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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.

For better understanding of in-cylinder soot formation processes and governing factors of the number of emitted soot particles of Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines, Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) analysis of morphology and nanostructure of the soot particles sampled in the exhaust should provide useful information. However, the number concentration of the soot particles emitted from GDI engines is relatively low, which was impeding reliable morphological analysis of the soot particles based on a sufficient number of sampled particles. Therefore, in the present study, a water-cooled thermophoretic sampler for simple and direct sampling of exhaust soot particles was developed and employed, which enabled to obtain a sufficient number of particle samples from the exhaust with Particulate Number (PN) 105 #/cc level for quantitative morphology analysis.

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.

The premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) combustion in a compression ignition (Cl) engine is one of countermeasures against the very much severe regulation for exhaust gas of engine out. The authors have been proposed to use the fuel mixed with high volatility component and low volatility component to actualize PCCI combustion. This kind of fuel injected forms a fine and lean spray by the flash boiling phenomena which depends on the pressure and the temperature. The role of the former fuel is to decrease in the generation of particulate matters (PM) and that of the latter one is to break out the ignition. Thus, it is very much significant to find the distribution of vapor concentration of both fuels in a spray. This paper describes both distributions in a single diesel spray by use of the technique of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) in a constant volume chamber with high temperature at high pressure as the fundamental research.

LES of non-evaporative diesel spray have been performed to investigate the effects of breakup models of Modified TAB, WAVE and KHRT model on computational results. KIVALES that is LES version of KIVA code was used for base code. In our KIVALES, CIP scheme was incorporated in order to suppress the numerical diffusion. Results showed that the breakup model is significantly affected on the calculated spray shape, because the droplet diameter determined by breakup models affects on the transmittance of the droplet momentum into the ambient gas, the evolution of the vortex structure in the gas phase and the droplet dispersion by the vortex structure.

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.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the concept of gasoline lift-off spray combustion in which the burning velocity is controlled by the rate of mixture supply to the flame zone. With this concept, gasoline fuel is injected under high pressure to promote atomization, evaporation and mixing with the air, thereby quickly forming a homogenous mixture extending to the flame downstream of the spray. As a result, the injected fuel is burned sequentially. In this study, a constant-volume combustion vessel was used to visualize and analyze spray combustion. The experimental results made clear the effects of the initial conditions (e.g., injection pressure and nozzle hole diameter) and the ambient conditions (e.g., temperature and pressure) on the flame lift-off length and soot formation. In addition, the conditions facilitating this combustion concept were examined by conducting combustion simulations with the KIVA-3V code, taking into account the detailed chemical reaction mechanisms.

The particulate matters (PM) containing in the exhaust gas through a CI engine affects strongly the human health. Thus, it is very significant to measure the mechanism of PM itself generation for actualization of a clean CI engine. On the standpoint mentioned above, the authors carried out the experiments of the characteristics of PM generated from a small high speed DI CI engine with a single cylinder. The variables were the equivalence ratio, the injection timing, the EGR rate and the sort of fuel. As a result, the effect of experimental condition on the distribution of PM is clear through experiments.

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.

Three-dimensional large eddy simulation (LES) has been conducted for a diesel spray flame using KIVALES which is LES version of KIVA code. Modified TAB model, velocity interpolation model and rigid sphere model are used to improve the prediction of the fuel-mixture process in the diesel spray. Combustion is simulated using the Eddy-Dissipation model. CIP method was incorporated into the KIVALES in order to suppress the numerical instability on the combustible flow. The formation of soot and NO was simulated using Hiroyasu model and KIVA original model. Three different grid resolutions were used to examine the grid dependency. The result shows that the LES approach with 0.5 mm grid size is able to resolve the instantaneous spray with the intermittency in the spray periphery, the axi-symmetric shape and meandering flow after the end of injection as shown in the experimental results.

A diesel engine operating in premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) mode promises the reduction of engine-out emissions of NOx and particulate matter. A serious issue for PCCI operation with the early injection timing during the compression stroke is the difficulty of controlling the mixture formation process. In this study, a mixed fuel consisting of high volatility fuel and high ignitability one is applied in order to develop a control technique for the mixture preparation. In particular, we focuses on a flash boiling phenomenon of mixed fuel. For pure substance, the quality of flashing spray is dominated by the degree of superheat. In contrast, that of mixed fuel is affected much by low boiling point fuel.

Authors propose the reformulation technique of physical properties of Biodiesel Fuel (BDF) by mixing lower boiling point fuels. In this study, waste cooking oil methyl ester (B100), which have been produced in Kyoto city, is used in behalf of BDF. N-Heptane (C7H16) and n-Dodecane (C12H26) are used as low and medium boiling point fuel. Mixed fuel of BDF with lower boiling point fuels have lighter quality as compared with neat BDF. This result is based on the chemical-thermo dynamical liquid-vapor equilibrium theory. This paper describes fundamental spray and combustion characteristics of mixed fuel of B100 with lower boiling point fuels as well as the reformulation technique. By mixing lower boiling point fuel, lighter quality fuels can be refined. Thus, mixed fuels have higher volatility and lower viscosity. Therefore, vaporization of mixed fuel spray is promoted and liquid phase penetration of mixed fuel shortens as compared with that of neat BDF.

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.

A single cylinder engine has been run with direct-injection premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) operation. The operation is fueled with primary reference fuels for a wide variety of injection timing and equivalence ratio to investigate the effect of charge stratification and octane rating on PCCI combustion. The test results showed that although the change of the injection timing can gain the high combustion efficiency for a wide range of equivalence ratio, the combustion phasing where the high combustion efficiency is accomplished is not varied only by changing the injection timings. Therefore, the only change of injection timings does not improve the thermal efficiency which is influenced by the combustion phasing. On the other hand, at the fixed compression ratio, inlet air temperature and so on, the octane rating is useful in altering the combustion phasing.

The authors have explored the potential of fuel to control spray and its combustion processes in a diesel engine. Fuel has some potential for low emission and high thermal efficiency because its volatility and ignitability are one of the ultimate performing factors of the engines. In present study, the ignition process of mixed fuel spray was investigated in a constant volume combustion vessel and in a rapid compression and expansion machine, The ignition delay based on the diagram of rate of the heat release, the imaging of natural flame emissions and the numerical simulation were carried out to clarify the effect of the physical and chemical properties of mixed fuel on ignition characteristics.

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is applied to non-evaporative and evaporative diesel spray simulations. KIVALES, which is LES version of KIVA code, is used as the LES computational code. Modified TAB model is used as breakup model, and interpolated donor cell differencing scheme is employed to calculate convective terms. To validity LES simulation, LES results using KIVALES are compared with experimental results and simulated results with conventional RANS approach using KIVA3V res.2. The results show that the LES simulation of non-evaporative spray depends on the grid size in comparison with RANS simulation, and good agreement is obtained between experimental results and the LES results with fine grid (720,000 cells). Furthermore, asymmetric non-evaporative spray which has intermittency at the outer edge of sprays is simulated, since instantaneous turbulent flow field can be predicted directly in LES case.

One of the effective ways to cope with the very severe future regulation of soot exhausted through a CI engine is the use of oxygenated fuel. This paper describes the experimental results of the soot generation of six kinds of oxygenated fuel and n-heptane whose cetane number is the almost the same as that of the gas oil by means of time resolved LII (TIRE-LII) and the classical two color method. The experiments were carried out in a constant volume chamber. The main result is that the oxygen content of the fuel is the much significant factor to decrease in the soot.

This paper describes the soot behavior in a diesel flame. The experiments were carried out in a constant volume chamber with quiescent atmosphere. Parameters were the ambient temperature and the oxygen concentration. The integrated image of flame was taken, the natural emission of flame was detected and the KL factor was found by means of classical technique of laser light extinction. The results were discussed by use of the apparent rate of heat release. As a result, the ignition delay and the vortex with large scale generated in a diesel spray affect the soot behavior in a diesel flame.

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.