In-cylinder water injection is a promising approach for reducing NOx and soot emissions from internal combustion engines. It allows one to use a higher compression ratio by reducing engine knock; hence, higher fuel economy and power output can be achieved. However, water injection can also affect engine combustion and emission characteristics if water injection and injector parameters are not properly set. Majority of the previous studies on the water injection are done through experiments. Therefore, subtle aspects of water injection such as in-cylinder interaction of water sprays, spatial distribution of water vapor, and effect on flame propagation are not clearly understood and rarely reported in literature due to experimental limitations. Thus, in the present article, a computational fluid dynamics investigation is carried out to analyze the effects of direct water injection under various injector configurations on water evaporation, combustion, performance, and emission characteristics of a gasoline direct injection engine. The emphasis is given to analyze in-cylinder water spray interactions, flame propagation, water spray droplet size distribution, and water vapor spatial distribution inside the engine cylinder. For the study, the water-to-fuel ratio is varied from 0 to 1. Various water injector configurations using nozzle hole diameters of 0.14, 0.179, and 0.205 mm, along with nozzle holes of 4, 5, 6, and 7, are considered for comparison in addition to the case of no_water. Computational fluid dynamics models used in this study are validated with the available data in literature. From the results, it is found that the emission and performance characteristics of the engine are highly dependent on water evaporation characteristics. Also, the water-to-fuel ratio of 0.6 with 6 number of nozzle holes and the nozzle diameter of 0.14 mm results in the highest indicated mean effective pressure and the lowest NOx, soot, and CO emissions compared to other cases considered. © IMechE 2019.