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In this study, the authors analyze the concentration distribution of an evaporative spray mixture with LIEF (Laser induced exciplex fluorescence) method, which is a type of optical measurement. LIEF method is one of the optical measurements for obtaining the spray concentration distribution for separating vapor/liquid phases based on the fluorescence characteristics. In this paper, a quantitative concentration distribution analysis method for wall impingement spray in heterogeneous temperature field has been proposed. Then, a series of experiments were performed in varying injection pressure and ambient density. As a result, a two-dimensional concentration distribution was obtained for the free spray and wall impingement spray.

In recent years, internal combustion engine using hydrogen gas, has attracted attention as one solution to the problem of global warming. Hydrogen gas has excellent combustion characteristics such as wide limits of inflammability and fast burning velocity because of high diffusion rate. Therefore, it has been made to obtain stable ignition and combustion by adding hydrogen with lean mixture in spark ignition engines using hydrocarbon fuels and to be attempted efficient operation by engine researchers. The purpose of this study is to reduce cooling loss in a gas engine using hydrogen gas and hydrogen Mixer system (Mixer) engine was remodeled to hydrogen Port Injection (PI) system engine. In this report, the heterogeneity of hydrogen mixture is clarified by comparing the combustion characteristics of the Mixer and the PI, and the effect of the difference in hydrogen supply systems on cooling loss is system. Ignition delay of the PI system is shorter than that of the Mixer.

We have proposed the application of EGR gas dissolved fuel which might improve spray atomization through effervescent atomization instead of high injection pressure. In this paper, the purpose is to evaluate the influence of the application of CO2 gas dissolved fuel on the combustion characteristics and emissions inside the single cylinder, direct injection diesel engine. As a result, by use of the fuel, smoke was reduced by about 50 to 70%. The amount of NOx was reduced at IMEP=0.3 MPa, but it was increased at IMEP=0.9 MPa.

The CO2 gas dissolved fuel for the diesel combustion is effective to reduce the NOx emissions to achieve the internal EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) effect by fuel. This method has supplied EGR gas to the fuel side instead of supply EGR gas to the intake gas side. The fuel has followed specific characteristics for the diesel combustion. When the fuel is injected into the chamber in low pressure, this CO2 gas is separated from the fuel spray. The distribution characteristics of the spray are improved and the improvement of the thermal efficiency by reduction heat loss in the combustion chamber wall, and reduce soot emissions by the lean combustion is expected. Furthermore, this CO2 gas decreases the flame temperature. Further, it is anticipated to reduce NOx emissions by the spray internal EGR effect.

The purpose of this work was to gain a fundamental understanding of which fuel property parameters are responsible for particulate emission characteristics, associated with key intermediate behavior in the engine cylinder such as the fuel film and insufficient mixing. Accordingly, engine tests were carried out using various fuels having different volatility and chemical compositions under different coolant temperature conditions. In addition, a fundamental spray and film visualization analysis was also conducted using a constant volume vessel, assuming the engine test conditions. As for the physical effects, the test results showed that a low volatility fuel displayed high particulate number (PN) emissions when the injection timing was advanced. The fundamental test clearly showed that the amount of fuel film on the impingement plate increased under such operating conditions with a low volatility fuel.

The fuel adhesion to the surfaces of the intake port, cylinder wall and piston head is one of the common phenomena in turbocharged gasoline injection engine. It causes super-knock, unburned HC and oil dilution. In this study, the fuel thickness and amount of adhering fuel to the oil film on the flat plate are measured by laser induced fluorescence (LIF) method and high-speed camera. As a result, they can be evaluated quantitatively. An influence of the oil film on evaporation of the fuel is also clarified.

Fuel design approach has been proposed as the control technique of spray and combustion processes in diesel engine to improve thermal efficiency and reduce exhaust emissions. In order to kwow if this approach is capable of controlling spray flame structure and interaction between the flame and a combustion chamber wall, the present study investigated ignition and flame characteristics of dual-component fuels, while varying mixing fraction, fuel temperature and ambient conditions. Those characteristics were evaluated through chemiluminescence photography and luminous flame photography. OH radical images and visible luminous flame images were analyzed to reveal flame shape aspect ratio and its fractal dimension.

In a direct injection gasoline engine, the impingement of injected fuel on the oil film, i.e. cylinder liner gives rise to various problems such as abnormal combustion, oil dilution and particulate matter emission. Therefore, in order to solve these problems, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the impingement behavior of the fuel spray onto the oil film. However, there is little information on the impingement behavior of the fuel droplet onto the oil film, whereas many investigations on the impingement behavior of the fuel droplet onto the fuel film are reported. In this study, fundamental investigations were performed for the purpose of clarifying the impingement behavior of the fuel spray onto the oil film. A single fuel droplet mixed with fluorescence dye was dripped on the oil film. To separately measure the fuel and the oil after impingement, simultaneous Mie scattering and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) methods were performed.

It is very much necessary for researchers and engineers whose work is the field of combustion in a CI engine to find the information of droplets in a diesel spray. The information is strongly required to construct the model of spray built in the numerical code for its simulation and to be used for the verification of the accuracy of the calculation. This paper describes the photographing system with high spatial resolution, the distribution of droplet size and the vortex scale caused by the droplets motion by means of this system.

Some automakers have been studying variable compression ratio (VCR) technology as one possible way of improving fuel economy. In previous studies, we have developed a VCR mechanism of a unique multiple-link configuration that achieves a piston stroke characterized by semi-sinusoidal oscillation and lower piston acceleration at top dead center than on conventional mechanisms. By controlling compression ratio with this multiple-link VCR mechanism so that it optimally matches any operating condition, the mechanism has demonstrated that both lower fuel consumption and higher output power are simultaneously possible. However, it has also been observed that fuel consumption does not reduce further once the compression ratio reached a certain level. This study focused on the fact that the piston-stroke characteristic obtained with the multiple-link mechanism is suitable to a longer stroke.

Instantaneous and statistical spray structures of diesel sprays are examined with numerical simulation and experiment. KIVALES, which is LES version of KIVA code, is used as the computational code. Injection velocity profiles measured by momentum method are employed for the initial condition of the calculation. In the experiment, shadowgraph photography is performed to measure macroscopic spray structure. LES approach predicts the instantaneous structure, which are the heterogeneity and intermittency in the periphery of the spray and the cyclic variability of each injection event. Moreover, LES can predict both the instantaneous and statistical spray structures.

It is thought that the synthetic gas, including hydrogen and carbon monoxide, has a potential to be an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines, because a heating value of the synthetic gas is higher than one of hydrogen or natural gas. A purpose of this study is to acquire stable auto-ignition and combustion of the synthetic gas which is supposed to be applied into a direct-injection compression ignition engine. In this study, the effects of ambient gas temperatures and oxygen concentrations on auto-ignition characteristics of the synthetic gas with changing percentage of hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the synthetic gas. An electronically-controlled, hydraulically-actuated gas injector was used to control a precise injection timing and period of gaseous fuels, and the experiments were conducted in an optically accessible, constant-volume combustion chamber under simulated quiescent diesel engine conditions.

It is very significant to take the intermediate products in diesel combustion for understanding the generation of exhaust emissions like SOF, dry soot and so on. The products generated in a constant volume combustion chamber were sampled by pricking a sheet of polyester film installed in the chamber to freeze the chemical reaction. The gas was analyzed by a gas chromatography. The fuel used was n-heptane. It is able to explain the generation of exhaust emissions by the experimental results. The other objective is to simulate the intermediate products. It is capable of explaining the relation between the simulated and experimental results.

Flash-boiling occurs when a fuel is injected to a combustion chamber where the ambient pressure is lower than the saturation pressure of the fuel. It has been known that flashing is a favorable mechanism for atomizing liquid fuels. On the other hand, alternative fuels, such as gaseous fuels and oxygenated fuels, are used to achieve low exhaust emissions in recent years. In general, most of these alternative fuels have high volatility and flash-boiling takes place easily in fuel spray, when they are injected into the combustion chamber of an internal combustion engine under high pressure. In addition, fuel design concept the multicomponent fuel with high and low volatility fuels has been proposed in the previous study in order to control the spray and combustion processes in internal combustion engine. It is found that the multicomponent fuel produce flash-boiling with an increase in the initial fuel temperature.

To improve urban air pollution, stringent emissions regulations for heavy-duty diesel engines have been proposed and will become effective in Japan, the EU, and the United States in a few years. To comply with such future regulations, it is critical to investigate the effects of intake and injection parameters and fuel properties on engine performance, efficiency and emissions characteristics, associated with the use of aftertreatment systems. An experimental study was carried out to identify such effects. In addition, the KIVA-3 code was used to gain insight into cylinder events. The results showed improvements in NOx-Smoke and BSFC trade-offs at high-pressure injection in conjunction with EGR and supercharging.

In an SI engine with direct injection of gasoline (DGI), many small droplets disperse in premixed gas in the cylinder. In a CI engine, diesel spray is injected a cylinder, thus, the situation at the spray periphery is almost the same as that of DGI SI engine. From the standpoint it is useful for understanding the combustion phenomena in both engines to experiment the combined combustion of premixed gas where many small droplets exist. This paper describes this kind of combustion and it seems to be able to apply the results to the simulation of combustion in these engines.

Soot formation process inside the combustion chamber of an DI diesel engine is focused as a phenomenological basic scheme by using several optical diagnostics technique for the improvement of diesel exhaust emission. We have conducted the series of optical measurement research for the clarification of combustion field in an DI diesel engine. Then, this paper is a kind of review by adding the fuel vapor properties and particle image velocimetry (PIV) analysis with focusing the soot formation process. The experiments were carried out in a small sized high-speed DI diesel engine installed with an optical access view. The spray characteristics and its flow field in 2-D field were measured by laser sheet scattering (LIS) method and PIV scheme.

In the internal combustion engines, combustion characteristics relating to HC & NO emission are affected remarkably by the spatial distribution of fuel concentration, temperature and turbulence properties. Especially, No formation process inside the combustion chamber affected by the mixture concentration field should be focused relating to the flame field temperature distribution. As the first step of NO formation study in premixed combustion field, NO formation process in the chamber was examined by considering OH radical property and flame temperature in homogeneous mixture conditions. In this study, in order to clarify NO formation process inside the transient premixed combustion field, relative concentration fields of OH radical and NO and temperature fields were measured by laser induced fluorescence technique(LIF) in the constant volume vessel for methane-air homogeneous mixture with the variation of equivalent ratio of the mixture.

Four kinds of optical measurements were performed to investigate the process of soot formation and oxidation in a direct-injection (DI) diesel engine. Measurements were carried out in an optically accessible DI diesel engine that allows planar laser sheet for combustion diagnostics to enter the combustion chamber either horizontally or along the axis of the fuel jet. The temporal and spatial distribution of soot particles has been investigated using the laser- induced incandescence (LII) and high-speed direct photography. Fuel vapor concentration, which is directly linked to the soot formation process in diesel combustion, has been deduced from the images obtained by the measurements of laser shadowgraph and elastic Mie scattering. According to the experimental results, soot formation begins to occur near the injector nozzle in which a fuel-rich mixture is distributed with a homogeneous condition. LII signal is dominated by the fuel vapor concentration in initial combustion period.

In this study, the purpose is placed in analysis the structure of diesel spray and, especially, making clear the mixture formation process in the evaporative diesel spray. The liquid fuel was injected from a single-hole nozzle (1/d = 1.0 mm/0.2 mm) into a constant-volume vessel possessing phenomena visualization under high pressure and temperature field. As for measurement method, in order to investigate liquid and vapor-phase of injected spray, exciplex fluorescence method was applied in the evaporative fuel spray. And the interested view region in injected spray is the downstream spray. For the minute investigation of spray flow, the liquid and vapor-phase region is taken with 35 mm still camera and CCD camera, respectively.