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In this paper, experimental investigation on spray atomization and droplet dynamics inside a thermostatic expansion valve (TXV), a component commonly used in vehicle refrigeration system, was conducted. A needle and an orifice were copied from a commercial TXV and machined to be mounted inside a chamber with optical access so that the flow inside the TXV is simulated and visualized at the same time. The break-up and atomization of the refrigerant were documented near the downstream of the orifice under different feed conditions for two TXV with different geometry. A Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA) system was used later to measure the size and velocity of atomized refrigerant droplets. The results showed that the droplet size variation along the radial direction is slightly decreased at near downstream and increased at farther downstream due to the coalescence.

Recently, with the increasing interest on some potential alternative substitutes of petroleum fuels such as biodiesel and butanol, more and more researches are focused on the field of bio-fuels because they are renewable and friendly to the environment and can possibly reduce domestic demand on foreign petroleum. Bio-fuels are generally used in the commercial market by mixing with petroleum-based diesel or gasoline. Since the volatilities and boiling points of ethanol/butanol and diesel/biodiesel fuels are significantly different, micro-explosion can be expected in the blend mixture. In this study, a numerical model of micro-explosion including bubble generation, bubble expansion, and final breakup for multi-component bio-fuel droplets is proposed. From the simulated results of droplet characteristics at the onset of micro-explosion, it is concluded that micro-explosion is possible under engine operation condition for ethanol/butanol-diesel/biodiesel fuel blends.

A finite diffusion method is presented in this paper to model droplet evaporation for complex liquid mixture composed of different homogeneous groups. Multiple components fuel mixture is represented by separate distribution functions to describe the composition of each homogeneous group in the mixture. Only a few parameters are required to describe the mixture. Quasi-steady assumption is applied in the determination of evaporation rates and heat flux to the droplet, and the effects of surface regression, finite diffusion and preferential vaporization of the mixture are included in the liquid phase equations using an effective properties approach. The proposed model was validated by comparing against experimental measurements for single, isolated droplets of n-decane, kerosene, heptane-decane and diesel-butanol. The present model was applied to simulate the evaporation of isolated droplets with composition of typical diesel.

An optically-accessible single cylinder small-bore HSDI diesel engine equipped with a Bosch common-rail injection system is used to study the effects of differing injection strategies on combustion and soot. Laser-Induced Incandescence (LII) is used to visualize the evolution and distribution of soot within the combustion chamber from the onset of ignition to late into the expansion stroke. A low-sooting fuel, blended from two single component fuels, is used for experimentation. Because of the low-sooting nature of the fuel blend, the lean operating conditions, and optical distortion of the complex shaped engine, acceptable LII signal levels are difficult to obtain. Therefore a low-sulfur European Diesel fuel is also employed during experimentation. Acceptable LII signal levels are obtained using the Diesel fuel, however, without extreme caution, surface damage to the optical components of the engine are possible.

An efficient multi-component fuel droplet vaporization model has been developed in this work using discrete approach. The precise modeling of droplet vaporization process is divided into two parts: vapor-phase and liquid-phase sub-models. Temporal evolution of flow inside the droplet is considered to describe the transient behavior introduced by the slow diffusion process. In order to account for the internal circulation motion, surface regression and finite diffusion without actually resolving the spatial governing equations within the liquid phase, a set of ordinary differential equations is applied to describe the evolution of the non-uniform distributions of universal diffusional variables, i.e. temperature and species mass fraction. The differences between the droplet surface and bulk mean states are modeled by constructing a quasi-1D frame; the effect of the internal circulations is taken into consideration by using the effective diffusivity rather than physical diffusivity.

The traditional energy management algorithm is mainly based on a single driving cycle, it is obvious that many factors might be often neglected by designer, such as different driving cycles would suit for different control strategies. But they tend to make decisions on the balance of torque distribution and battery power that based on a single driving cycle. Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve the optimal control in each case. In this paper we introduce a new design concept of Multi-operating mode energy management, a mathematical model of the energy management applied to a hybrid vehicle system is presented. Results of simulations using the model with the Multi-operating mode energy management were compared with results of simulations using a model with the single mode energy management, allowing the energy efficiency evaluation of the proposed energy management system.

A numerical investigation of air-fuel mixing in gasoline direct-injection (GDI) engines is presented in this paper. The primary goal of this study is to demonstrate the importance of fuel representation. In the past studies, fuel has been usually modeled as a single component substance. However, most fuels are mixtures of hydrocarbons with diverse boiling points, resulting in mixture vaporization behavior substantially different from single-component behavior. This study presents a newly developed multicomponent vaporization model, which takes into account important mechanisms such as preferential vaporization, internal circulation, surface regression, and non-ideal behavior in high-pressure environments. A sheet spray atomization model was also used to calculate the disintegration of the liquid sheet and the breakup of the subsequent droplets. The results of a single-component fuel representation and a multicomponent fuel representation were compared.

Recent research has shown that butanol, instead of ethanol, has the potential of introducing a more suitable blend in diesel engines. This is because butanol has properties similar to current transportation fuels in comparison to ethanol. However, the main downside is the high cost of the butanol production process. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) is an intermediate product of the fermentation process of butanol production. By eliminating the separation and purification processes, using ABE directly in diesel blends has the potential of greatly decreasing the overall cost for fuel production. This could lead to a vast commercial use of ABE-diesel blends on the market. Much research has been done in the past five years concerning spray and combustion processes of both neat ABE and ABE-diesel mixtures. Additionally, different compositions of ABE mixtures had been characterized with a similar experimental approach.

The primary breakup of a planar liquid sheet produced by an air-blast atomizer was studied through numerical simulations, in order to reveal physical mechanisms involved during this process. The reliability of simulations was verified by comparing the macroscopic parameters, e.g. breakup time and spatial growth rate, with experimental data. Shear instability and RT (Rayleigh-Taylor) instability were found to play important roles during the primary breakup. By analyzing the acceleration of a fluid parcel within liquid sheet using Discrete Particle Method, and measuring the wave length of transverse unstable wave, RT instability was found to be partially responsible for transverse instability. The predictions of LISA (Linearized Instability Sheet Atomization) model on breakup time were compared to experiments, and obvious differences were found to exist.