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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.

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.

In this study, numerical simulations of in-cylinder processes associated to fuel post-injection in a diesel engine operated at Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) have been performed. An extended Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) model capable of accounting for an arbitrary number of subsequent injections has been employed: instead of a three-feed system, the problem has been described as a sequential two-feed system, using the total mixture fraction as the conditioning scalar. A reduced n-heptane chemical mechanism coupled with a two-equation soot model is employed. Numerical results have been validated with measurements from the optically accessible heavy-duty diesel engine installed at Sandia National Laboratories by comparing apparent heat release rate (AHRR) and in-cylinder soot mass evolutions for three different start of main injection, and a wide range of post injection dwell times.

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.

Emissions and performance parameters of a medium size, medium speed D.I. diesel engine with increased charge air pressure and reduced but fixed inlet valve opening period have been measured and compared to the standard engine. While power output and fuel consumption are slightly improved, nitric oxide emissions can be reduced by up to 20%. The measurements confirm the results of simulations for both performance and emissions, for which a quasidimensional model including detailed chemistry for nitric oxide prediction has been developed.

Numerical simulations of in-cylinder soot evolution in the optically accessible heavy-duty diesel engine of Sandia National Laboratories have been performed with the multidimensional conditional moment closure (CMC) model using a reduced n-heptane chemical mechanism coupled with a two-equation soot model. Simulation results are compared to the high-fidelity experimental data by means of pressure traces, apparent heat release rate (AHRR) and time-resolved in-cylinder soot mass derived from optical soot luminosity and multiple wavelength pyrometry in conjunction with high speed soot cloud imaging. In addition, spatial distributions of soot relevant quantities are given for several operating conditions.

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.

The sooting propensity of dual-fuel combustion with n-dodecane pilot injection in a lean-premixed methane-air charge has been investigated using an optically accessible Rapid Compression-Expansion Machine (RCEM) to achieve engine-relevant pressure and temperature conditions at the start of pilot injection. A Diesel injector with a 100 μm single-hole coaxial nozzle, mounted at the cylinder periphery, has been employed to admit the pilot fuel. The aim of this study was to enhance the fundamental understanding of soot formation and oxidation processes of n-dodecane in the presence of methane in the air charge by parametric variation of methane equivalence ratio, charge temperature, and pilot fuel injection duration. The influence of methane on ignition delay and flame extent of the pilot fuel jet has been determined by simultaneous excited-state hydroxyl radical (OH*) chemiluminescence and Schlieren imaging.

This paper presents numerical simulations of in-cylinder soot evolution in the optically accessible heavy-duty diesel engine of Sandia Laboratories performed with the conditional moment closure (CMC) model employing a reduced n-heptane chemical mechanism coupled with a two-equation soot model. The influence of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) on in-cylinder processes is studied considering different ambient oxygen volume fractions (8 - 21 percent), while maintaining intake pressure and temperature as well as the injection configuration unchanged. This corresponds to EGR rates between 0 and 65 percent. Simulation results are first compared with experimental data by means of apparent heat release rate (AHRR) and temporally resolved in-cylinder soot mass, where a quantitative comparison is presented. The model was found to fairly well reproduce ignition delays as well as AHRR traces along the EGR variation with a slight underestimation of the diffusion burn portion.

Formation of soot in an auto-igniting n-dodecane spray under diesel engine relevant conditions has been investigated numerically. As opposed to research addressing turbulence-chemistry interaction (TCI) by coupling diffusive turbulence models with more sophisticated models in the context of Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS), this study employs the advanced sub-grid scale k-equation model in the framework of a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) together with the uninvolved Direct Integration (DI) approach. A reduced n-heptane chemical mechanism has been employed and artificially accelerated in order to predict the ignition for n-dodecane accurately. Soot processes have been modelled with an extended version of the semi-empirical, two-equation model of Leung, which considers C2H2 as the soot precursor and accounts for particle inception, surface growth by C2H2 addition, oxidation by O2, oxidation by OH and particle coagulation.

Combustion engines for decentralized power generation or cogeneration in general, are subject to increasingly stringent pollutant emissions regulations. Motivated by the Europe-;wide lowest allowable NOx levels in Switzerland - particularly in the Zurich metropolitan area with 50 mg/Nm3 at 5% O2 - and in close cooperation with industry, the I.C. Engines and Combustion Laboratory (LVV) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) has investigated some new operating concepts and engine processes in order to overcome the dilemma between low emissions and high efficiency, which is usually encountered in engine optimization. Our final approach thereby involves the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) combined with stoichiometric mixture (λ = 1) and a 3-way catalytic converter. The engine is supercharged and the intake mixture aftercooled for high power density and thermal efficiency.

A recently developed auto-ignition model based on a single transport equation in combination with a reduced kinetic scheme has been validated and tested in combination with a cascade jet and droplet breakup model. The validation has been performed by comparing ignition locations and delays for various thermodynamic conditions with experimental data from a high-pressure combustion cell. Also for medium-size diesel engine applications, predictions of ignition delay are in good agreement with experimental observations. In addition, a new approach to the modeling of the early flame development in diesel engine combustion is introduced. The reaction rate in the transition phase from the premixed to the mixing-controlled combustion mode is determined by means of a sub-grid scale model, which describes the evolution of a turbulent diffusion flame. The model has been tested during the early combustion phase of a medium-size, medium-speed DI diesel engine.

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.

In this paper we investigate the effect of the introduction of water in the combustion chamber of a DI-diesel engine on combustion characteristics and pollutant formation, by using water-diesel fuel emulsions with three distinct water amounts (13%, 21% and 30%). For the measurements we use a modern 4-cylinder DI-diesel engine with high-pressure common rail fuel injection and EGR system. The engine investigations are conducted at constant speed in different operating points of the engine map with wide variations of injection setting parameters and EGR rate. The main concern refers to the interpretation of both measured values and relevant thermodynamic variables, which are computed with analytical instruments (heat release rate, ignition delay, reciprocal characteristic mixing time, etc). The analysis of the measured and computed data shows clear trends and detailed evaluations on the behavior of water-diesel fuel emulsions in the engine process are possible.

In the field of heavy-duty applications almost all engines apply the compression ignition principle, spark ignition is used only in the niche of CNG engines. The main reason for this is the high efficiency advantage of diesel engines over SI engines. Beside this drawback SI engines have some favorable properties like lower weight, simple exhaust gas aftertreatment in case of stoichiometric operation, high robustness, simple packaging and lower costs. The main objective of this fundamental research was to evaluate the limits of a SI engine for heavy-duty applications. Considering heavy-duty SI engines fuel consumption under full load conditions has a high impact on CO₂ emissions. Therefore, downsizing is not a promising approach to improve fuel consumption and consequently the focus of this work lies on the enhancement of thermal efficiency in the complete engine map, intensively considering knocking issues.

At the Internal Combustion Engines and Combustion Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich we are currently developing low emission strategies for heavy duty diesel engines that engine manufacturers can implement to meet stringent emissions regulations. The technologies being studied include high-pressure fuel injection (with common-rail injection system), multiple injection strategies (with pilot or post injections), turbo charging, exhaust gas recirculation (cooled EGR), oxygenated fuels and the optimization of the air management system. This paper focuses on the effects of exhaust gas recirculation (cooled EGR) in combination with very high injection pressure. Measurements were carried out on a heavy-duty diesel single-cylinder research engine equipped with a modern common rail fuel injection. The engine investigations were conducted in different operating points in the engine map covering wide speed and load ranges.