Patent ID: 7540275

Claim:
An internal combustion engine furnished with an accumulator-type fuel injection apparatus, comprising a fuel pump that receives a drive force from a driveshaft of a main internal combustion engine unit through motive force transmission means and performs an operation to provide a pressurized supply of fuel, a common rail for holding the fuel that has been supplied under pressure from the fuel pump, and a fuel injection valve that injects fuel that has been supplied from the common rail toward a combustion chamber of the main internal combustion engine unit, wherein the driveshaft of the main internal combustion engine unit and the driveshaft of the fuel pump are linked by the motive force transmission means to rotate at the same speed and with the rotation phases of the driveshafts coordinated so that a timing at which a load torque that acts on the driveshaft of the main internal combustion engine unit becomes a local maximum and a timing at which a load torque that acts on the driveshaft of the fuel pump becomes a local minimum substantially coincide with one another, wherein the fuel pump is furnished with a plurality of pressurized supply chambers, each of which performs an operation to provide a pressurized supply of fuel at a different timing, and these pressurized supply chambers are divided into a plurality of groups, each of which is furnished with a pressurized supply amount control mechanism for adjusting the amount of fuel that is supplied under pressure from the pressurized supply chambers to the common rail, and wherein by selectively driving only part of the plurality of pressurized supply amount control mechanisms, fuel is supplied under pressure to the common rail from only the pressurized supply chambers of a specific group or groups, and by doing this, the load torque fluctuation cycle of the fuel pump is made to substantially coincide with the load torque fluctuation cycle of the internal combustion engine, the timing at which the load torque that acts on the driveshaft of the fuel pump becomes a local minimum is made to substantially coincide with the timing at which the load torque that acts on the driveshaft of the main internal combustion engine unit becomes a local maximum, and the timing at which the load torque that acts on the driveshaft of the fuel pump becomes a local maximum is made to substantially coincide with the timing at which the load torque that acts on the driveshaft of the main internal combustion engine unit becomes a local minimum.