Internal combustion engine

An internal combustion engine having a combustion chamber in which a swirl or swirling flow about the center axis of its cylinder is generated, comprising:

• a fuel injection valve having a plurality of injection ports and injecting fuel in directions from the center axis of the cylinder toward the wall of the cylinder;
• an ignition plug whose position relative to said fuel injection valve is set in such a way that fuel spray injected through said fuel injection valve passes through an ignition-capable region and the ignition plug can ignite the fuel spray directly;
• a controller configured to perform pre-injection, which is fuel injection performed through said fuel injection valve during the compression stroke, ignite pre-spray, which is fuel spray formed by the pre-injection, by said ignition plug, and thereafter perform main injection, which is fuel injection through said fuel injection valve performed at such a predetermined injection start time before the top dead center of the compression stroke that enables combustion to be started by flame of pre-injected fuel, thereby causing at least a portion of main-injected fuel to be burned by diffusion combustion,
• wherein said fuel injection valve has a plurality of injection ports provided in such a way that the quantity of said main-injected fuel injected to a predetermined region that is defined by a predetermined angle equal to or smaller than 90 degrees about the fuel injection valve from the location of the ignition plug in the direction of rotation of the swirl is smaller than the quantity of said main-injected fuel injected to a region that is located adjacent to or apart from said predetermined region in the direction of rotation of the swirl, does not include the predetermined region, and is defined by an angle equal to said predetermined angle to have the same size as said predetermined region.