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A feasible method was developed to reconstruct the three-dimensional flame surface of SI combustion based on 2D images. A double-window constant volume vessel was designed to simultaneously obtain the side and bottom images of the flame. The flame front was reconstructed based on 2D images with a slicing model, in which the flame characteristics were derived by slicing flame contour modeling and flame-piston collision area analysis. The flame irregularity and anisotropy were also analyzed. Two different principles were used to build the slicing model, the ellipse hypothesis modeling and deep learning modeling, in which the ellipse hypothesis modeling was applied to reconstruct the flame in the optical SI engine. And the reconstruction results were analyzed and discussed. The reconstruction results show that part of the wrinkled and folded structure of the flame front in SI engines can be revealed based on the bottom view image.

Liquid ammonia is an ideal zero carbon fuel to reduce carbon emission of internal combustion engines. The high-pressure injection of liquid ammonia is a key technology to fast distribute fuels and prepare better combustion performances. The physical properties of liquid ammonia are different to traditional fossil fuels including diesel and gasoline, which can change the spray and droplet characteristics significantly. However, the spray droplet characteristics of liquid ammonia injection is lack of investigations. In this paper, Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) are used to measure the droplet diameter and velocity of high-pressure liquid ammonia sprays up to 75 MPa and compare to diesel sprays. Effects of flash boiling of liquid ammonia droplet characteristics are also analyzed.

Natural gas is one of the promising alternative fuels due to the low cost, worldwide availability, high knock resistance and low carbon content. Ignition quality is a key factor influencing the combustion performance in natural gas engines. In this study, the effect of pre-chamber geometry on the ignition process and flame propagation was studied under varied initial mixture temperatures and equivalence ratios. The pre-chambers with orifices in different shapes (circular and slit) were investigated. Schlieren method was adopted to acquire the flame propagation. The results show that under the same cross-section area, the slit pre-chamber can accelerate the flame propagation in the early stages. In the most of the cases, the penetration length of the flame jet and flame area development are higher in the early stages of combustion.

The spray characteristics is the key to achieve the clean combustion in diesel engines and the in-cylinder conditions are one of the factors affecting the spray process. In this work, the diesel spray characteristics were studied over a range of injection pressures and ambient pressures in a constant volume chamber and a single-hole common rail diesel injector was used. The present work is to decouple the effects of ambient pressure and ambient density on near-field spray processes by using different ambient gas (N2, and CO2). The spray processes were captured by a Photron SA X2 camera with speed of 300,000 fps and resolution of 256 by 80 pixels. The spray processes were analyzed in terms of penetration length and spray tip velocity. Difference in penetration length and tip velocity were found at the same ambient density and/or ambient pressure when different ambient gases were used.

Ammonia shows promise as an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines (ICEs) in reducing CO2 emissions due to its carbon-free nature and well-established infrastructure. However, certain drawbacks, such as the high ignition energy, the narrow flammability range, and the extremely low laminar flame speed, limit its widespread application. The dual fuel (DF) mode is an appealing approach to enhance ammonia combustion. The combustion characteristics of ammonia-diesel dual fuel mode and ammonia-PODE3 dual fuel mode were experimentally studied using a full-view optical engine and the high-speed photography method. The ammonia energy ratio (ERa) was varied from 40% to 60%, and the main injection energy ratio (ERInj1) and the main injection time (SOI1) were also varied in ammonia-PODE3 mode.

In order to improve the ignition capacity and burning rate for spark-ignited engines, pre-chamber jet ignition is a promising technique to achieve fast premixed combustion and low pollutant emissions. However, few studies focus on the interaction between multiple reacting (i.e. flamelet) or reacted (i.e. radical) jets, its effect on ignition, exotherm and flow behaviors also remain to be revealed. This paper investigated two types of jet interaction under different pre-chamber structures, including the jet-crossing and unequal nozzle designs. Optical experiments under different conditions were conducted in a constant volume combustion chamber with CH4 as fuel, using simultaneous high speed schlieren and OH* chemiluminescence method. Meanwhile, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with CH4 and NH3/CH4 blend fuels were carried out using Converge software to provide further insights of turbulent flow and ignition process.