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Increasingly strict emission regulations and unfavorable economic climate bring severe challenges to the energy conservation of marine low-speed engine. Besides traditional methods, the energy and exergy analysis could acknowledge the losses of fuel from a global perspective to further improve the engine efficiency. Therefore, the energy and exergy analysis is conducted for a marine low-speed engine based on the experimental data. Energy analysis shows the exhaust gas occupies the largest proportion of all fuel energy waste, and it rises with the increment of engine load. The heat transfer consumes the second largest proportion, while it is negatively correlated to engine load. The energy analysis indicates that the most effective way to improve the engine efficiency is to reduce the energy wasted by exhaust gas and heat transfer. However, the latter exergy analysis demonstrates that there are other effective approaches to improve the engine efficiency.

Lean-burn combustion is an effective method for increasing the thermal efficiency of gasoline engines fueled with stoichiometric fuel-air mixture, but leads to an unacceptable level of high cyclic variability before reaching ultra-low nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions emitted from conventional gasoline engines. Multi-point micro-flame ignited (MFI) hybrid combustion was proposed to overcome this problem, and can be can be grouped into double-peak type, ramp type and trapezoid type with very low frequency of appearance. This research investigates the micro-flame ignition stages of double-peak type and ramp type MFI combustion captured by high speed photography. The results show that large flame is formed by the fast propagation of multi-point flame occurring in the central zone of the cylinder in the double-peak type. However, the multiple flame sites occur around the cylinder, and then gradually propagate and form a large flame accelerated by the independent small flame in the ramp type.

Owing to the small size of engines and high injection pressures, it is difficult to avoid the fuel spray impingement on the combustion cylinder wall and piston head in Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI) engine, which is a possible source of hydrocarbons and soot emission. As a result, the droplets size and distribution are significantly important to evaluate the atomization and predict the impingement behaviors, such as stick, spread or splash. However, the microscopic behaviors of droplets are seldom reported due to the high density of small droplets, especially under high pressure conditions. In order to solve this problem, a “spray slicer” was designed to cut the spray before impingement as a sheet one to observe the droplets clearly. The experiment was performed in a constant volume chamber under non-evaporation condition, and a mini-sac injector with single hole was used.

The stripping of cylinder oil at the scavenging ports of low-speed two-stroke marine engines is one of the main sources of floating oil droplets existing in cylinders. The combustion of these oil droplets is one of the major reasons of PM emissions and pre-ignition for dual-fuel engines. In order to investigate the stripping behavior, a prototype model and a test bench were set up to carry out the experiment of cylinder oil stripping behavior and single droplet deformation under different conditions. Meanwhile, a CFD model was established to analyze the actual scavenging flow field, and the verification results were obtained: in the case of excessive lubrication, a considerable amount of cylinder oil remains on the upper surface of the scavenge ports. Such cylinder oil can be blown into the cylinder when the ports are opened.

Although turbulence plays a critical role in engines operated within low temperature combustion (LTC) regime, its interaction with chemistry on auto-ignition at low-ambient-temperature and lean-oxygen conditions remains inadequately understood. Therefore, it is worthwhile taking turbulence-chemistry interaction (TCI) into consideration in LTC engine simulation by employing advanced combustion models. In the present study, large eddy simulation (LES) coupled with linear eddy model (LEM) is performed to simulate the ignition process in n-heptane spray under engine-relevant conditions, known as Spray H. With LES, more details about unsteady spray flame could be captured compared to Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS). With LEM approach, both scalar fluctuation and turbulent mixing on sub-grid level are captured, accounting for the TCI. A skeletal mechanism is adopted in this numerical simulation, including 41 species and 124 reactions.

Syngas is considered to be a promising alternative fuel for the dual-fuel reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) engine to reduce the fuel consumption and emissions. However, the optimal syngas compositions and fuel supply strategies in RCCI combustion are significantly affected by engine configurations, which have not been investigated yet. In this study, by integrating the KIVA-3V code and the non-dominated sort genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II), the optimizations for a 0.477 L single-cylinder engine with shallow/wide piston bowl (Engine A) and a 1.325 L single-cylinder engine with conventional omega-type piston (Engine B) under the syngas/diesel RCCI combustion were performed. The optimized operating parameters include the fuel-supply strategies, syngas compositions, and intake conditions. The results indicate that the fuel-supply strategy is flexible in Engine A due to the shallow/wide piston bowl and the relatively small cylinder bore.

The combustion of cylinder lubricating oil (called as cylinder oil for short) is one of the major sources of PM emissions of low-speed 2-stroke marine diesel engines. For pre-mixed combustion low-speed 2-stroke marine gas engines, the auto-ignition of cylinder oil might result in knock or more hazard abnormal combustion - pre-ignition. Evaporation is a key sub-process of the auto-ignition process of cylinder oil droplets. The evaporation behavior has a profound impact on the auto-ignition and combustion processes of cylinder oil droplets, and a great influence on engine combustion performance and emission characteristics. This paper applied an oil suspending apparatus to investigate the evaporation behavior of cylinder oil droplets and base oil droplets. The effects of ambient temperatures on the evaporation process were measured and analyzed. The results indicate that the evaporation of cylinder oil includes heating, evaporating, pyrolysis, and polymerization.

The new DI diesel engine combustion system named Double-Layer Diverging Combustion System (DLDCS) results in a better Brake Specific Fuel Consumption (BSFC) and lower exhaust emissions. The previous results of numerical simulation and bench test of a single cylinder DI diesel engine showed that more homogeneous fuel distribution, better BSFC and lower emission level were obtained by employing this combustion system. In this research, further numerical simulation are employed to seek the best injection advance angle and investigate the influence of different volume fraction and type lines of upper layer with AVL Fire.

In this work, large eddy simulation (LES) with a K-equation subgrid turbulent kinetic energy model is implemented into the CFD code KIVA3V to study the features of liquid fuel spray and combustion using gradually varying grid in a constant volume chamber. The characteristic time-scale combustion model (CTC) incorporating a turbulent timescale is adopted to predict the combustion process and the SHELL auto-ignition model is used to predict auto-ignition. Combustion is also simulated using Parallel Detailed Chemistry with Lu's n-heptane reduced mechanism (58 species), which has been added into the KIVA3V-LES code. The computational results are compared with Sandia experimental data for non-reacting and reacting cases. As a result, LES can capture the complex structure of the spray and temperature distribution as well as the trend of ignition delay and flame lift-off length variations. Better results are obtained using the Parallel Detailed Chemistry than the CTC model.

A large eddy simulation approach and different breakup models are used to analyze fuel injection and atomization processes in a constant volume combustion bomb. The study is focused on the influences of the subgrid turbulent kinetic energy, especially the source term induced by the fuel spray, on the droplet movement and spray characteristics. Furthermore, the influence of different subgrid scale (SGS) models, including the constant coefficient and dynamic Smagorinsky models, WALE model and the K-equation turbulent energy transport model, on fuel sprays and the turbulent dispersion of droplets are examined. Factors affecting the fuel spray are discussed based on numerical computations for various operating conditions and are compared with experimental data.

Porous medium (PM) engine was a new type engine based on the technique of combustion in porous medium, which can realize homogeneous and stable combustion. In this paper, the combustion and working processes of a specific PM engine was simulated by a two-zone model considering the influences of the mass distribution, heat transfer from the cylinder wall, mass exchange between zones and the heat transfer in porous medium. Influences of operating parameters, e.g. intake temperature and pressure, compression ratio, the excess air ratio on the performance of the PM engine were discussed. It is found out that the porous medium, acting as a heat recuperator, can significantly enhance the evaporation of liquid fuel and preheat the mixture, which promotes the ignition and combustion in the cylinder; and that the initial PM temperature and the compression ratio are critical factors controlling the compression ignition of the mixture.

To understand the working mechanism of the porous medium (PM) internal combustion engine, effects of a porous medium heat regenerator inserted into a combustion chamber on the turbulent flow field and fuel-air mixture formation are studied by numerical simulation. The cylindrical chamber has a constant volume, in which a disk-shaped PM insert is fixed. A simplified model for the random structure of the PM is presented, in which the PM is represented by an assembly of a great number of randomly distributed solid units. To simulate flows in the PM a Brinkman-Forchheimer-extended Darcy's equation is introduced into the numerical solver. A version of two-equation k - ε turbulence model suggested by Antohe and Lage is employed for the turbulence prediction in the PM. A spray model, in which the effects of drop breakup, collision and coalescence are taken into account, is introduced to describe spray/wall interactions.

The starting knock of R4102 D.I. diesel engine are analyzed experimentally based on the transient speed and first and third cylinder indicator diagrams that were taken from updated data acquisition system developed by the authors[1][2]. The influence of the starting knock on the strength of connecting rod, piston and piston ring are also studied. The results show that the influence of the starting knock is larger than the influence of the rated conditions. So the starting knock must be thought in the engine design.

A solution for cylinder wall scuffing is researched. By means of the finite element method, a mathematical model to investigate the temperature field and thermal deformation of the piston is established, which can be used for predicting the cylinder wall scuffing in both the design process of a new diesel engine and the improvement process of the combustion system of an operating diesel engine. The experimental data support the calculated results obtained by using the model. As an application example, the temperature fields and thermal deformations of the piston in the 6E150C diesel engine, which suffers from the cylinder wall scuffing during the period of operation, are analyzed quantitatively by using the mathematical model. After an improved piston with new structure and good cooling system is used in the 6E150C diesel engine, the cylinder wall scuffing no longer occurs.