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Two different types of mesh used for diesel combustion with the KIVA-4 code are compared. One is a well established conventional KIVA-3 type polar mesh. The other is a non-polar mesh with uniform size throughout the piston bowl so as to reduce the number of cells and to improve the quality of the cell shapes around the cylinder axis which can contain many fuel droplets that affect prediction accuracy and the computational time. This mesh is specialized for the KIVA-4 code which employs an unstructured mesh. To prevent dramatic changes in spray penetration caused by the difference in cell size between the two types of mesh, a recently developed spray model which reduces mesh dependency of the droplet behavior has been implemented. For the ignition and combustion models, the Shell model and characteristic time combustion (CTC) model are employed.

The focus of the present study was to characterize Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) using a single-fuel approach of gasoline and gasoline mixed with a commercially available cetane improver on a multi-cylinder engine. RCCI was achieved by port-injecting a certification grade 96 research octane gasoline and direct-injecting the same gasoline mixed with various levels of a cetane improver, 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (EHN). The EHN volume percentages investigated in the direct-injected fuel were 10, 5, and 2.5%. The combustion phasing controllability and emissions of the different fueling combinations were characterized at 2300 rpm and 4.2 bar brake mean effective pressure over a variety of parametric investigations including direct injection timing, premixed gasoline percentage, and intake temperature. Comparisons were made to gasoline/diesel RCCI operation on the same engine platform at nominally the same operating condition.

The higher cylinder peak pressure and pressure rise rate of modern diesel and gasoline fueled engines tend to increase combustion noise while customers demand lower noise. The multiple degrees of freedom in engine control and calibration mean there is more scope to influence combustion noise but this must first be measured before it can be balanced with other attributes. An efficient means to realize this is to calculate combustion noise from the in-cylinder pressure measurements that are routinely acquired as part of the engine development process. This publication reviews the techniques required to ensure accurate and precise combustion noise measurements. First, the dynamic range must be maximized by using an analogue to digital converter with sufficient number of bits and selecting an appropriate range in the test equipment.

With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. To seek for an optimized volumetric ratio for ABE-diesel blends, the previous work in our team has experimentally investigated and analyzed the combustion features of ABE-diesel blends with different volumetric ratio (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %) in a constant volume chamber. It was found that an increased amount of acetone would lead to a significant advancement of combustion phasing whereas butanol would compensate the advancing effect. Both spray dynamic and chemistry reaction dynamic are of great importance in explaining the unique combustion characteristic of ABE-diesel blend. In this study, a semi-detailed chemical mechanism is constructed and used to model ABE-diesel spray combustion in a constant volume chamber.

Low-temperature combustion (LTC) strategies have been an active area of research due to their ability to achieve high thermal efficiency while avoiding the formation of NOx and particulate matter. One of the largest challenges with LTC is the relative lack of authority over the heat release rate profile, which, depending on the particular injection strategy, either limits the maximum attainable load, or creates a tradeoff between noise and efficiency at high load conditions. We have shown previously that control over heat release can be dramatically improved through a combination of reactivity stratification in the premixed charge and a diffusion-limited injection that occurs after the conclusion of the low-temperature heat release, in a strategy called direct dual fuel stratification (DDFS).

Diesel particulate filters are designed to reduce the mass emissions of diesel particulate matter and have been proven to be effective in this respect. Not much is known, however, about their effects on other unregulated chemical species. This study utilized source dilution sampling techniques to evaluate the effects of a catalyzed diesel particulate filter on a wide spectrum of chemical emissions from a heavy-duty diesel engine. The species analyzed included both criteria and unregulated compounds such as particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), inorganic ions, trace metallic compounds, elemental and organic carbon (EC and OC), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and other organic compounds. Results showed a significant reduction for the emissions of PM mass, CO, HC, metals, EC, OC, and PAHs.

The effect of the ring pack storage mechanism on the hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from an air-cooled utility engine has been studied using a simplified ring pack model. Tests were performed for a range of engine load, two engine speeds, varied air-fuel ratio and with a fixed ignition timing using a homogeneous, pre-vaporized fuel mixture system. The integrated mass of HC leaving the crevices from the end of combustion (the crank angle that the cumulative burn fraction reached 90%) to exhaust valve closing was taken to represent the potential contribution of the ring pack to the overall HC emissions; post-oxidation in the cylinder will consume some of this mass. Time-resolved exhaust HC concentration measurements were also performed, and the instantaneous exhaust HC mass flow rate was determined using the measured exhaust and cylinder pressure.

A transport equation residual model incorporating refined G-equation and detailed chemical kinetics combustion models has been developed and implemented in the ERC KIVA-3V release2 code for Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engine simulations for better predictions of flame propagation. In the transport equation residual model a fictitious species concept is introduced to account for the residual gases in the cylinder, which have a great effect on the laminar flame speed. The residual gases include CO2, H2O and N2 remaining from the previous engine cycle or introduced using EGR. This pseudo species is described by a transport equation. The transport equation residual model differentiates between CO2 and H2O from the previous engine cycle or EGR and that which is from the combustion products of the current engine cycle.

The focus of this paper is to discuss the modeling and control of intake plenum pressure on the Powertrain Control Research Laboratory's (PCRL) Single-Cylinder Engine (SCE) transient test system using a patented device known as the Intake Air Simulator (IAS), which dynamically controls the intake plenum pressure, and, subsequently, the instantaneous airflow into the cylinder. The IAS exists as just one of many devices that the PCRL uses to control the dynamic boundary conditions of its SCE transient test system to make it “think” and operate as though it were part of a Multi-Cylinder Engine (MCE) test system. The model described in this paper will be used to design a second generation of this device that utilizes both continuously and discretely actuating valves working in parallel.

In multidimensional modeling, fuels have been represented predominantly by single components, such as octane for gasoline. Several bicomponent studies have been performed, but these are still limited in their ability to represent real fuels, which are blends of as many as 300 components. This study outlines a method by which the fuel composition is represented by a distribution function of the fuel molecular weight. This allows a much wider range of compositions to be modeled, and only requires including two additional “species” besides the fuel, namely the mean and second moment of the distribution. This approach has been previously presented but is applied here to multidimensional calculations. Results are presented for single component droplet vaporization for comparison with single component fuel predictions, as well as results for a multicomponent gasoline and a diesel droplet.

A direct calibration has been performed on laser-induced fluorescence measurements of the oil film in a single cylinder air-cooled research engine by simultaneously measuring the minimum oil film thickness by the capacitance technique. At the minimum oil film thickness the capacitance technique provides an accurate measure of the ring-wall distance, and this value is used as a reference for the photomultiplier voltage, giving a calibration coefficient. This calibration coefficient directly accounts for the effect of temperature on the fluorescent properties of the constituents of the oil which are photoactive. The inability to accurately know the temperature of the oil has limited the utility of off-engine calibration techniques. Data are presented for the engine under motoring conditions at speeds from 800 - 2400 rpm and under varying throttle positions.

The contribution to the engine-out hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from fuel that escapes the main combustion event in piston ring crevices was estimated for an air-cooled, V-twin utility engine. The engine was run with a homogeneous pre-vaporized mixture system that avoids the presence of liquid films in the cylinder, and their resulting contribution to the HC emissions. A simplified ring pack gas flow model was used to estimate the ring pack contribution to HC emissions; the model was tested against the experimentally measured blowby. At high load conditions the model shows that the ring pack returns to the cylinder a mass of HC that exceeds that observed in the exhaust, and thus, is the dominant contributor to HC emissions. At light loads, however, the model predicts less HC mass returned from the ring pack than is observed in the exhaust. Time-resolved HC measurements were performed and used to assess the effect of combustion quality on HC emissions.

In this paper, knock in a Ford single cylinder direct-injection spark-ignition (DISI) engine was modeled and investigated using the KIVA-3V code with a G-equation combustion model coupled with detailed chemical kinetics. The deflagrative turbulent flame propagation was described by the G-equation combustion model. A 22-species, 42-reaction iso-octane (iC8H18) mechanism was adopted to model the auto-ignition process of the gasoline/air/residual-gas mixture ahead of the flame front. The iso-octane mechanism was originally validated by ignition delay tests in a rapid compression machine. In this study, the mechanism was tested by comparing the simulated ignition delay time in a constant volume mesh with the values measured in a shock tube under different initial temperature, pressure and equivalence ratio conditions, and acceptable agreements were obtained.

Multi-zone CFD simulations with detailed kinetics were used to model iso-octane HCCI experiments performed on a single-cylinder research engine. The modeling goals were to validate the method (multi-zone combustion modeling) and the reaction mechanism (LLNL 857 species iso-octane) by comparing model results to detailed exhaust speciation data, which was obtained with gas chromatography. The model is compared to experiments run at 1200 RPM and 1.35 bar boost pressure over an equivalence ratio range from 0.08 to 0.28. Fuel was introduced far upstream to ensure fuel and air homogeneity prior to entering the 13.8:1 compression ratio, shallow-bowl combustion chamber of this 4-stroke engine. The CFD grid incorporated a very detailed representation of the crevices, including the top-land ring crevice and head-gasket crevice. The ring crevice is resolved all the way into the ring pocket volume. The detailed grid was required to capture regions where emission species are formed and retained.

Predictive models of soot formation during Diesel combustion are of great practical interest, particularly in light of newly proposed strict regulations on particulate emissions. A modified version of the phenomenological model of soot formation developed previously has been implemented in KIVA-II CFD code. The model includes major generic processes involved in soot formation during combustion, i.e., formation of soot precursors, formation of surface growth species, soot particle nucleation, coagulation, surface growth and oxidation. The formulation of the model within the KIVA-II is fully coupled with the mass and energy balances in the system. The model performance has been tested by comparison with the results of optical in-cylinder soot measurements in a single cylinder Cummins NH Diesel engine. The predicted soot volume fraction, number density and particle size agree reasonably well with the experimental data.

A hybrid approach utilizing the measured intake/exhaust port pressure traces and gas dynamics simulation was developed to process the instant fresh charge and RGF (Residual Gas Fraction) trapped in cylinder. The real time RGF, pumping losses and indicated thermal efficiency of an automotive gasoline engine under vehicle driving conditions are analyzed, cycle by cycle, and associated to the engine operating parameters including engine load, speed, VVT positions, manifold pressure and temperatures, as well as spark timing. In this way the inter-relationship among those parameters are established. The derived relationship could be used to determine the in-cylinder process for more accurate prediction of engine performance at the stage of concept simulation study, and applied to narrow the range of parameter tests in the engine calibration stage.

This study investigates the fundamental stiffness and damping properties of a self-damped pneumatic suspension system, based on both the experimental and analytical analyses. The pneumatic suspension system consists of a pneumatic cylinder and an accumulator that are connected by an orifice, where damping is realized by the gas flow resistance through the orifice. The nonlinear suspension system model is derived and also linearized for facilitating the properties characterization. An experimental setup is also developed for validating both the formulated nonlinear and linearized models. The comparisons between the measured data and simulation results demonstrate the validity of the models under the operating conditions considered. Two suspension property measures, namely equivalent stiffness coefficient and loss factor, are further formulated.

We have developed a methodology for predicting combustion and emissions in a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) Engine. This methodology combines a detailed fluid mechanics code with a detailed chemical kinetics code. Instead of directly linking the two codes, which would require an extremely long computational time, the methodology consists of first running the fluid mechanics code to obtain temperature profiles as a function of time. These temperature profiles are then used as input to a multi-zone chemical kinetics code. The advantage of this procedure is that a small number of zones (10) is enough to obtain accurate results. This procedure achieves the benefits of linking the fluid mechanics and the chemical kinetics codes with a great reduction in the computational effort, to a level that can be handled with current computers.

Using a low-speed high-torque (LSHT) pump/motor to provide the speed range and torque for a hydrostatic automobile offers a number of advantages over using a high-speed low-torque pump/motor, combined with a gear reducer. However, there appear to be no LSHT units commercially available that have true variable displacement capability. Because of this void, a variable displacement pump/motor has been designed and built that could provide a direct drive for each wheel of a hydrostatic automobile. The unit uses some components such as the cylinder block, piston and modified rotating case from a commercially available radial piston pump/motor. Initial preliminary testing of the pump/motor indicates that it has good efficiency and performance characteristics, and, with further development should be very attractive for automotive use. This paper focuses on the design and kinematics of the device.

The present study investigated HCCI combustion in a heavy-duty diesel engine both experimentally and numerically. The engine was equipped with a hollow-cone pressure-swirl injector using gasoline direct injection. Characteristics of HCCI combustion were obtained by very early injection with a heated intake charge. Experimental results showed an increase in NOx emission and a decrease in UHC as the injection timing was retarded. It was also found that optimization can be achieved by controlling the intake temperature together with the start-of-injection timing. The experiments were modeled by using an engine CFD code with detailed chemistry. The CHEMKIN code was implemented into KIVA-3V such that the chemistry and flow solutions were coupled. The model predicted ignition timing, cylinder pressure, and heat release rates reasonably well. The NOx emissions were found to increase as the injection timing was retarded, in agreement with experimental results.