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The introduction of high-pressure injection systems in D.I. diesel engines has highlighted already known drawbacks of in-cylinder turbulence modeling. In particular, the well known equilibrium hypothesis is far from being valid even during the compression stroke and moreover during the spray injection and combustion processes when turbulence energy transfer between scales occurs under non-equilibrium conditions. The present paper focuses on modeling in-cylinder engine turbulent flows. Turbulence is accounted for by using the RNG k-ε model which is based on equilibrium turbulence assumptions. By using a modified version of the Kiva-3 code, different mathematically based corrections to the computed macro length scale are proposed in order to account for non-equilibrium effects. These new approaches are applied to a simulation of a recent generation HSDI Diesel engine at both full load and partial load conditions representative of the emission EUDC cycle.

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to make gas velocity and turbulence measurements in a motored diesel engine. The experiments were conducted using a single-cylinder version of the Caterpillar 3406 production engine. One of the exhaust valves and the fuel injector port were used to provide optical access to the combustion chamber so that modifications to the engine geometry were minimal, and the results are representative of the actual engine. Measurements of gas velocity were made in a plane in the piston bowl using TiO2 seed particles. The light sheet necessary for PIV was formed by passing the beam from a Nd:YAG laser through the injector port and reflecting the beam off a conical mirror at the center of the piston. PIV data was difficult to obtain due to significant out-of-plane velocities. However, data was acquired at 25° and 15° before top dead center of compression at 750 rev/min.

Predictions of the volume flow rate through an inlet port were produced by four different commercially available CFD programs suitable for use in a steady flow simulation. These predictions were compared with experimental measurements of an inlet port's discharge coefficients. The experiment performed was a typical steady state flow bench test for an inlet port. Volume flow rates were measured at five different valve lifts. The largest valve lift tested (12.24mm) was the maximum value of lift under actual operation. The smallest valve lift was typical of early valve opening. The tests were performed at two different pressure differences across the inlet port and valve at each of the five different valve lifts. All predictions were made using an RNG k-ε turbulence model. Standard wall functions were used to predict wall friction effects and the energy equation was included to account for compressibility effects.

Intake flow simulations were carried out for a prototype DISI engine using the standard k-ε model and the RNG k-ε model. The results were compared with PTV (transient water analog) measurements. The study was focused on low load operations with engine speed at 400 rev/min. Two cases were studied, a single intake case in which one intake port was blocked and a dual intake port case. In the computations, the results show that the standard k-ε model tends to produce higher turbulence levels when turbulence is generated and decays faster when turbulence dissipates. Different turbulence models predict almost the same flow structures. However, the effects of the turbulence model on the predicted tumble and swirl ratios are significant. The TKE distributions at BDC predicted by the two models are also different. The standard k-ε model seems to be more diffusive. Good agreements with PTV data were obtained in the single valve case with the RNG k-ε model.