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The medium and heavy-duty powertrain industry trend is to reduce reliance on diesel fuel and is aligned with continued efforts of achieving ultra-low emissions and high brake efficiencies. Compression Ignition (CI) of late cycle Directly Injected (DI) Natural Gas (NG) shows the potential to match diesel performance in terms of brake efficiency and power density, with the benefit of utilizing a lower carbon content fuel. A primary challenge is to achieve stable ignition of directly injected NG over a wide engine speed and load range without the need for a separate ignition source. This project aims to demonstrate the CI of DI NG through experimental studies with a Single Cylinder Research Engine (SCRE), leading to the development of a mono-fueled NG engine with equivalent performance to that of current diesel technology, 25% lower CO2 emissions, and low engine out methane emissions.

A diesel piloted natural gas engine's performance varies depending on operating conditions and has performed best under medium to high loads. It can often equal or better the fuel conversion efficiency of a diesel-only engine in this operating range. This paper presents a study performed on a multi-cylinder Cummins ISB 6.7L diesel engine converted to run stoichiometric natural gas/diesel micro-pilot combustion with a maximum diesel contribution of 10%. This study systematically quantifies and ranks the sensitivity of control factors on combustion and performance while operating at medium loads. The effects of combustion control parameters, including the pilot start of injection, pilot injection pressure, pilot injection quantity, exhaust gas recirculation, and global equivalence ratio, were tested using a design of experiments orthogonal matrix approach.

This paper presents a combined numerical and experimental investigation of the characteristics of spark discharge in a spark-ignition engine. The main objective of this work is to gain insights into the spark discharge process and early flame kernel development. Experiments were conducted in an inert medium within an optically accessible constant-volume combustion vessel. The cross-flow motion in the vessel was generated using a previously developed shrouded fan. Numerical modeling was based on an existing discharge model in the literature developed by Kim and Anderson. However, this model is applicable to a limited range of gas pressures and flow fields. Therefore, the original model was evaluated and improved to predict the behavior of spark discharge at pressurized conditions up to 45 bar and high-speed cross-flows up to 32 m/s. To accomplish this goal, a parametric study on the spark channel resistance was conducted.

Gasoline compression ignition (GCI) technology shows the potential to obtain high thermal efficiencies while maintaining low soot and NOx emissions in light-duty engine applications. Recent experimental studies and numerical simulations have indicated that high reactivity gasoline-like fuels can further enable the benefits of GCI combustion. However, there is limited empirical data in the literature studying the gasoline compression ignition process at relevant in-cylinder conditions, which are required for further optimizing combustion system designs. This study investigates the temporal and spatial evolution of the compression ignition process of various high reactivity gasoline fuels with research octane numbers (RON) of 71, 74 and 82, as well as a conventional RON 97 E10 gasoline fuel. A ten-hole prototype gasoline injector specifically designed for GCI applications capable of injection pressures up to 450 bar was used.

An experimental study was performed to investigate spark ignition and subsequent spark stretch evolution in an inert environment at high- flow velocities up to 32 m/s across the spark plug gap in a constant-volume optical combustion-vessel at pressures representative of those in an engine. The vessel is capable of generating various in-cylinder thermodynamic conditions representative of light-duty spark ignition engines. The characteristic behavior of the spark was investigated using both a high-speed optical diagnostics and electrical measurement. Charge gas pressures were varied from 15 to 45 bar. Results show that the spark, flowing downstream the spark plug, is subject to short circuits of the spark channel and/or restrikes. The frequency of the restrike increased with increased flow velocity and charge gas pressure and decreased discharge current level.

A constant volume spray and combustion vessel utilizing the pre-burn mixture procedure to generate pressure, temperature, and composition characteristic of near top dead center (TDC) conditions in compression ignition (CI) engines was modified with post pre-burn gas induction to incorporate premixed methane gas prior to diesel injection to simulate processes in dual fuel engines. Two variants of the methane induction system were developed and studied. The first used a high-flow modified direct injection injector and the second utilized auxiliary ports in the vessel that are used for normal intake and exhaust events. Flow, mixing, and limitations of the induction systems were studied. As a result of this study, the high-flow modified direct injection injector was selected because of its controlled actuation and rapid closure. Further studies of the induction system post pre-burn were conducted to determine the temperature limit of the methane auto-ignition.

Combustion systems with advanced injection strategies have been extensively studied, but there still exists a significant fundamental knowledge gap on fuel spray interactions with the piston surface and chamber walls. This paper is meant to provide detailed data on spray-wall impingement physics and support the spray-wall model development. The experimental work of spray-wall impingement with non-vaporizing spray characterization, was carried out in a high pressure-temperature constant-volume combustion vessel. The simultaneous Mie scattering of liquid spray and schlieren of liquid and vapor spray were carried out. Diesel fuel was injected at a pressure of 1500 bar into ambient gas at a density of 22.8 kg/m3 with isothermal conditions (fuel, ambient, and plate temperatures of 423 K). A Lagrangian-Eulerian modeling approach was employed to characterize the spray-gas and spray-wall interactions in the CONVERGETM framework by means of a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) formulation.

High-pressure direct-injection (HPDI) in heavy duty engines allows a natural gas (NG) engine to maintain diesel-like performance while deriving most of its power from NG. A small diesel pilot injection (5-10% of the fuel energy) is used to ignite the direct injected gas jet. The NG burns in a predominantly non-premixed combustion mode which can produce particulate matter (PM). Here we study the effect of injection strategies on emissions from a HPDI engine in two parts. Part-I will investigates the effect of late post injection (LPI) and Part II will study the effect of slightly premixed combustion (SPC) on emission and engine performance. PM reductions and tradeoffs involved with gas late post-injections (LPI) was investigated in a single-cylinder version of a 6-cylinder,15 liter HPDI engine. The post injection contains 10-25% of total fuel mass, and occurs after the main combustion event.

High-pressure direct-injection (HPDI) in heavy duty engines allows a natural gas (NG) engine to maintain diesel-like performance while deriving most of its power from NG. A small diesel pilot injection (5-10% of the fuel energy) is used to ignite the direct injected gas jet. The NG burns in a predominantly mixing-controlled combustion mode which can produce particulate matter (PM). Here we study the effect of injection strategies on emissions from a HPDI engine in two parts. Part-I investigated the effect of late post injection (LPI); the current paper (Part-II) reports on the effects of slightly premixed combustion (SPC) on emission and engine performance. In SPC operation, the diesel injection is delayed, allowing more premixing of the natural gas prior to ignition. PM reductions and tradeoffs involved with gas slightly premixed combustion was investigated in a single-cylinder version of a 6-cylinder, 15 liter HPDI engine.

Optical and laser diagnostics enable in-depth spray characterization in regards to macroscopic spray characteristics and in-situ fuel mixture quality information, which are needed in understanding the spray injection process and for spray model development, validation and calibration. Use of fuel surrogates in spray researches is beneficial in controlling fuel parameters, developing spray and combustion kinetic models, and performing laser diagnostics with known fluorescence characteristics. This study quantifies and evaluates the macroscopic spray characteristics of a single and multi-component surrogate in comparison to a gasoline with 10% ethanol under gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine conditions. In addition, the effect of fuel tracers on spray evolution and vaporization is also investigated. Both diethyl-methyl-amine/fluorobenzene as a laser-induced exciplex (LIEF) fluorescence tracer pair and 3-pentanone as a laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) tracer are examined.

Natural gas offers the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty on-road transportation. One of the challenges facing natural gas as a fuel is that its composition can vary significantly between different fuel suppliers and geographical regions. In this work, the impact of fuel composition variations on a heavy-duty, direct injection of natural gas engine with diesel pilot ignition is evaluated. This combustion process results in a predominantly non-premixed gaseous fuel combustion event; as a result, end-gas autoignition (knock) is not a concern. Changes in the fuel composition do still impact the combustion, both through the changes in the chemical kinetics of the reactions and due to changes in the density of the fuel. Increasing concentrations of heavier hydrocarbons, such as ethane or propane, in the fuel lead to higher fuel densities and hence greater fuel mass being injected for a given injection duration.