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A Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere (CATA) Combustor enables the investigation of stabilization mechanisms in an environment that decouples the turbulent chemical kinetics from the complex recirculating flow. Previous studies on combustion of the low-pressure fuel jets in the Controllable Active Thermo-Atmosphere (CATA) showed non-linear effect of coflow temperature on autoignition delay and the randomness of autoignition sites. In this work, a diesel spray is injected into the CATA with the injection pressure at 20MPa from a single-hole injector and the autoignition and combustion process of the spray is recorded by a high-speed camera video. The multipoint autoignition of diesel spray is observed in the CATA and the subsequent combustion process is analyzed. The results show that autoignition phenomenon plays an important role in the stabilization of the lifted flames of diesel spray under low coflow temperature.

An experimental study is presented on the evaporation of diluted droplet-laden two-phase jet flows within a heated air channel co-flow. In this study, n-heptane is pre-atomized by an ultrasonic nozzle to produce droplet cluster with a median diameter of about15μm, and a continuous cold air flow is applied to carry the fuel droplet cluster to emerge from a nozzle tube, producing a free turbulent jet of droplet stream. The droplet stream is then introduced as a central jet into a square-shaped channel with heated air co-flow for evaporation investigations. With flexibilities of the initial properties of droplet stream and surrounding conditions of channel flow, the axial evolution of droplet size is determined to characterize the evaporation behavior of n-heptane droplet stream under various boundary conditions. The equivalence ratios of droplet streams are varied by changing both the carrier-air flow rate and the fuel flow rate.

Research studies have suggested that changes to the ignition system are required to generate a more robust flame kernel in order to secure the ignition process for the future advanced high efficiency spark-ignition (SI) engines. In a typical inductive ignition system, the spark discharge is initiated by a transient high-power electrical breakdown and sustained by a relatively low-power glow process. The electrical breakdown is characterized as a capacitive discharge process with a small quantity of energy coming mainly from the gap parasitic capacitor. Enhancement of the breakdown is a potential avenue effectively for extending the lean limit of SI engine. In this work, the effect of high-power capacitive spark discharge on the early flame kernel growth of premixed methane-air mixtures is investigated through electrical probing and optical diagnosis.

The present work investigates the efficacy of distributed electrical discharge to increase the ignition volume by means of multipole spark discharge and radio frequency (RF) corona discharge. A range of ignition strategies are implemented to evaluate the efficacy of distributed ignition. The multipole spark igniter design has multiple high-voltage electrodes in close proximity to each other. This distributed spark ignition concept has the ability to generate multiple flame kernels either simultaneously or in a staggered mode. A novel elastic breakdown ignition strategy in responsive distribution (eBIRD) high frequency discharge is also implemented via the multipole igniter. The RF corona discharge is generated through an in-house developed ignition system. A form of distributed ignition is initiated along the streamer filaments.

The spark ignition circuit inside an internal combustion engine system is the source which provides the initiation energy required for triggering combustion in a spark ignition (SI) engine in-cylinder air/fuel mixture. Proper spark phasing and adequate spark energy release in spark ignited combustion would yield significant combustion efficiency improvement and affect the in-cylinder production species composition. In this work a simplified spark ignition circuit model constructed based on circuit theorems is proposed. Measurements on how ignition pressure, secondary circuit series resistance and dwell duration would affect the ignition energy migration are presented. Simulations using the proposed model have also demonstrated similar energy migration trends to measurement results which show the influences caused by different secondary series resistance and dwell durations.