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Increasing rail pressure is the development trend of high-pressure common rail system. When the rail pressure reaches ultrahigh range, fuel leakage of precision coupling components could have a significant impact on system performance. In order to investigate the effects of system and structure parameters on the leakage characteristics of precision coupling components, guide the design of ultrahigh-pressure common rail system, simulations were carried out. Variation of fuel leakage were studied with different structure and system parameters. A three-dimensional model of oil film with eccentric was developed to simulate eccentric between two parts of coupling component. The leakage in control valve component increases with common rail pressure; however, there is no obvious change in leakage of control piston component with rail pressure.

In the present paper, a three-dimensional (3D) internal flow field model of an electronic unit pump (EUP) fuel system oil drainage progress was established, including solenoid valve model, control valve model, high-pressure oil passage, and the plunger cavity model. From the microscopic point of view, the flow characteristics, such as pressure, velocity, and turbulence kinetic energy, are analyzed by using Fluent. This paper uses the combination of one-dimensional (1D) software AMESim and 3D software Fluent to achieve the purpose. The pressure curve of the high-pressure pipe is extracted from the control valve module of the 1D EUP fuel system model, and the velocity curve of the plunger movement is extracted from the plunger pump module. The two sets of curves are dynamically linked to the flow field calculation with a User-Defined Function (UDF), and the flow field change of the single pump fuel system control valve is calculated by Fluent.

As a typical partially premixed flame, a Triple Flame widely exists in internal combustion engines. In this study, experiments were carried out on a propane triple flame. The base propagation characteristics of the attaching flame and the lifted-off flame of a propane triple flame under the condition of coflow were investigated. The base height, base width, and geometric structure of the triple flame were analyzed. The results showed that a higher coflow equivalence ratio is more beneficial in shortening the flame attaching time, and the increase in mainstream velocity interferes with the combustion of the mixture of the upstream flow field. In addition, the entrainment mixing of the fuel and ambient air increases the downstream combustible range, thus increasing the flame base width. For lifted-off flame, an increase in the mainstream equivalence ratio decreases the local radial combustible range of the flame base front position, thus decreasing the base width.

Experiments of the methane/air turbulent premixed combustion under different turbulence intensities are conducted in a constant combustion bomb to investigate the effect of turbulence intensity on the flame structure characteristics. Fourier transform is adopted to extract detailed information of disturbance acting on the flame front of the methane/air turbulent premixed flame. The results indicate that the fluctuation radius presented an increasing trend as a whole with the development of the flame, and the flame stretch rate gradually decreases. With the increase of turbulence intensity, the disturbance of the flame front increases obviously, which makes the structure of the flame front more complex, and the correlation coefficient of the flame at the same radius decreases gradually.

In this paper, pressure fluctuation in a high-pressure common rail system has been investigated through numerical simulation method. By establishing a three-dimensional (3D) model and one-dimensional (1D) simulation model of a high-pressure common rail system validated by the experiment, three essential parameters (needle lift, injection pulse width, and the pressure in common rail) of the common rail system were investigated, and their effects on pressure waves’ characteristics were evaluated with a 1D model. Combined with the results of the 3D simulation, the pressure wave generation, propagation, and fuel flow vector in high-pressure pipelines are studied. The results illustrated how each geometric parameter affects the pressure fluctuations. The pressure waves mainly include the expansion wave generated by the fuel injector spray and the compression wave generated during the fuel supply, and the pressure waves are reflected and superimposed in the process of propagation.

In the air conditioning system, flow-induced noise is very disturbing, including the noise generated in the expansion device and the heat exchangers. In the past few decades, most researches related to flow-induced noise focused on the relationship between the flow regimes near the expansion device and the amplitude of flow-induced noise when the measurements are not synched. In this paper, an experimental approach is used to explore the simultaneous relationships between flow-induced noise characteristics and flow regimes at the inlet of TXV of evaporators used in automobiles. A pumped R134a loop with microphones and transparent visualization sections is used to simulate the vapor compression system. Also, the paper evaluates the severity of flow-induced noise from not only the amplitude of noise but also the frequency of noise with a parameter called psychoacoustic annoyance (PA).

Carbon dioxide (CO2 or R744) is a promising next-generation refrigerant for mobile air-conditioning applications (MAC), which has the advantages of good heating performance in cold climates and environmental-friendly properties. This paper presents a simulation model of an integrated internal heat exchanger (IHX) and accumulator (Acc) using the finite volume method. The results are validated by a group of experimental data collected with different transcritical R744 mobile air-conditioner and heat pump (MHP) systems, and the error was within ±10%. The impacts of refrigerant mass flow rate and operating temperatures on the heat transfer rate of the IHX, improvement on refrigeration capacity and the liquid level in the Acc were studied. Results show that the net benefits of IHX are significant in AC mode, while it helps preventing flooding of the compressor in MHP mode.

Hydrogen fuel is a future energy to solve the problems of energy crisis and environmental pollution. Hydrogen internal combustion engines can combine the advantage of hydrogen without carbon pollution and the main basic structure of the traditional engines. However, the power of the port fuel injection hydrogen engines is smaller than the same volume gasoline engine because the hydrogen occupies the volume of the cylinder and reduces the air mass flow. The turbocharger can increase the power of hydrogen engines but also increase the NOx emission. Hence, a comprehensive controlling strategy to solve the contradiction of the power, BTE and NOx emission is important to improve the performance of hydrogen engines. This paper shows the controlling strategy for a four-stroke, 2.3L hydrogen engine with a turbocharger. The controlling strategy divides the operating conditions of the hydrogen engine into six parts according to the engine speeds and loads.

The spray-wall interaction is a common phenomenon in modern diesel engine that has an important influence on the combustion and performance of the diesel engine. The main focus of this paper is to analyze the macro characteristics of diesel spray impingement with the experimental data and thus support simulation research. This paper studies the surface temperature range from 300°C to 500°C and 20°C is studied as comparison. Injection pressures range from 70 MPa to 110 MPa, and based on the obtained data, several aspects are analyzed. The results show that the distribution of the fuel concentration is quite inhomogeneous after the impingement with a cold wall (20°C) which causes a large number of dense droplets occupying most of the internal space with the concentration more than 60%. While the thin spray only occupies the external space partially. According to the experimental data, increasing the injection pressure contributes to improving the mixing process.

Cavitation plays a significant role in the spray characteristics and the subsequent mixing and combustion process in engines. Cavitation has beneficial effects on the development of the fuel sprays by improving injection velocity and promoting primary break-up. On the other hand, intense pressure peaks induced by the vapor collapse may lead to erosion damage and severe degradation of the injector performance. In the present paper, the transient cavitating flow in the injector-like geometry was investigated using the modified turbulence model and cavitation criterion. A local density correction was used in the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes turbulence model to reduce the turbulent viscosity, which facilitates the cavitation development. The turbulent stress was also considered in the cavitation inception stage. The modified model is capable of reproducing the cavitating flow with an affordable computational cost.

Flash boiling has drawn much attention recently for its ability to enhance spray atomization and vaporization, while providing better fuel/air mixing for gasoline direct injection engines. However, the behaviors of flash boiling spray with multi-component fuels have not been fully discovered. In this study, isooctane, ethanol and the mixtures of the two with three blend ratios were chosen as the fuels. Measurements were performed with constant fuel temperature while ambient pressures were varied to adjust the superheated degree. Macroscopic and microscopic characteristics of flash boiling spray were investigated using Diffused Back-Illumination (DBI) imaging and Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA). Comparisons between flash boiling sprays with single component and binary fuel mixtures were performed to study the effect of fuel properties on spray structure as well as atomization and vaporization processes.

The spray structure and vaporization processes of flash-boiling sprays in a constant volume chamber under a wide range of superheated conditions were experimentally investigated by a high speed imaging technique. The Engine Combustion Network’s Spray G injector was used. Four fuels including gasoline, ethanol, and gasoline-ethanol blends E30 and E50 were investigated. Spray penetration length and spray width were correlated to the degree of the superheated degree, which is the ratio of the ambient pressure to saturated vapor pressure (pa/ps). It is found that parameter pa/ps is critical in describing the spray transformation under flash-boiling conditions. Three distinct stages namely the slight flash-boiling, the transition flash-boiling, and the flare flash-boiling are identified to describe the transformation of spray structures.

Inverted phi (ϕ)-sensitivity is a new approach of NOx reduction in compression-ignition (C.I.) engines. Previously, pure ethanol (E100) was selected as the preliminary test fuel in a single injection compression-ignition engine, and was shown to have good potential for low engine-out NOx emissions under low and medium load conditions due to its inverted ignition sequence. Under high load, however, the near-stoichiometric and non-homogeneous fuel/air distribution removes the effectiveness of the inverted ϕ-sensitivity. Therefore, it is desirable to recover the combustion sequence in the chamber such that the leaner region is burned before the near-stoichiometric region. When the combustion in near-stoichiometric region is inhibited, the temperature rise of that region is hindered and the formation of NOx is suppressed.

There are a few different ways in which biofuels can be sourced, with the most popular coming from agricultural sources. An alternative approach is to utilize biowaste. An estimated 20 million dry tons of volatile organic compounds, or biowaste, is annually deposited in US municipal wastewaters. Most of this biowaste energy content is not recovered and, as a result, the biowaste could be a massive potential source of renewable energy. Biocrude diesel is converted from wet biowaste via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL). Three types of feedstocks (algae, swine manure, and food processing waste) were converted into biocrude oil via HTL. From the previous experiments done in an AVL 5402 single-cylinder diesel engine, it was observed that the presence of 20% of HTL in the blend performed similarly during combustion to pure diesel. By studying these mixtures in a constant volume chamber, these observations could be compared to the results in the diesel engine.

Phase separation circuiting have been proved in the past to effectively improve the performance of mobile air conditioning (MAC) condensers. In the vertical second header of the condenser, liquid separates from vapor mainly due to gravity, leaving vapor-rich flow with higher heat transfer coefficient to go into the upper passes. The condenser effectiveness is improved in this way. However, separation is usually not perfect, expressed through the separation efficiency (ηl and ηv). This paper presents the numerical study of phase separation phenomena in the second header. The Euler-Euler method of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used. Simulations are conducted for two-phase refrigerant R-134a for MAC application. Inlet mass flow rate is simulated at values of 16 g∙s-1, 20 g∙s-1, and 30 g∙s-1 for 21 inlet microchannel tubes, which is the same 1st-pass tube number as of a real separation condenser. Corresponding mass fluxes are 166 kg∙m-2∙s-1, 207 kg∙m-2∙s-1, and 311 kg∙m-2∙s-1.

With market share of electric vehicles continue to grow, there is an increasing demand of mobile heat pump for cabin climate control, as it has much higher energy efficiency when compared to electric heating and helps to cut drive range reduction. One big challenge of heat pump systems is that their heating capacities drop significantly when operating at very low ambient temperature, especially for those with low pressure refrigerants. This paper presents a way to improve low ambient temperature heating performance by using intermediate vapor bypass with the outdoor heat exchanger, which works as an evaporator in heat pump mode. The experimental results show a 35% increase of heating capacity at −20 °C ambient with the improved system as compared to the baseline, and heating performance factor also slightly increased when the system is working at higher ambient temperature to reach the same heating capacity as the baseline.

The formation of fuel film in the combustion cylinder affects the mixing process of the air and the fuel, and the process of the combustion propagation in engines. Some models of film evaporation have been developed to predict the evaporation behavior of the film, but rarely experimental results have been produced, especially when the temperature is high. In this study, the evaporation behavior of the film of different species of oil and their blends at different temperature are observed. The 45 μL films of isooctane, 1-propanol, 1-butanol, 1-pentanol, and their blends were placed on a quartz glass substrate in the closed temperature-controlled chamber. The shape change of the film during evaporation was monitored by a high-speed camera through the window of the chamber. First, the binary blends film of isooctane and one of the other three oils were evaporated at 30 °C, 50 °C, 70 °C and 90 °C.

Fuel spray impingement is a common phenomenon during the combustion processes of a DI diesel engine. When liquid droplets impinge on the hot surface of a combustion chamber, a complex heat transfer and mechanical interaction occur between the droplets and combustion chamber. This probably changes the surface topography and microstructure of the impact position. Based on the experimental method, the fuel spray phenomenon and conditions of a surface pit caused by droplet impingement were investigated. The experimental results indicate that the surface pit is formed under specific conditions, i.e., a specific droplet diameter and surface temperature. Scanning electron microscopy of the pit area shows that the microstructure of the pit changed from an original dense and smooth surface to a loose structure. The microstructure of the pit did not show a molten state. The concentration of metal and nonmetallic elements in the pit area changed significantly.

Bio-butanol has been widely investigated as a promising alternative fuel. However, the main issues preventing the industrial-scale production of butanol is its relatively low production efficiency and high cost of production. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE), the intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, has attracted a lot of interest as an alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuels, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for individual component during fermentation. If ABE could be directly used for clean combustion, the separation costs would be eliminated which save an enormous amount of time and money in the production chain of bio-butanol.

Bio-butanol has been considered as a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engines due to its advantageous physicochemical properties. However, the further development of bio-butanol is inhibited by its high recovery cost and low production efficiency. Hence, the goal of this study is to evaluate two upstream products from different fermentation processes of bio-butanol, namely acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) and isopropanol-butanol-ethanol (IBE), as alternative fuels for diesel. The experimental comparison is conducted on a single-cylinder and common-rail diesel engine under various main injection timings (MIT) and equivalent engine load (EEL) conditions. The experimental results show that ABE and IBE significantly affect the combustion phasing. The start of combustion (SOC) is retarded when ABE and IBE are mixed with diesel. Furthermore, the ABE/IBE-diesel blends are more sensitive to the changes in MIT compared with that of pure diesel.