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Large Eddy Simulations (LES) and tracer-based Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) measurements were performed to study the dynamics of fuel wall-films on the piston top of an optically accessible, four-valve pent-roof GDI research engine for a total of eight operating conditions. Starting from a reference point, the systematic variations include changes in engine speed (600; 1,200 and 2,000 RPM) and load (1000 and 500 mbar intake pressure); concerning the fuel path the Start Of Injection (SOI=360°, 390° and 420° CA after gas exchange TDC) as well as the injection pressure (10, 20 and 35 MPa) were varied. For each condition, 40 experimental images were acquired phase-locked at 10° CA intervals after SOI, showing the wall-film dynamics in terms of spatial extent, thickness and temperature.

Dual-fuel natural gas engines are seen as an attractive solution for simultaneous reduction of pollutant and CO2 emissions while maintaining high engine thermal efficiency. However, engines of this type exhibit a tradeoff between misfire as well as high UHC emissions for small pilot injection amounts and higher emissions of soot and NOX for operation strategies with higher pilot fuel proportion. The aim of this study was to investigate POMDME as an alternative pilot fuel having the potential to mitigate the emissions tradeoff, enabling smokeless combustion due to high degree of oxygenation, and being less prone to misfire due to its higher cetane number. Furthermore, POMDME can be synthetized carbon neutrally. First, characteristics of POMDME ignition in methane/air mixture and the transition into premixed flame propagation were investigated optically in a rapid compression-expansion machine (RCEM) by employing Schlieren and OH* chemiluminescence imaging.

In the present work numerical simulations were carried out investigating the effect of fuel type, nozzle-geometry variations and back-pressure changes on high-pressure gas injections under application-relevant conditions. Methane, hydrogen and nitrogen with a total pressure of 500 bar served as high-pressure fuels and were injected into air at rest at 200 bar and 100 bar. Different nozzle shapes were simulated and the analysis of the results lead to a recommendation for the most advantageous geometry regarding jet penetration, volumetric growth, mixing enhancement and discharge coefficient. Additionally an artificial inlet boundary conditions was tested for the use with real-gas thermodynamics and was shown to be capable of reducing the simulation time significantly.

Despite significant benefits in terms of the ignition enhancement, the strength and timing of the turbulent flame jets subsequently issuing into the main chamber strongly depend on the pre-chamber combustion process and, thus, are sensitive to the specific engine operating conditions it experienced. This poses considerable difficulties in optimizing engine operating conditions as well as controlling engine performance. This paper investigates the influence of engine operating conditions on the pre-chamber combustion event using both experimental and numerical methods. A miniaturized piezo-electric pressure transducer was designed to be placed inside the engine cylinder head to record the pre-chamber inner volume pressure, in addition to conventional pressure indication inside the main chamber.

Cycle-to-cycle variations in internal combustion engines are known to lead to limitations in engine load and efficiency, as well as increases in emissions. Recent research has led to the identification of the source of cyclic variations of pressure, soot and NO emissions in direct injection common rail diesel engines, when employing a single block injection and operating under long ignition delay conditions. The variations in peak pressure arise from changes in the diffusion combustion rate, caused by randomly occurring in-cylinder pressure fluctuations. These fluctuations result from the excitation of the first radial mode of vibration of the cylinder gases which arises from the rapid premixed combustion after the long ignition delay period. Cycles with high-intensity fluctuations present faster diffusion combustion, resulting in higher cycle peak pressure, as well as higher measured exhaust NO concentrations.

An existing three-stage ignition delay model which has seen successful application to Primary Reference Fuels (PRFs) has been extended to six surrogate fuels which constitute potential candidates for future Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines. The fuels include petroleum-derived and oxygenated components and can be divided into low, intermediate and high cetane number groups. A new methodology to obtain the model parameters is presented which relies jointly on simulation and experimental data: in a first step, constant volume adiabatic reactor simulations using chemical kinetic mechanisms are performed to generate ignition delays for a very wide range of conditions, namely variations in equivalence ratio, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR), pressure and temperature.

Numerical simulations of a heavy-duty diesel engine fuelled with n-heptane have been performed with the conditional moment closure (CMC) combustion model and an embedded two-equation soot model. The influence of exhaust gas recirculation on the interaction between post- and main- injection has been investigated. Four different levels of EGR corresponding to intake ambient oxygen volume fractions of 12.6, 15, 18 and 21% have been considered for a constant intake pressure and temperature and unchanged injection configuration. Simulation results have been compared to the experimental data by means of pressure and apparent heat-release rate (AHRR) traces and in-cylinder high-speed imaging of natural soot luminosity and planar laser-induced incandescence (PLII). The simulation was found to reproduce the effect of EGR on AHRR evolutions very well, for both single- and post-injection cases.

Direct injection of natural gas in engines is considered a promising approach toward reducing engine out emissions and fuel consumption. As a consequence, new gas injection strategies have to be developed for easing direct injection of natural gas and its mixing processes with the surrounding air. In this study, the behavior of a hollow cone gas jet generated by a piezoelectric injector was experimentally investigated by means of tracer-based planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF). Pressurized acetone-doped nitrogen was injected in a constant pressure and temperature measurement chamber with optical access. The jet was imaged at different timings after start of injection and its time evolution was analyzed as a function of injection pressure and needle lift.

This paper presents numerical simulations of in-cylinder soot evolution in the optically accessible heavy-duty diesel engine of Sandia Laboratories performed with the conditional moment closure (CMC) model employing a reduced n-heptane chemical mechanism coupled with a two-equation soot model. The influence of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) on in-cylinder processes is studied considering different ambient oxygen volume fractions (8 - 21 percent), while maintaining intake pressure and temperature as well as the injection configuration unchanged. This corresponds to EGR rates between 0 and 65 percent. Simulation results are first compared with experimental data by means of apparent heat release rate (AHRR) and temporally resolved in-cylinder soot mass, where a quantitative comparison is presented. The model was found to fairly well reproduce ignition delays as well as AHRR traces along the EGR variation with a slight underestimation of the diffusion burn portion.

Large eddy simulations (LES) of a port-injected 4-valve spark ignited (SI) engine have been carried out with the emphasis on the combustion process. The considered operating point is close to full load at 3,500 RPM and exhibits considerable cyclic variation in terms of the in-cylinder pressure traces, which can be related to fluctuations in the combustion process. In order to characterize these fluctuations, a statistically relevant number of subsequent cycles, namely up to 40, have been computed in the multi-cycle analysis. In contrast to other LES studies of SI engines, here the G-equation (a level set approach) has been adopted to model the premixed combustion in the framework of the STAR-CD/es-ICE flow field solver. Tuning parameters are identified and their impact on the result is addressed.

The heat release of the low temperature reactions (LTR or cool-flame) under Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion has been quantified for five candidate fuels in an optically accessible Rapid Compression Expansion Machine (RCEM). Two technical fuels (Naphthas) and three primary reference fuels (PRF), (n-heptane, PRF25 and PRF50) were examined. The Cetane Numbers (CN) of the fuels range from 35 to 56. Variation of the operating parameters has been performed, in regard to initial charge temperature of 383, 408, and 433K, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) rate of 0%, 25%, and 50%, and equivalence ratio of 0.29, 0.38, 0.4, 0.53, 0.57, and 0.8. Pressure indication measurements, OH-chemiluminescence imaging, and passive spectroscopy were simultaneously implemented. In our previous work, an empirical, three-stage, Arrhenius-type ignition delay model, parameterized on shock tube data, was found to be applicable also in a transient, engine-relevant environment.

An optically accessible Rapid Compression Expansion Machine (RCEM) has been used to investigate the homogeneous auto-ignition of five candidate fuels for Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion. Two technical fuels (Naphthas) and three primary reference fuels (PRF), (n-heptane, PRF25 and PRF50) were examined. The Cetane Numbers (CN) of the fuels range from 35 to 56. The PRF25 and PRF50 were selected in order to approximately match the CN of the two Naphthas. Variation of the operating parameters has been performed, in regard to initial charge temperature of 383, 408, and 433K, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) rate of 0%, 25%, and 50%, and equivalence ratio of 0.29, 0.38, 0.4, 0.53, 0.57, and 0.8. Pressure indication measurements, OH-chemiluminescence imaging, and passive spectroscopy were simultaneously implemented.

Future engine emission legislation regulates soot from Diesel engines strictly and requires improvements in engine calibration, fast response sensor equipment and exhaust gas aftertreatment systems. The in-cylinder phenomena of soot formation and oxidation can be analysed using a pyrometer with optical access to the combustion chamber. The pyrometer collects the radiation of soot particles during diffusion combustion, and allows the calculation of soot temperature and a proportional value for the in-cylinder soot density (KL). A four-cylinder heavy-duty Diesel engine was equipped in all cylinders with prototype pyrometers and state of the art pressure transducers. The cylinder specific data was recorded crank angle-resolved for a set of steady-state and transient operating conditions, as well as exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) addition and over a wide range of soot emissions.

The combustion of gaseous fuels like methane in internal combustion engines is an interesting alternative to the conventional gasoline and diesel fuels. Reasons are the availability of the resource and the significant advantage in terms of CO2 emissions due to the beneficial C/H ratio. One difficulty of gaseous fuels is the preparation of the gas/air mixtures for all operation points, since the volumetric energy density of the fuel is lower compared to conventional liquid fuels. Low-pressure port-injected systems suffer from substantially reduced volumetric efficiencies. Direct injection systems avoid such losses; in order to deliver enough fuel into the cylinder, high pressures are however needed for the gas injection which forces the fuel to enter the cylinder at supersonic speed followed by a Mach disk. The detailed modeling of these physical effects is very challenging, since the fluid velocities and pressure and velocity gradients at the Mach disc are very high.

Compact and computationally efficient reaction models capable of accurately predicting ignition delay and heat release rates are a prerequisite for the development of strategies to control and optimize HCCI engines. In particular for full boiling range fuels exhibiting two-stage ignition a tremendous demand exists in the engine development community. To this end, in a previous investigation, a global reaction mechanism was developed and fitted to data from shock tube experiments for n-heptane and five full boiling range fuels. By means of a genetic algorithm, for each of these fuels, a set of reaction rate parameters (consisting of pre-exponential factors, activation energies and concentration exponents) has been defined, without any change to the model form.

The NO reduction in an ammonia SCR converter has been simulated by a 1D+1D model for a single representative channel to parametrically study the characteristics of the system under typical operating conditions. An appropriate model has been selected interpreting the chemical behavior of the system and the parameters are calibrated based on a comprehensive set of experiments with an Fe-Zeolite washcoated monolith for different feed concentrations, temperatures and flow rates. Physical and chemical properties are determined as well as kinetics and rate parameters and the model has been verified by experimental data at different operating conditions. Three different mechanisms for the surface kinetics to model NO reduction have been assessed and the results have been compared in the cases of steady DeNO performance and transient response of the system. Ammonia inhibition is considered in the model since it has a major effect specifically under transient operating conditions.

Measurements of the soot emissions and engine operating parameters from a diesel engine during transient operation were used to investigate the influence of transient operation on the soot emissions, as well as to validate a realtime mean value soot model (MVSM, [1]) for transient operation. To maximize the temporal resolution of the soot emission and engine parameter measurements (in particular EGR), fast instruments were used and their dynamic responses characterized and corrected. During tip-in transients, an increase in the soot emissions was observed due to a short term oxygen deficit compared to steady-state operation. No significant difference was seen between steady-state and transient operation for acceleration transients. When the MVSM was provided with inputs of sufficient temporal resolution, it was capable of reproducing the qualitative and, in part, quantitative soot emission trends.

Addition of hydrogen-rich gas to gasoline in internal combustion engines is gaining increasing interest, as it seems suitable to reach near-zero emission combustion, able to easily meet future stringent regulations. Bottled gas was used to simulate the output of an on-board reformer (21%H2, 24%CO, 55%N2). Measurements were carried out on a 4-stroke, 2-cylinder, 0.5-liter engine, with EGR, in order to calculate the heat release rate through a detailed two-zone model. A quasi-dimensional model of the flame was developed: it consists of a geometrical estimate of the flame surface, which is then coupled with the heat release rate. The turbulent flame speed can then be inferred. The model was then applied to blends of gasoline with hydrogen-rich gas, showing the effect on the flame speed and transition from laminar to turbulent combustion.

The addition of hydrogen-rich gas to gasoline in an Internal Combustion Engine seems to be particularly suitable to arrive at a near-zero emission Otto engine, which would be able to easily meet the most stringent regulations. In order to simulate the output of an on-board reformer that partially oxidizes gasoline, providing the hydrogen-rich gas, a bottled gas has been used. Detailed results of our measurements are here shown, such as fuel consumption, engine efficiency, exhaust emissions, analysis of the heat release rates and combustion duration, for both pure gasoline and blends with reformer gas. Additionally simulations have been performed to better understand the engine behaviour and NOx formation.

In this paper we investigate the effect of the introduction of water in the combustion chamber of a DI-diesel engine on combustion characteristics and pollutant formation, by using water-diesel fuel emulsions with three distinct water amounts (13%, 21% and 30%). For the measurements we use a modern 4-cylinder DI-diesel engine with high-pressure common rail fuel injection and EGR system. The engine investigations are conducted at constant speed in different operating points of the engine map with wide variations of injection setting parameters and EGR rate. The main concern refers to the interpretation of both measured values and relevant thermodynamic variables, which are computed with analytical instruments (heat release rate, ignition delay, reciprocal characteristic mixing time, etc). The analysis of the measured and computed data shows clear trends and detailed evaluations on the behavior of water-diesel fuel emulsions in the engine process are possible.