Mechanism of Improving Fuel Efficiency by Miller Cycle and Its Future Prospect

We have introduced a supercharged Miller Cycle gasoline engine into the market in 1993 as an answer to the requirement of reduction in CO₂ emission of vehicles. Improvement in the fuel economy of a supercharged Miller Cycle engine is achieved by the reduction of friction loss due to a smaller displacement.

The biggest problem of a conventional supercharged engine is knocking. In order to avoid the knocking, lower compression ratio, which accompanies lower expansion ratio, has been adopted by the conventonal engines and achieved insufficient fuel economy improvement. The Miller Cycle obtains superior anti-knocking performance as well as lowering compression ratio, while keeping the high expansion ratio. The decreased friction loss by the smaller displacement has completely lead to the improvement of fuel economy.

The supercharged Miller Cycle engine is the most practical system to make the brake thermal efficiency of gasoline engine close to that of a D I diesel engine, which seems to be an ultimate limit of improving the gasoline engine.