Jaguar Land Rover has announced the creation of two new ‘Centres of Excellence for Engine Combustion Research’ at two leading UK universities. The £1m investment will be shared equally between University College London (UCL) and the University of Oxford to support the development of new research facilities and fund two 5-year study programmes.
Each centre will focus on specific combustion technologies. The work at UCL’s Department of Mechanical Engineering will be dedicated to spark ignition in petrol engines, led by Dr Pavlos Aleiferis. At the University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science, Dr Martin Davy will lead the project on compression ignition in diesel engines.
The primary area of research will be to understand and develop advanced combustion concepts compatible with future fuel advances by investigating new combustion geometries, valvetrain, fuel injection, air management and ignition technologies.
These study programmes have the potential to feed directly into the future development of Jaguar Land Rover’s new Ingenium family of compact, lightweight, high-efficiency diesel and petrol turbocharged engines, which will begin production at the new Engine Manufacturing Centre in Wolverhampton early in 2015.
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