Fuel economy can be significantly improved in a gasoline direct-injection (GDI) engine owing to the stratified mixture formation strategy which guarantees stable combustion under ultra-lean air–fuel mixture conditions. In the GDI engine, it is widely accepted that the spray-guided direct-injection system, which is characterized by a close configuration between the centrally mounted injector and the spark plug, is regarded as a promising technology among the efforts to realize stratified lean combustion. With this configuration, the split injection can be an effective fuel injection scheme because of its potential to modulate the spray characteristics as well as to create a combustible mixture in the proximity of the spark plug. In this study, the split-injection strategy was assessed as a way to achieve ultra-lean operation in a GDI engine and the resulting lean-combustion characteristics were investigated in terms of the engine performance and emissions. The engine was tested at constant operating conditions (an engine speed of 3000 r/min and an indicated mean effective pressure of 0.4 MPa) with a change in the fuel injection pressure ranging from 10 MPa to 20 MPa. The excess air ratio λ varied from stoichiometry to the lean flammability limit, which turned out to be extended in the GDI approach. The engine test results show that the split injection of fuel allowed the formation of an adequately stratified mixture in lean-combustion conditions, and thus stable combustion was guaranteed. These results indicate that an excess air ratio was one of the important factors affecting the thermal efficiency and nitrogen oxide (NO x) emissions and was significantly extended to λ = 2.0 by the split-injection scheme. In addition, several fuel injection parameters such as the injection quantity, the split ratio, and the number of splits were examined with an emphasis on their impact on the fuel economy and emissions. The results demonstrate that there exists a trade-off between the NO x reduction and the efficiency, and therefore it is required to choose an appropriate injection strategy depending on the engine operating conditions in order to satisfy emission regulations.

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