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A comparison of the flame structure for two different fuels, dodecane and oxymethylene dimethyl ether (OMEX), has been performed under condition of Spray A of the Engine Combustion Network (ECN). The experiments were carried out in a constant pressure vessel with wide optical access, at high pressure and temperature and controlled oxygen concentration. The flame structure analysis has been performed by measuring the formaldehyde and OH radical distributions using planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) techniques. To complement the analysis, this information was combined with that obtained with high-speed imaging of OH* chemiluminescence radiation in the UV. Formaldehyde molecules are excited with the 355-nm radiation from the third harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser, whilst OH is excited with a wavelength of 281.00-nm from a dye laser.

Ever decreasing permitted emission levels and the necessity of more efficient engines demand a better understanding of in-cylinder phenomena. In swirl-supported compression ignition (CI) engines, mean in-cylinder flow structures formed during the intake stroke deeply influence mixture preparation prior to combustion, heat transfer and pollutant oxidation all of which could potentially improve engine performance. Therefore, the ability to characterize these mean flow structures is relevant for achieving performance improvements. CI mean flow structure is mainly described by a precessing vortex. The location of the vortex center is key for the characterization of the flow structure. Consequently, this work aims at evaluating algorithms that allow for the location of the vortex center both, in ensemble-averaged velocity fields and in instantaneous velocity fields.

A prototype multi-hole diesel injector operating with n-heptane fuel from a high-pressure common rail system is used in a high-pressure and high-temperature test rig capable of reaching 1100 Kelvin and 150 bar under different oxygen concentrations. A novel optical set-up capable of visualizing the soot cloud evolution in the fuel jet from 30 to 85 millimeters from the nozzle exit with the high-speed color diffused back illumination technique is used as a result of the insertion of a high-pressure window in the injector holder opposite to the frontal window of the vessel. The experiments performed in this work used one wavelength provide information about physical of the soot properties, experimental results variating the operational conditions show the reduction of soot formation with an increase in injection pressure, a reduction in ambient temperature, a reduction in oxygen concentration or a reduction in ambient density.

With ever-demanding emission legislations in Compression Ignition (CI) engines, new premixed combustion strategies have been developed in recent years seeking both, emissions and performance improvements. Since it has been shown that in-cylinder air flow affects the combustion process, and hence the overall engine performance, the study of swirling structures and its interaction with fuel injection are of great interest. In this regard, possible Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE) distribution changes after fuel injection may be a key parameter for achieving performance improvements by reducing in-cylinder heat transfer. Consequently, this paper aims to gain an insight into spray-swirl interaction through the analysis of in-cylinder velocity fields measured by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) when PCCI conditions are proposed. Experiments are carried out in a single cylinder optical Diesel engine with bowl-in-piston geometry.

Visualization of single-hole nozzles into quiescent ambient has been used extensively in the literature to characterize spray mixing and combustion. However in-cylinder flow may have some meaningful impact on the spray evolution. In the present work, visualization of direct diesel injection spray under both non-reacting and reacting operating conditions was conducted in an optically accessible two-stroke engine equipped with a single-hole injector. Two different high-speed imaging techniques, Schlieren and UV-Light Absorption, were applied here to quantify vapor penetration for non-reacting spray. Meanwhile, Mie-scattering was used to measure the liquid length. As for reacting conditions, Schlieren and OH* chemiluminescence were simultaneously applied to obtain the spray tip penetration and flame lift-off length under the same TDC density and temperature. Additionally, PIV was used to characterize in-cylinder flow motion.

In this work, a 5-zone model has been applied to replicate the in-cylinder conditions evolution of a Rapid Compression-Expansion Machine (RCEM) in order to improve the chemical kinetic analyses by obtaining more accurate simulation results. To do so, CFD simulations under motoring conditions have been performed in order to identify the proper number of zones and their relative volume, walls surface and temperature. Furthermore, experiments have been carried out in an RCEM with different Primary Reference Fuels (PRF) blends under homogeneous conditions to obtain a database of ignition delays and in-cylinder pressure and temperature evolution profiles. Such experiments have been replicated in CHEMKIN by imposing the heat losses and volume profiles of the experimental facility using a 0-D 1-zone model. Then, the 5-zone model has been analogously solved and both results have been compared to the experimental ones.

The 4th Workshop of the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) was held September 5-6, 2015 in Kyoto, Japan. This manuscript presents a summary of the progress in experiments and modeling among ECN contributors leading to a better understanding of soot formation under the ECN “Spray A” configuration and some parametric variants. Relevant published and unpublished work from prior ECN workshops is reviewed. Experiments measuring soot particle size and morphology, soot volume fraction (fv), and transient soot mass have been conducted at various international institutions providing target data for improvements to computational models. Multiple modeling contributions using both the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) Equations approach and the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) approach have been submitted. Among these, various chemical mechanisms, soot models, and turbulence-chemistry interaction (TCI) methodologies have been considered.

A radiation-based 2-color method (2C) and light extinction imaging (LEI) have been performed simultaneously to obtain two-dimensional soot distribution information within a diesel spray flame. All the measurements were conducted in an optically accessible two-stroke engine equipped with a single-hole injector. The fuel used here is a blend of 30% Decane and 70% Hexadecane (in mass). According to previous research, operating conditions with three different flame soot amounts were investigated. The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the two soot diagnostics techniques, after proper conversion of soot-related values from both methods. All the KL extinction values are lower than the saturation limit. As expected, both techniques show sensitivity with the parametric variation. The soot amount increases with higher ambient gas temperature and lower injection pressure. However, the LEI technique presents more sensitivity to the soot quantity.

Schlieren/shadowgraphy has been adopted in the combustion research as a standard technique for tip penetration analysis of sprays under diesel-like engine conditions. When dealing with schlieren images of reacting sprays, the combustion process and the subsequent light emission from the soot within the flame have revealed both limitations as well as considerations that deserve further investigation. Seeking for answers to such concerns, the current work reports an experimental study with this imaging technique where, besides spatial filtering at the Fourier plane, both short exposure time and chromatic filtering were performed to improve the resulting schlieren image, as well as the reliability of the subsequent tip penetration measurement. The proposed methodology has reduced uncertainties caused by artificial pixel saturation (blooming).

Soot radiation has an important contribution to the overall heat losses in a combustion chamber of a DI diesel engine. The aim of this study was to develop a soot radiation model coupled to a soot formation/oxidation sub-model, which is also described in the paper. On the one hand, the soot radiation model is based on the available knowledge of the radiation of a soot cloud commonly used to apply the two-color method to diesel sprays. On the other hand, it was tuned and validated with experimental data: the optical thickness, KL, obtained from the laser extinction method, and the radiation intensity at two different wavelengths. Once the model was validated, the overall radiated power was calculated taking into account the radiation absorption caused by the spray itself. This power was compared to the one released by the spray combustion process, and the results were in agreement with other studies available in the literature.

The relationship between ignition, lift-off length and soot formation was investigated for a collection of fuels in an optically-accessible modified 2-stroke engine under a set of typical quasi-steady state Diesel DI conditions. Five fuels including biodiesel blends and Fischer-Tropsch fuels have been selected for their potential to substitute conventional diesel with no major modifications on the engine hardware, and were previously characterized under ambient pressure following ASTM standards. Fuels were injected into a large volume through a single-hole nozzle at three levels of injection pressure, by sweeping ambient temperatures at constant density, and ambient densities at constant temperature. The 8 ms single-shot injections were long enough to reach the stabilization of a free diffusion flame. The OH-chemiluminescence was imaged and lift-off length was measured via image post-processing.