in which the fuel and the compressed air form a fuel-air mixture, wherein the combustion chamber (17) includes a toroid-like space (6) disposed in the region of the piston's perimeter and also a trough (8) disposed in the cylinder head (3), and wherein the combustion of the fuel-air mixture takes place in stages, characterized in that the entire quantity of fuel is fed - shortly prior to the piston (1) reaching its top dead-centre during the ignition lag - into the trough (8) and forms a rich mixture therein, that, when the piston (1) has reached a position in the region of its top dead-centre, the only link between the trough (8) and the toroid-like space (6) is the one provided by the smallest essentially required piston clearance (11), that the fuel-air mixture is ignited during the first stage at a predeterminable ignition point in the trough (8) so that a flame front moves during the second stage through the rich mixture which, as a result thereof, expands and intensifies a radially outwardly directed squeezed stream from the trough (8), that the partly burnt mixture reaches during the third stage the toroid-like space (6) which, due to its particular shape, causes the mixture to be whirled, that combustion with a surplus of oxygen continues in this whirl, and in that the combustion gas flows during the fourth stage as a squeeze-relieving stream from the whirl into the - by the piston's downward stroke - expanding volume towards the ignition point and thus terminates the combustion.