This paper investigates, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, the knock resistance improvements that can be obtained in a turbo-charged GDI engine with water injection. In a first step, water and gasoline injector models are validated comparing the results with experimental data from constant volume chamber tests. Then, multi-cycle simulations are performed using the G-equation turbulent combustion model focusing on spray evolution and wall film dynamics. The main intent is analyzing the effectiveness of different water injection timings and injection pressures in a port water injection (PWI) installation. Combustion rates are validated against experimental engine data, with and without water injection. Afterwards, in order to predict autoignition behavior with different spark advance (SA) timings, the extended coherent flamelet model (ECFM) combined with a tabulated kinetic ignition (TKI) dataset is used. End-gas autoignition delays are calculated using a reduced mechanism for toluene primary reference fuel (TPRF), which revealed essential for capturing actual gasoline ignition characteristics. Results indicate that the water atomization quality, i.e., injection pressure, is significant in a PWI installation allowing a reduction of the water wall film formation in the ports. Water injection timing needs also to be carefully chosen for optimized performance. As the injected water allows the SA to be increased, the overall benefits on indicated mean effective pressure and fuel consumption are quantified under the same knock safety margin, matching adequately well the available measurements.

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