Search Results

High altitude ice crystals have led to instances of ice accretion on stationary compressor surfaces in aeroengines. Rollback, surge and stall events are known to have been instigated through such accretions due to aerodynamic losses related to ice growth, damage and flameout due to ice shedding. The prevalence of these events has led to a change in certification requirements for icing conditions. Development of accurate numerical models allows the costs of certification and testing to be minimised. An in-house computational code was developed at the Oxford Thermofluids Institute to model glaciated and mixed-phase ice crystal icing. The Ice Crystal Icing ComputationaL Environment (ICICLE) code, comprises a frozen 2D flowfield solution, Lagrangian particle tracking, particle heat transfer and phase change and particle surface interaction modelling.

Particulate emissions from gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines continue to be a topic of substantial research interest. Forthcoming regulation both in the USA and the EU will further reduce their emission and drive innovation. Substantial research effort is spent undertaking experiments to understand, characterize, and research particle number (PN) emissions from engines and vehicles. Recent advances in computing power, data storage, and understanding of artificial intelligence algorithms now mean that these are becoming an important tool in engine research. In this work a random forest (RF) algorithm is used for the prediction of PN emissions from a highly boosted (up to 32 bar BMEP) GDI engine. Particle size, concentration, and the accumulation mode geometric standard deviation (GSD) are all predicted by the model. The results are analysed and an in depth study on parameter importance is carried out.

This study looked into the application of active thermal coatings on the surfaces of the combustion chamber as a method of improving the thermal efficiency of internal combustion engines. The active thermal coating was applied to a production aluminium piston and its performance was compared against a reference aluminium piston on a single-cylinder diesel engine. The two pistons were tested over a wide range of speed/load conditions and the effects of EGR and combustion phasing on engine performance and tailpipe emissions were also investigated. A detailed energy balance approach was employed to study the thermal behaviour of the active thermal coating. In general, improvements in indicated specific fuel consumption were not statistically significant for the coated piston over the whole test matrix. Mean exhaust temperature showed a marginal increase with the coated piston of up to 6 °C.

The partial melting of ingested ice crystals can lead to ice accretion in aircraft compressors, but accurately measuring the relatively small fraction of liquid water content in such flows is challenging. Probe-based methods for detecting liquid water content are not suitable for deployment within turbofan engines, and thus alternatives are sought. Recent research has described approaches based on passive microwave sensing. We present here an approach based on active microwave transmission and reflection, employing a vector network analyzer. Utilization of both transmission and reflection provides additional data over and above emission or transmission only, and permits a more controllable environment than passive sensing approaches. The paper specifically addresses the question of whether such an approach is viable within the context of representative icing wind tunnel and engine flow conditions.

High altitude ice crystals can pose a threat to aircraft engine compression and combustion systems. Cases of engine damage, surge and rollback have been recorded in recent years, believed due to ice crystals partially melting and accreting on static surfaces (stators, endwalls and ducting). The increased awareness and understanding of this phenomenon has resulted in the extension of icing certification requirements to include glaciated and mixed phase conditions. Developing semi-empirical models is a cost effective way of enabling certification, and providing simple design rules for next generation engines. A comprehensive ice crystal icing model is presented in this paper, the Ice Crystal Icing ComputationaL Environment (ICICLE). It is modular in design, comprising a baseline code consisting of an axisymmetric or 2D planar flowfield solution, Lagrangian particle tracking, air-particle heat transfer and phase change, and surface interactions (bouncing, fragmentation, sticking).

Chromium-molybdenum alloy steel pistons, which have been used in commercial vehicle applications for some time, have more recently been proposed as a means of improving thermal efficiency in light-duty applications. This work reports a comparison of the effects of geometrically similar aluminium and steel pistons on the combustion characteristics and energy flows on a single cylinder high-speed direct injection diesel research engine tested at two speed / load conditions (1500 rpm / 6.9 bar nIMEP and 2000 rpm/25.8 bar nIMEP) both with and without EGR. The results indicate that changing to an alloy steel piston can provide a significant benefit in brake thermal efficiency at part-load and a reduced (but non-negligible) benefit at the high-load condition and also a reduction in fuel consumption. These benefits were attributed primarily to a reduction in friction losses.

Accurate measurement of exhaust gas temperature in internal combustion engines is essential for a wide variety of monitoring and design purposes. Typically these measurements are made with thermocouples, which may vary in size from 0.05 mm (for fast response applications) to a few millimetres. In this work, the exhaust of a single cylinder diesel engine has been instrumented both with a fast-response probe (comprising of a 50.8 μm, 127 μm and a 254 μm thermocouple) and a standard 3 mm sheathed thermocouple in order to assess the performance of these sensors at two speed/load conditions. The experimental results show that the measured time-average exhaust temperature is dependent on the sensor size, with the smaller thermocouples indicating a lower average temperature for both speed/load conditions. Subject to operating conditions, measurement discrepancies of up to ~80 K have been observed between the different thermocouples used.

Particulate emissions from Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines have been an important topic of recent research interest due to their known environmental effects. This review paper will characterise the influence of different gasoline direct injection fuel systems on particle number (PN) emissions. The findings will be reviewed for engine and vehicle measurements with appropriate driving cycles (especially real driving cycles) to evaluate effects of the fuel injection systems on PN emissions. Recent technological developments alongside the trends of the influence of system pressure and nozzle design on injector tip wetting and deposits will be considered. Besides the engine and fuel system it is known that fuel composition will have an important effect on GDI engine PN emissions. The evaporation qualities of fuels have a substantial influence on mixture preparation, as does the composition of the fuel itself.

A new reflected shock tube facility, the Cold Driven Shock Tube (CDST), has been designed, built and commissioned at the University of Oxford for investigating IC engine fuel spray physics and chemistry. Fuel spray and chemical kinetics research requires its test gas to be at engine representative pressures and temperatures. A reflected shock tube generates these extreme conditions in the test gas for short durations (order milliseconds) by transiently compressing it through a reflected shock process. The CDST has been designed for a nominal test condition of 6 MPa, 900 K slug of air (300 mm long) for a steady test duration of 3 ms. The facility is capable of studying reacting mixtures at higher pressures (up to 150 bar) than other current facilities, whilst still having comparable size (100 mm diameter) and optical access to interrogate the fuel spray with high speed imaging and laser diagnostics.

The analysis of thermal fields in the underhood region is complicated by the complex geometry and the influence of a multitude of different heat sources. This complexity means that running full CFD analyses to predict the thermal field in this region is both computationally expensive and time consuming. A method of predicting the thermal field using linear superposition has been developed in order to analyse the underhood region of a simplified Formula One race car, though the technique is applicable to all vehicles. The use of linear superposition allows accurate predictions of the thermal field within a complex geometry for varying boundary conditions with negligible computational costs once the initial characterisation CFD has been run. A quarter scale, rear end model of a Formula One race car with a simplified internal assembly is considered for analysis, though the technique can also be applied to commercial and industrial vehicles.

Engine optimization requires a good understanding of the in-cylinder heat transfer since it affects the power output, engine efficiency and emissions of the engine. However little is known about the convective heat transfer inside the combustion chamber due to its complexity. To aid the understanding of the heat transfer phenomena in a Spark Ignition (SI) engine, accurate measurements of the local instantaneous heat flux are wanted. An improved understanding will lead to better heat transfer modelling, which will improve the accuracy of current simulation software. In this research, prototype thin film gauge (TFG) heat flux sensors are used to capture the transient in-cylinder heat flux within a Cooperative Fuel Research (CFR) engine. A two-zone temperature model is linked with the heat flux data. This allows the distinction between the convection coefficient in the unburned and burned zone.

To optimize internal combustion engines (ICEs), a good understanding of engine operation is essential. The heat transfer from the working gases to the combustion chamber walls plays an important role, not only for the performance, but also for the emissions of the engine. Besides, thermal management of ICEs is becoming more and more important as an additional tool for optimizing efficiency and emission aftertreatment. In contrast little is known about the convective heat transfer inside the combustion chamber due to the complexity of the working processes. Heat transfer measurements inside the combustion chamber pose a challenge in instrumentation due to the harsh environment. Additionally, the heat loss in a spark ignition (SI) engine shows a high temporal and spatial variation. This poses certain requirements on the heat flux sensor. In this paper we examine the heat transfer in a production SI ICE through the use of Thin Film Gauge (TFG) heat flux sensors.

Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engines are a promising alternative to traditional spark- and compression-ignition engines, due to their high thermal efficiency and near-zero emissions of NOx and soot. Simulation software is an essential tool in the development and optimization of these engines. The heat transfer submodel used in simulation software has a large influence on the accuracy of the simulation results, due to its significant effect on the combustion. In this work several empirical heat transfer models are assessed on their ability to accurately predict the heat flux in a CFR engine during HCCI operation. Models are investigated that are developed for traditional spark- and compression-ignition engines such as those from Annand [1], Woschni [2] and Hohenberg [3] and also models developed for HCCI engines such as those from Chang et al. [4] and Hensel et al. [5].

Models for the convective heat transfer from the combustion gases to the walls inside a spark ignition engine are an important keystone in the simulation tools which are being developed to aid engine optimization. The existing models have, however, been cited to be inaccurate for hydrogen, one of the alternative fuels currently investigated. One possible explanation for this inaccuracy is that the models do not adequately capture the effect of the gas properties. These have never been varied in a wide range because air and ‘classical’ fossil fuels have similar values, but they are significantly different in the case of hydrogen. As a first step towards a fuel independent heat transfer model, we have investigated the effect of the gas properties on the heat flux in a spark ignition engine.

In-cylinder spray imaging by Mie scattering has been taken with frame rates up to 27,000 fps, along with high speed video photography of chemiluminescence and soot thermal radiation. Spectroscopic measurements have confirmed the presence of OH*, CH* and C2* emissions lines, and their magnitude relative compared to soot radiation. Filtering for CH* has been used with both the high speed video and a Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT). The PMT signals have been found to correlate with the rate of heat release derived from in-cylinder pressure measurements. A high power photographic strobe has been used to illuminate the fuel spray. Images show that the fuel spray can strike the ground strap of the spark plug, break up, and a fuel cloud then drifts over and under the strap through the spark plug gap. Tests have conducted at two different spark plug orientations using a single spark strategy.

Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence has been widely accepted and applied to measurements of fuel concentration distributions in IC engines. The need for such measurements has increased with the introduction of Direct Injection (DI) gasoline engines, where it is critical to understand the influence of mixture inhomogeneity on ignition and subsequent combustion, and in particular the implications for cyclic variability. The apparent simplicity of PLIF has led to misunderstanding of the technique when applied to quantitative measurements of fuel distributions. This paper presents a series of engineering methods for optimizing, calibrating and referencing, which together demonstrate a quantitative measure of fuel concentration with an absolute accuracy of 10%. PLIF is widely used with single component fuels as carriers for the fluorescent tracers.

The burn rate and the instantaneous in-cylinder heat transfer have been studied experimentally in a spray-guided direct-injection spark-ignition engine with three different fuels: gasoline, iso-octane and toluene. The effects of the ignition timing, air fuel ratio, fuel injection timing and injection strategy (direct injection or port injection) on the burn rate and the in-cylinder heat transfer have been experimentally investigated at a standard mapping point (1500 rpm and 0.521 bar MAP) with the three different fuels. The burn rate analysis was deduced from the in-cylinder pressure measurement. A two-dimensional heat conduction model of the thermocouple was used to calculate the heat flux from the measured surface temperature. An engine thermodynamic simulation code was used to predict the gas-to-wall heat transfer.

This paper has two parts. The first compares the measured burned gas temperature using Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) with the predictions of a multiple zone computer simulation of combustion. The second part describes a system that is capable of determining the heat flux into the combustion chamber by means of measuring the chamber surface temperature. It is shown that the multi-zone computer simulation can accurately predict the burned gas temperature once the fuel burn rate has been analyzed and the model tuned correctly. The effect of different fuels (methane and iso-octane) on the burned gas temperature is reported. A high burn rate or more advanced ignition timing gave a lower burned gas temperature towards the end of the engine cycle. The surface heat flux was deduced from measurements of the surface temperature by using a finite difference method.