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While the use of injection strategies utilizing multiple injection events for each engine cycle has become common, there are relatively few studies of the spray structure of split injection events. Optical spray measurements are particularly difficult for split injection events with a short dwell time between injections, since droplets from the first injection will obscure the end of the first and the start of the second injection. The current study uses x-ray radiography to examine the near-nozzle spray structure of split injection events with a short dwell time between the injection events. In addition, x-ray phase-enhanced imaging is used to measure the injector needle lift vs. time for split injections with various dwell timings. Near the minimum dwell time needed to create two separate injection events, the spray behavior is quite sensitive to the dwell time.

Multi-hole DI injectors are being adopted in the advanced downsized DISI ICE powertrain in the automotive industry worldwide because of their robustness and cost-performance. Although their injector design and spray resembles those of DI diesel injectors, there are many basic but distinct differences due to different injection pressure and fuel properties, the sac design, lower L/D aspect ratios in the nozzle hole, closer spray-to-spray angle and hense interactions. This paper used Phase-Contrast X ray techniques to visualize the spray near a 3-hole DI gasoline research model injector exit and compared to the visible light visualization and the internal flow predictions using with multi-dimensional multi-phase CFD simulations. The results show that strong interactions of the vortex strings, cavitation, and turbulence in and near the nozzles make the multi-phase turbulent flow very complicated and dominate the near nozzle breakup mechanisms quite unlike those of diesel injections.

A specially designed generator has been developed to produce poly-disperse droplet streams: A liquid fuel (n-heptane) is metered to an ultrasonic atomizer to produce droplets, which are then carried and accelerated vertically upwards through a nozzle tube by carrier-air flow. Conditions of the streams at the nozzle exit are modulated by varying the length of nozzle tubes, the fuel and carrier-air flow rate. Optical measurement techniques such as direct photography method, schlieren photography and particle image velocimetry (PIV) are employed to characterize its performance characteristics. Effects of the nozzle tube length, the carrier-air and fuel flow rate are investigated to evaluate the performance of the generator. Longer nozzle tubes provide a better flow guidance for the carrier-air, and tend to generate streams with less and smaller droplets due to the transporting losses.

As an efficient hydrogen carrier, ammonia itself is also a promising zero-carbon fuel that is drawing more and more attention. As the combustion of pure ammonia is hard to achieve on SI engines, in this study, spark- ignited micro-gasoline-jet was utilized to ignite the premixed ammonia/air mixture in a constant volume combustible vessel at different premixed ammonia/air excess air coefficient and backpressure (represented by ammonia partial pressure). The flame image was captured by a high-speed camera and the transient pressure change in the vessel was measured by an engine cylinder pressure sensor.