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Particle image velocimetry measurements of the in-cylinder flow in an optically accessible single-cylinder research engine were taken to better understand the effects of intake pressure variations on the flow field. At a speed of 1500 rpm, the engine was run at six different intake pressure loads from 0.4 to 0.95 bar under motored operation. The average velocity fields show that the tumble center position is located closer to the piston and velocity magnitudes decrease with increasing pressure load. A closer investigation of the intake flow near the valves reveals sharp temporal gradients and differences in maximum and minimum velocity with varying intake pressure load which are attributed to intake pressure oscillations. Despite measures to eliminate acoustic oscillations in the intake system, high-frequency pressure oscillations are shown to be caused by the backflow of air from the exhaust to the intake pipe when the valves open, exciting acoustic modes in the fluid volume.

Cycle-to-cycle variations in internal combustion engines are known to lead to limitations in engine load and efficiency, as well as increases in emissions. Recent research has led to the identification of the source of cyclic variations of pressure, soot and NO emissions in direct injection common rail diesel engines, when employing a single block injection and operating under long ignition delay conditions. The variations in peak pressure arise from changes in the diffusion combustion rate, caused by randomly occurring in-cylinder pressure fluctuations. These fluctuations result from the excitation of the first radial mode of vibration of the cylinder gases which arises from the rapid premixed combustion after the long ignition delay period. Cycles with high-intensity fluctuations present faster diffusion combustion, resulting in higher cycle peak pressure, as well as higher measured exhaust NO concentrations.

Past research has shown that post injections have the potential to reduce Diesel engine exhaust PM concentration without any significant influence in NOx emissions. However, an accurate, widely applicable rule of how to parameterize a post injection such that it provides a maximum reduction of PM emissions does not exist. Moreover, the underlying mechanisms are not thoroughly understood. In past research, the underlying mechanisms have been investigated in engine experiments, in constant volume chambers and also using detailed 3D CFD-CMC simulations. It has been observed that soot reduction due to a post injection is mainly due to two reasons: increased turbulence from the post injection during soot oxidation and lower soot formation due to lower amount of fuel in the main combustion at similar load conditions. Those studies do not show a significant temperature rise caused by the post injection.

The operation of dual fuel engines, operated with natural gas as main fuel, offers the potential of substantial savings in CO2. Nevertheless, the operating map area where low pollutant emissions are produced is very narrow. Especially at low load, the raw exhaust gas contains high concentrations of unburned methane and, with high pilot fuel portions due to ignition limitations, also soot. The analysis of the combustion in those conditions in particular is not trivial, since multiple combustion modes are present concurrently. The present work focuses on the evaluation of the individual combustion modes of a dual fuel engine, operated with natural gas as main and diesel as pilot fuel, using a combustion model. The combustion has been split in two partwise concurrent combustion phases: the auto-ignition phase and the premixed flame propagation phase.

Measurements of the soot emissions and engine operating parameters from a diesel engine during transient operation were used to investigate the influence of transient operation on the soot emissions, as well as to validate a realtime mean value soot model (MVSM, [1]) for transient operation. To maximize the temporal resolution of the soot emission and engine parameter measurements (in particular EGR), fast instruments were used and their dynamic responses characterized and corrected. During tip-in transients, an increase in the soot emissions was observed due to a short term oxygen deficit compared to steady-state operation. No significant difference was seen between steady-state and transient operation for acceleration transients. When the MVSM was provided with inputs of sufficient temporal resolution, it was capable of reproducing the qualitative and, in part, quantitative soot emission trends.

Numerical simulations of diesel sprays in a constant-volume vessel have been performed with the conditional moment closure (CMC) combustion model for a broad range of conditions. On the oxidizer side these include variations in ambient temperature (800-1100 K), oxygen volume fraction (15-21%) and density (7.3-58.5 kg/m₃) and on the fuel side variation in injector orifice diameter (50-363 μm) and fuel pressure (600-1900 bar); in total 22 conditions. Results are compared to experimental data by means of ignition delay and flame lift-off length (LOL). Good agreement for both quantities is reported for the vast majority of conditions without any changes to model constants: the variations relating to the air side are quantitatively accurately predicted; for the fuel side (viz. orifice diameter and injection pressure) the trends are qualitatively well reproduced.

Optical soot pyrometry is a mature experimental technique that has been applied to a broad range of combustion systems for measuring soot temperature and concentration. Even though the method is widely used and well documented, the line of sight nature of the technique makes the interpretation of its results challenging. Notably, gradients in temperature and soot concentration along the line of sight or across the field of view can introduce significant levels of uncertainty in the results. This paper presents a numerical study where the signal from the experimental two-color pyrometry technique in a marine diesel engine reference experiment is reconstructed employing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a detailed Line-by-Line (LBL) spectral radiation model. The analysis is aimed at qualitatively supporting interpretability of experimental observations.

Dual-fuel natural gas engines are seen as an attractive solution for simultaneous reduction of pollutant and CO2 emissions while maintaining high engine thermal efficiency. However, engines of this type exhibit a tradeoff between misfire as well as high UHC emissions for small pilot injection amounts and higher emissions of soot and NOX for operation strategies with higher pilot fuel proportion. The aim of this study was to investigate POMDME as an alternative pilot fuel having the potential to mitigate the emissions tradeoff, enabling smokeless combustion due to high degree of oxygenation, and being less prone to misfire due to its higher cetane number. Furthermore, POMDME can be synthetized carbon neutrally. First, characteristics of POMDME ignition in methane/air mixture and the transition into premixed flame propagation were investigated optically in a rapid compression-expansion machine (RCEM) by employing Schlieren and OH* chemiluminescence imaging.

This study investigates n-dodecane split injections of “Spray A” from the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) using two different turbulence treatments (RANS and LES) in conjunction with a Conditional Moment Closure combustion model (CMC). The two modeling approaches are first assessed in terms of vapor spray penetration evolutions of non-reacting split injections showing a clearly superior performance of the LES compared to RANS: while the former successfully reproduces the experimental results for both first and second injection events, the slipstream effect in the wake of the first injection jet is not accurately captured by RANS leading to an over-predicted spray tip penetration of the second pulse. In a second step, two reactive operating conditions with the same ambient density were investigated, namely one at a diesel-like condition (900K, 60bar) and one at a lower temperature (750K, 50bar).

Large Eddy Simulations (LES) and tracer-based Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) measurements were performed to study the dynamics of fuel wall-films on the piston top of an optically accessible, four-valve pent-roof GDI research engine for a total of eight operating conditions. Starting from a reference point, the systematic variations include changes in engine speed (600; 1,200 and 2,000 RPM) and load (1000 and 500 mbar intake pressure); concerning the fuel path the Start Of Injection (SOI=360°, 390° and 420° CA after gas exchange TDC) as well as the injection pressure (10, 20 and 35 MPa) were varied. For each condition, 40 experimental images were acquired phase-locked at 10° CA intervals after SOI, showing the wall-film dynamics in terms of spatial extent, thickness and temperature.

State of the art high-pressure fuel injectors offer the ability to inject multiple times per cycle, and can reach very low fuel amounts per injection event. This behaviour allows the application of pilot injections in diesel engine applications or dual fuel engines. In both diesel and dual fuel engines, the amount of pilot fuel affects the engine efficiency. The understanding of the underlying ignition mechanism of the pilot fuel is required to optimize injection parameters and the engines’ fuel consumption. The present work focuses on the differences of ignition mechanisms between long and short injections. The investigation has been performed numerically, using CFD with a well-proven combustion model. The setup used employs a well characterized single orifice injector, injecting into a high temperature, pressurized environment with a composition of 15% oxygen.

The interaction of turbulent premixed methane combustion with the surrounding flow field can be studied using optically accessible test rigs such as a rapid compression expansion machine (RCEM). The high flexibility offered by such a test rig allows its operation at various thermochemical conditions at ignition. However, limitations inherent to such test rigs due to the absence of an intake stroke do not allow turbulence production as found in IC-engines. Hence, means to introduce turbulence need to be implemented and the relevant turbulence quantities have to be identified in order to enable comparability with engine relevant conditions. A dedicated high-pressure direct injection of air at the beginning of the compression phase is considered as a measure to generate adjustable turbulence intensities at spark timing and during the early flame propagation.

Large-bore natural gas engines may use pre-chamber ignition. Despite extensive research in engine environments, the exact nature of the jet, as it exits the pre-chamber orifice, is not thoroughly understood and this leads to uncertainty in the design of such systems. In this work, a specially-designed rig comprising a quartz pre-chamber fit with an orifice and a turbulent flowing mixture outside the pre-chamber was used to study the pre-chamber flame, the jet, and the subsequent premixed flame initiation mechanism by OH* and CH* chemiluminescence. Ethylene and methane were used. The experimental results are supplemented by LES and 0D modelling, providing insights into the mass flow rate evolution at the orifice and into the nature of the fluid there. Both LES and experiment suggest that for large orifice diameters, the flow that exits the orifice is composed of a column of hot products surrounded by an annulus of unburnt pre-chamber fluid.

In this study, a novel 3D-CFD combustion model employing Flamelet Generated Manifolds (FGM) for dual fuel combustion was developed. Validation of the platform was carried out using recent experimental results from an optically accessible Rapid Compression Expansion Machine (RCEM). Methane and n-dodecane were used as model fuels to remove any uncertainties in terms of fuel composition. The model used a tabulated chemistry approach employing a reaction mechanism of 130 species and 2399 reactions and was able to capture non-premixed auto ignition of the pilot fuel as well as premixed flame propagation of the background mixture. The CFD model was found to predict well all phases of the dual fuel combustion process: I) the pilot fuel ignition delay, II) the Heat Release Rate of the partially premixed conversion of the micro pilot spray with entrained methane/air and III) the sustained background mixture combustion following the consumption of the spray plume.

An existing three-stage ignition delay model which has seen successful application to Primary Reference Fuels (PRFs) has been extended to six surrogate fuels which constitute potential candidates for future Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines. The fuels include petroleum-derived and oxygenated components and can be divided into low, intermediate and high cetane number groups. A new methodology to obtain the model parameters is presented which relies jointly on simulation and experimental data: in a first step, constant volume adiabatic reactor simulations using chemical kinetic mechanisms are performed to generate ignition delays for a very wide range of conditions, namely variations in equivalence ratio, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR), pressure and temperature.

Fuel spray propagation and its morphology are important aspects for the in-cylinder mixture preparation in Diesel engines. Since there is still a lack of suitable measurements with regard to large 2-stroke marine Diesel engines combustion systems, a comprehensive data set of spray characteristics has been investigated using a test facility reflecting the specific features of such combustion systems. The spray penetration, area and cone angle were analysed for a variation of gas density (including the behaviour at evaporation and non-evaporating conditions), injection pressure and nozzle diameter. Moreover, spray and swirl flow interaction as well as fuel quality influences have been studied. To analyse the impacts and effects of each measured parameter, an empirical correlation for the spray penetration has been derived and discussed for all measurements presented.

A mean value soot model (MVSM) was developed and validated for the realtime prediction of the raw, engine-out soot emissions from common rail diesel engines. Through the consideration of five representative states during the combustion cycle, the developed MVSM determines the engine out soot emissions based on the soot formation and oxidation processes, using only parameters available from a standard engine control unit. 16 model parameters are used to describe the engine, fuel, and combustion characteristics, and must be determined for each engine and fuel combination. The MVSM was parameterized and validated using the measured soot emissions from two different engines operating with a total of three different fuels. After parameterization, the MVSM was capable of qualitatively and quantitatively reproducing the soot emissions for operating points throughout the entire operating map, including for operating regimes not considered during the parameterization.

Modern Diesel engines have become ever more complex systems with many degrees of freedom. Simultaneously, with increasing computational power, simulations of engines have become more popular, and can be used to find the optimum set up of engine operation parameters which result in the desired point in the emission-efficiency trade off. With increasing number of engine operation parameter combinations, the number of calculations increase exponentially. Therefore, adequate models for combustion and emissions with limited calculation costs are required. For obvious reasons, the accuracy of the ignition timing is a key point for the following combustion and emission model quality. Furthermore, the combination of mixing and chemical processes during the ignition delay is very challenging to model in a fast way for a wide range of operation conditions.

Three-dimensional reactive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) plays a crucial role in IC engine development tasks complementing experimental efforts by providing improved understanding of the combustion process. A widely adopted combustion model in the engine community for (partially) premixed combustion is the G-Equation where the flame front is represented by an iso-level of an arbitrary scalar G. A convective-reactive equation for this iso-surface is solved, for which the turbulent flame speed ST must be provided. In this study, the commonly used and well-established Damköhler approach is compared to a novel correlation, derived from an algebraic closure for the scalar dissipation of reaction progress as proposed by Kolla et al. [1].

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of premixed turbulent combustion in a confined cylinder setup at engine relevant conditions has been carried out for three different initial turbulence intensities, mimicking different flame propagation regimes. Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of the setup under investigation provides the reference data to be compared against. The DNS fields have been filtered on the LES grid and are used as initial conditions for the LES at onset of combustion, guaranteeing a direct comparability of the single realizations between the modeled and reference data. Two different combustion models, the G-Equation and CMC-premixed (Conditional Moment Closure) are compared with respect to their predictive capabilities as well as their usability and computational cost. While the G-Equation is a widely adopted approach for industrial applications and usually relies on a tunable turbulent flame speed closure, the novel LES-CMC comes as a tuning parameter free model.