Search Results

With growing concern about global warming, alternatives to fossil fuels in internal combustion engines are searched. In this context, hydrogen is one of the most interesting fuels as it shows excellent combustion properties such as laminar flame speed and energy density. In this work a CFD methodology for 3D-CFD in-cylinder simulations of engine combustion is proposed and its predictive capabilities are validated against test-bench data from a direct injection spark-ignition (DISI) prototype. The original engine is a naturally aspirated, single cylinder compression ignition (Diesel fueled) unit. It is modified substituting the Diesel injector with a spark plug, adding two direct gas injectors, and lowering the compression ratio to run with hydrogen fuel. A 3D-CFD model is built, embedding in-house developed ignition and heat transfer models besides G-equation one for combustion.

The accurate representation of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) flows via CFD is an extremely complex task: it strongly depends on a combination of highly impacting factors, such as grid resolution (both local and global), choice of the turbulence model, numeric schemes and mesh motion technique. A well-founded choice must be made in order to avoid excessive computational cost and numerical difficulties arising from the combination of fine computational grids, high-order numeric schemes and geometrical complexity typical of ICEs. The paper focuses on the comparison between different mesh motion technologies, namely layer addition and removal, morphing/remapping and overset grids. Different grid strategies for a chosen mesh motion technology are also discussed. The performance of each mesh technology and grid strategy is evaluated in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency (stability, scalability, robustness).

High power-density Diesel engines are characterized by remarkable thermo-mechanical loads. Therefore, compared to spark ignition engines, designers are forced to increase component strength in order to avoid failures. 3D-CFD simulations represent a powerful tool for the evaluation of the engine thermal field and may be used by designers, along with FE analyses, to ensure thermo-mechanical reliability. The present work aims at providing an integrated in-cylinder/CHT methodology for the estimation of a Diesel engine thermal field. On one hand, in-cylinder simulations are fundamental to evaluate not only the integral amount of heat transfer to the combustion chamber walls, but also its point-wise distribution. To this specific aim, an improved heat transfer model based on a modified thermal wall function is adopted to estimate correctly wall heat fluxes due to combustion.

Engine downsizing is gaining popularity in the high performance engine market sector, where a new generation of highly downsized engines with specific power outputs around or above 150 HP/litre is emerging. High-boost and downsizing, adopted to increase power density and reduce fuel consumption, have to face the increased risks of pre-ignition, knock or mega-knock. To counterbalance autoignition of fuel/air mixture, such engines usually operate with high fuel enrichments and delayed (sometimes negative) spark advances. The former is responsible for high fuel consumption levels, while the latter reduces performance and induces an even lower A/F ratio (below 11), to limit the turbine inlet temperature, with huge negative effects on BSFC.

Ammonia and hydrogen can be produced from water, air and excess renewable electricity (Power-to-fuel) and are therefore a promising alternative in the transition from fossil fuel energy to cleaner energy sources. An Homogeneous-Charge Compression-Ignition (HCCI) engine is therefore being studied to use both fuels under a variable blending ratio for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) production. Due to the high auto-ignition resistance of ammonia, hydrogen is required to promote and stabilize the HCCI combustion. Therefore the research objective is to investigate the HCCI combustion of varying hydrogen-ammonia blending ratios in a 16:1 compression ratio engine. A specific focus is put on maximizing the ammonia proportion as well as minimizing the NOx emissions that could arise from the nitrogen contained in the ammonia. A single-cylinder, constant speed, HCCI engine has been used with an intake pressure varied from 1 to 1.5 bar and with intake temperatures ranging from 428 to 473 K.

The present investigation examines a new way to control the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) process. An ozone generator was set up to seed the intake of a single-cylinder engine with low concentrations of ozone. Two kinds of gas supply were tested: an oxygen supply and an air supply; as well as two kinds of injection: a plenum injection and an injection inside one of the intake pipes. The results showed that air can easily be used and that the second injection mode is the best way to achieve an on-road application. Moreover, experiments demonstrated that each combustion parameter such as the phasing, the indicated mean effective pressure and the pollutants can be controlled by varying the capacity of the ozone generator. Then, from experimental results, two dynamic control approaches on the maximum pressure phasing were proposed.

The paper aims at defining a methodology for the prediction and understanding of knock tendency in internal combustion engine piston crevices by means of CFD simulations. The motivation for the analysis comes from a real design requirement which appeared during the development of a new high performance SI unit: it is in fact widely known that, in high performance engines (especially the turbocharged ones), the high values of pressure and temperature inside the combustion chamber during the engine cycle may cause knocking phenomena. “Standard” knock can be easily recognized by direct observation of the in-cylinder measured pressure trace; it is then possible to undertake proper actions and implement design and control improvements to prevent it with relatively standard 3D-CFD analyses.

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) are undergoing a rapid development, due to the ever-growing interest towards their use to decarbonize power generation applications. In the transportation sector, a key technological challenge is their thermal management, i.e. the ability to preserve the membrane at the optimal thermal state to maximize the generated power. This corresponds to a narrow temperature range of 75-80°C, possibly uniformly distributed over the entire active surface. The achievement of such a requirement is complicated by the generation of thermal power, the limited exchange area for radiators, and the poor heat transfer performance of conventional coolants (e.g., ethylene glycol). The interconnection of thermal/fluid/electrochemical processes in PEMFCs renders heat rejection as a potential performance limiter, suggesting its maximization for power density increase.

CFD simulations of reacting flows are fundamental investigation tools used to predict combustion behaviour and pollutants formation in modern internal combustion engines. Focusing on spark-ignited units, most of the flamelet-based combustion models adopted in current simulations use the fuel/air/residual laminar flame propagation speed as a background to predict the turbulent flame speed. This, in turn, is a fundamental requirement to model the effective burn rate. A consolidated approach in engine combustion simulations relies on the adoption of empirical correlations for laminar flame speed, which are derived from fitting of combustion experiments. However, these last are conducted at pressure and temperature ranges largely different from those encountered in engines: for this reason, correlation extrapolation at engine conditions is inevitably accepted. As a consequence, relevant differences between proposed correlations emerge even for the same fuel and conditions.

In the search for zero-carbon emissions and energy supply security, hydrogen is one of the fuels considered for internal combustion engines. The state-of-the-art studies show that a good strategy to mitigate NOx emissions in hydrogen-fueled spark-ignition engines (H2ICE) is burning ultra-lean hydrogen-air mixtures in current diesel architectures, due to their capability of standing high in-cylinder pressures. However, it is well-known that decreasing equivalence ratio leads to higher engine instability and greater cycle-to-cycle variations (CCVs). Nevertheless, hydrogen flames, especially at low equivalence ratios and high pressures, present thermodiffusive instabilities that speed up combustion, changing significantly the flame development and possibly its variability. This work evaluates the hydrogen combustion and their CCVs in two single-cylinder diesel baseline H2ICEs (light-duty and medium-duty) and their influence on performance parameters.

Enhanced calibration strategies and innovative engine combustion technologies are required to meet the new limits on exhaust gas emissions enforced in the field of marine propulsion and on-board energy production. The goal of the paper is to optimize the control parameters of a 4.2 dm3 unit displacement marine DI Diesel engine, in order to enhance the efficiency of the combustion system and reduce engine out emissions. The investigation is carried out by means of experimental tests and CFD simulations. For a better control of the testing conditions, the experimental activity is performed on a single cylinder prototype, while the engine test bench is specifically designed to simulate different levels of boosting. The numerical investigations are carried out using a set of different CFD tools: GT-Power for the engine cycle analysis, STAR-CD for the study of the in-cylinder flow, and a customized version of the KIVA-3V code for combustion.

A single cylinder Diesel engine was used to study combustion stability changes from a cetane number improver: 2-EHN. It has been added to a low cetane number diesel and two biodiesels blends with 20 % of SME or RME. All fuels have been raised to a CN of 51 with 2-EHN. Those fuels have been compared to a reference diesel with a CN of 55. Cold and warm start have been recreated for measurements at three conditions: cranking, engine speed increase and idle. Engine coolant temperature has been set to 20°C and 80°C for cold and warm start respectively. 2-EHN effects on combustion stability have been monitored through the IMEP covariance. Under cold-start, only the low cetane number diesel showed combustion stabilities improvements with 2-EHN addition. Moreover, the combustion stability was better than the reference diesel and the heat release rate show an enhancement of the cold flame. On the contrary, the biodiesel fuels exhibited higher IMEP covariances.

Internal combustion engine downsizing allows the reduction of fuel consumption, in particular for those applications where the engine operates frequently at part load conditions. This design solution is usually combined with intake charge dilution by means of exhaust gas recirculation, for the purpose of limiting abnormal combustion events, reducing pumping losses and nitrogen oxide formation. While the exhaust gas recirculation is widely used in compression ignition engines, it still causes some technological issues, in particular for spark ignition engines. This paper presents the results of an experimental campaign performed on a spark ignition engine for the investigation of different dilution techniques for low temperature combustion. Nitrogen, carbon dioxide and exhaust gas recirculation have been adopted as diluents, comparing engine performance and pollutant emissions.

CFD and FE tools are intensively adopted by engine manufacturers in order to prevent thermo-mechanical failures reducing time- and cost-to market. The capability to predict correctly the physical factors leading to damages is hence essential for their application in the industrial practice. This is even more important for last generation SI engines, where the more and more stringent need to lower fuel consumption and pollutant emissions is pushing designers to reduce engine displacement in favor of higher specific power, usually obtained by means of turbocharging. This brings to a new generation of SI engines characterized by higher and higher adiabatic efficiency and thermo-mechanical loads. A recent research highlighted the different behavior of the thermal boundary layer of such engines operated at high revving speeds and high loads if compared to the same engines operated at low loads and revving speeds or even engines with a lower specific power.

This paper presents the development of a parallel hybrid power unit for Formula SAE application. In particular, the system is made up of a brand new, single-cylinder 480 cc internal combustion engine developed on the basis of the Ducati “959 Superquadro” V90 2-cylinders engine. The thermal engine is assisted by a custom electric motor (30 kW), powered by a Li-Ion battery pack. The performance of the ICE has been optimized through CFD-1D simulation (a review of this activity is reported in a parallel paper). The main design goal is to get the maximum amount of mechanical energy from the fuel, considering the car typical usage: racing on a windy track. The Ducati “959 Superquadro” engine is chosen because of its high power-to-weight ratio, as well as for its V90 2-cylinder layout.

The trend of powertrain electrification is quickly spreading from the automotive field into many other sectors. For ultra-light aircraft, needing a total installed propulsion power up to 150 kW, the combination of a specifically developed internal combustion engine (ICE) integrated with a state-of-the-art electric system (electric motor, inverter and battery) appears particularly promising. The dimensions and weight of ICE can be strongly reduced (downsizing), so that it can operate at higher efficiency at typical cruise conditions; a large power reserve is available for emergency maneuvers; in comparison to a full electric airplane, the hybrid powertrain makes possible to fly at zero emissions for a much longer time, or with a much heavier payload. On the other hand, the packaging of a hybrid powertrain into existing aircraft requires a specific design of the thermal engine, that must be light, compact, highly reliable and fuel efficient.

Conventional 2-Stroke Spark Ignition engines are characterized by very high power to weight ratios and low manufacturing costs, but also by very low thermal efficiencies and high pollutant emissions. The last issues can be fully addressed by adopting an external scavenging pump and a direct or semi-direct injection system. The implementation of these solutions requires a strong support from CFD simulations, in particular for the optimization of air-fuel mixing and combustion. The paper presents a theoretical study on a new 2-Stroke, three cylinders, 1.3 L, Spark Ignition engine for light aircraft. The power-unit also includes an electric motor connected in parallel with the thermal engine. The latter features a supercharger and a two-stage injection system, made up of a set of low-pressure fuel injectors installed on the transfer ports, and a high-pressure gasoline injector on the cylinder head.

It is widely recognized that spatial and temporal evolution of both macro- and micro- turbulent scales inside internal combustion engines affect air-fuel mixing, combustion and pollutants formation. Particularly, in spark ignition engines, tumbling macro-structure induces the generation of a proper turbulence level to sustain the development and propagation of the flame front. As known, 3D-CFD codes are able to describe the evolution of the in-cylinder flow and turbulence fields with good accuracy, although a high computational effort is required. For this reason, only a limited set of operating conditions is usually investigated. On the other hand, thanks to a lower computational burden, 1D codes can be employed to study engine performance in the whole operating domain, despite of a less detailed description of in-cylinder processes. The integration of 1D and 3D approaches appears hence a promising path to combine the advantages of both.

Engine knock is one of the most limiting factors for modern Spark-Ignition (SI) engines to achieve high efficiency targets. The stochastic nature of knock in SI units hinders the predictive capability of RANS knock models, which are based on ensemble averaged quantities. To this aim, a knock model grounded in statistics was recently developed in the RANS formalism. The model is able to infer a presumed log-normal distribution of knocking cycles from a single RANS simulation by means of transport equations for variances and turbulence-derived probability density functions (PDFs) for physical quantities. As a main advantage, the model is able to estimate the earliest knock severity experienced when moving the operating condition into the knocking regime.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is among the new generation of combustion modes which can be applied to internal combustion engines. It is currently the topic of numerous studies in various fields. Due to its operating process, HCCI ensures a good efficiency, similar to that of compression ignition (CI) engines, and low particulate and nitric oxide (NOx) emissions. However, before promoting the use of this kind of engine, several challenges must be addressed, in particular controlling the combustion. Recent work showed that the combustion phasing can be controlled using low concentrations of ozone, an oxidizing chemical species. As ozone generators become increasingly compact, the integration of this kind of device in passenger cars can be considered. The present study investigates the effect of ozone on the combustion of different fuel mixtures. The engine was fuelled with various blends: a 95%methane/5%propane mixture and three different methane/hydrogen mixtures.