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Cross-sectional distributions of the liquid phase temperatures in fuel sprays were measured using a laser-induced fluorescence technique. The liquid fuel (n-hexadecane or squalane) was doped with pyrene(C16H10). The fluorescence intensity ratios of the pyrene monomer and excimer emissions has temperature dependence, and were used to determine the liquid phase temperatures in the fuel sprays. The measurements were performed on two kinds of sprays. One was performed on pre-heated fuel sprays injected into surrounding gas at atmospheric conditions. The other was performed on fuel sprays exposed to hot gas flow. The spray was excited by laser radiation at 266nm, and the resulting fluorescence was imaged by an intensified CCD camera. The cross-sectional distribution of the liquid phase temperature was estimated from the fluorescence image by the temperature dependence of the intensity ratio.

Three-dimensional behaviors of direct injection (D.I.) gasoline sprays were investigated using 2-D and 3-D particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques. The fuel was injected with a swirl type injector for D.I. gasoline engines into a constant volume chamber in which ambient pressure was varied from 0.1 to 0.4 MPa at room temperature. The spray was illuminated by a laser light sheet generated by a double-pulsed Nd:YAG laser (wave length: 532 nm) and the succeeding two tomograms of the spray were taken by a high-resolution CCD camera. The 2-D and 3-D velocity distributions of the droplet cloud in the spray were calculated from these tomograms by using the PIV technique. The effects of the swirl groove flows in the injector and the ambient pressure on the structural behavior of the droplet cloud in the spray were also examined.

In the present study, a challenge has been made to quantitatively determine the vapor phase concentration distributions in an evaporating multicomponent fuel spray using the LAS imaging technique. The theoretical considerations were particularly given when applying the LAS imaging technique to the multicomponent fuel spray and reconstructing the vapor concentration distributions from the spray images.

Effects of split injection, with a relatively short time interval between the two sprays, on the spray development process, and the air entrainment into the spray, were investigated by using laser induced fluorescence and particle image velocimetry (LIF-PIV) techniques. The velocities of the spray and the ambient air were measured. The cumulative mass of the ambient air entrained into the spray was calculated by using the entrainment velocity normal to the spray boundary. The vortex structure of the spray, formed around the leading edge of the spray, showed a true rotating flow motion at low ambient pressures of 0.1 MPa, whereas at 0.4 MPa, it was not a true rotating flow, but a phenomenon of the small droplets separating from the leading edge of the spray and falling behind, due to air resistance. The development processes of the 2nd spray were considerably different from that of the 1st spray because the 2nd spray was injected into the flow fields formed by the 1st spray.

In this paper, the Diesel spray characteristics were studied by HS video camera and the Laser Absorbing Scattering (LAS) technique means of the combustion deterioration problem caused by the engine downsizing based on the geometrical similarity was investigated. In the experiments, three Diesel injectors with the hole diameters of 0.07mm, 0.101mm and 0.133mm were used. The injection pressures of the injectors with three different diameters were 45MPa, 93MPa and 160MPa, respectively. The Diffused Background Illumination (DBI) method was employed for the nonevaporating spray experiment to obtain spray tip penetration and spray angle at room temperature. The LAS technique was employed for the evaporating spray experiment to obtain the equivalence ratio distributions, evaporation rate, and vapor phase tip penetration. Moreover, the Wakuri Momentum Theory was applied to analyze the data obtained by both the non-evaporating and the evaporating spray experiments.

Measurements of the droplet and ambient air velocities in and around a D.I. gasoline spray were made by combining the laser induced fluorescence (LIF) and the particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques. Before the fuel spray was injected into a constant volume vessel, rhodamine B-water solution was injected into the ambient air by a swirl-type injector for dispersing the fine fluorescent liquid particles as tracers for the ambient air motion. The fuel spray was injected into the fluorescent tracer clouds by a D.I. gasoline injector and was illuminated by an Nd:YAG laser light sheet (wave length: 532 nm). The light scattered by the droplets in the fuel spray was the same as the Nd:YAG laser wavelength, whereas the light emitted by the fluorescent tracer clouds was at a longer wavelength.

In the previous study of the authors, it was found that some benefits for the mixture preparation of DI gasoline engines can be offered by splitting the fuel injection, such as the phenomenon of high density liquid phase fuel piling up at the leading edge of the spray can be circumvented. In a further analysis, the vapor quantity in the “stable operating” range (equivalence ratio of vapor ϕv in a range of 0.7≤ϕv≤1.3) was significantly increased by the split injection compared to the single injection. In this work, the mechanism of the effect of the split injection on the mixture formation process was studied by combining the laser-sheet imaging, LIF-PIV and the LAS (Laser Absorption Scattering) technique. As a result, it is found that the spray-induced ambient air motion can help the formation of the more combustible mixture of the split injection whereas it played a minus role of diluting the spray by the single injection.

Fuel spray impingement on the combustion chamber wall cannot be avoid in direct injection gasoline engines, resulting in insufficient combustion and unburned hydrocarbon/soot emissions from the engines. And the microscopic characteristics of the impinging spray have a close relation with the fuel film formation, which has a direct effect on the engine performance and emissions. Therefore, figuring out the droplet behaviors of the impinging spray is significantly important for improving the engine performance and reducing emissions. However, the microscopic characteristics of the impinging spray have not been deeply understood and the differences between the impinging and free spray are seldom mentioned in previous study. Therefore, particle image analysis (PIA) technique was applied to detect the microscopic characteristics at the capture location in order to track the droplet behaviors of the spray tip during the propagation process.

The breakup and atomization processes of the pre-swirl spray, which is produced before the hollow-cone spray from a high-pressure swirl-type D.I. gasoline injector, were investigated under different ambient pressure conditions. The injector has a press-fitted swirl tip, in which six tangential slots giving the injecting fuel an angular momentum are perforated at an equal space interval. A microscopic imaging technique was applied to get the spatially high-resolution LIF tomograms of the pre-swirl spray. The sprays were illuminated by an Nd:YAG laser light sheet and imaged using a high resolution CCD camera, fixed with a micro lens and coupled with an optical low-pass filter. The droplet size and the individual droplet's velocity were obtained by applying the image processing and the particle tracking techniques, respectively.

The effect of spray/wall interaction on diesel spray flame characteristics was investigated by applying LAS (Laser Absorption-Scattering) technique, OH* chemiluminescence and two color pyrometry in a constant volume vessel. To insure the precision of this investigation, following necessary verification experiments were carried out: (1) OH* chemiluminescence and two color pyrometry were synchronously employed to analyze the influence of soot incandescence on OH* chemiluminescence signal intensity; and (2) frontal view and side view OH* images of a linearly arranged three holes injector were concentrated on to investigate the effect of soot on optical intensity attenuation under line-of-sight image recording condition. And then the effect of impinging distance (30,40,50,60 mm and free) on diesel spray and combustion behaviors were studied. The results reveal that the impinging distance plays a significant role in mixture formation.

The objective of the paper is to characterize the diesel spray under the ambient conditions relevant for direct injection (D.I.) diesel engines. The particular emphasis is on the comparisons between laser measurements and predictions by empirical correlations and theoretical analyses. The ultraviolet-visible laser absorption-scattering (LAS) imaging technique is employed to quantitively determine the spray/mixture properties of the diesel spray injected by a hole-type injector, in terms of spray tip penetration and spatial concentration distributions of liquid and vapor phase. The structure of evaporating spray is obtained and analyzed. Based on the penetration correlations in the literature, a non-dimensional analysis of the spray tip penetration data is carried out. The results indicate that a self-similar state of the evaporating fuel spray is achieved.

The combustion processes in the prechamber and the main chamber of a small indirect injection (I.D.I.) diesel engine were observed simultaneously by high-speed photography. These observations made it possible to characterize the behavior of flames in both chambers, that is, ignition of fuel, developing and rotating flames in the prechamber, and a flame jet spouting into the main chamber. The effect of engine variables, such as fuel injection timing, cross-sectional area of a throat, fuel injector location, and a recess in a piston top, on the combustion process as well as the engine performance were considered. A flame jet spouting into the main chamber separated into two directions and induced two vortexes. Brown sooty flames appeared along the prechamber wall and inside the flame jet which struck on the piston top. The higher-velocity flame jet and the two Intense vortexes induced by the flame jet realized superior fuel consumption and lower smoke emission.

Mixture formation processes play a vital role on the performance of a D.I. Gasoline engine. Quantitative measurement of liquid and vapor phase concentration distribution in a D.I. gasoline spray is very important in understanding the mixture formation processes. In this paper, an unique laser absorption scattering (LAS) technique was employed to investigate the mixture formation processes of a fuel spray injected by a D.I. gasoline injector into a high pressure and temperature constant volume vessel. P-xylene, which is quite suitable for the application of the LAS technique, was selected as the test fuel. The temporal variations of the concentration distribution of both the liquid and vapor phases in the spray were quantitatively clarified. Then the effects of injection pressure and quantity on the concentration distributions of both the liquid and vapor phases in the spray were analyzed.

In order to investigate the effect of split injections on mixture formation processes in Direct Injection (DI) gasoline engine sprays, an experimental study was conducted applying the laser absorption and scattering (LAS) technique to the sprays using double pulse injections with various dwells and mass ratios. The effects of various dwells and mass ratios between the pulsed injections on the spatial concentration distributions in the spray, the penetration of vapor and liquid phases, and the mean equivalence ratios of the vapor phase and overall spray, were clarified. It was found that the phenomenon of high concentration liquid spray piling up at the leading edge of the spray is avoided by the double injections with enough dwell or appropriate mass ratio. The maximum penetration length of the spray significantly decreases, especially for the liquid phase with high concentration.

Experimental results of a diesel engine have shown that using split-injection can reduce the NOx and particulate emissions. For understanding the mechanism of emissions reduction, mixture formation in split-injection diesel sprays was characterized in the present paper. A dual-wavelength laser absorption-scattering (LAS) technique was developed by use of the second harmonic (532nm) and the fourth harmonic (266nm) of a pulsed Nd:YAG laser as the incident light and dimethylnaphthalene (DMN) as the test fuel. By applying this technique, imaging was made of DMN sprays injected into a high-temperature and high-pressure constant volume vessel by a single-hole nozzle incorporated in a common rail injection system for D.I. diesel engine. The line-of-sight optical thickness of both fuel vapor and droplets in the sprays was yielded from the sprays images.

Spray characteristics are of great importance to achieve fuel economy and low emissions for a D.I. gasoline engine. In this study, the characteristics of the fuel spray as well as its interaction with a cross-flow were investigated. The fuel was injected by a VCO injector into an optically accessible rectangular wind tunnel under the normal temperature and pressure, in which the direction of the injection was perpendicular to the direction of the cross-flow. The velocity of the cross-flow varied from 0 to 10 m/s while the injection pressure was 5 and 10 MPa. With using the high speed video camera and the PIV system, the spray profile, velocity distribution and the penetration distance were measured. The lower penetration distance can be obtained with the lower injection pressure and the increased velocity of the cross-flow, however the injected fuel expands along the direction of the cross-flow, which indicates that spray atomization and mixing of fuel and air are enhanced.

Owing to the small size of engines and high injection pressures, it is difficult to avoid the fuel spray impingement on the combustion cylinder wall and piston head in Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI) engine, which is a possible source of hydrocarbons and soot emission. As a result, the droplets size and distribution are significantly important to evaluate the atomization and predict the impingement behaviors, such as stick, spread or splash. However, the microscopic behaviors of droplets are seldom reported due to the high density of small droplets, especially under high pressure conditions. In order to solve this problem, a “spray slicer” was designed to cut the spray before impingement as a sheet one to observe the droplets clearly. The experiment was performed in a constant volume chamber under non-evaporation condition, and a mini-sac injector with single hole was used.

The high injection pressure and small cylinder volume of direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engines can result in flat-wall wetness on the surface of the piston, increasing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. The characteristics of microscopic fuel adhesion are observed using refractive index matching (RIM). Fuel adhesion characteristics after wall impingement are evaluated with various cross-flow velocities under triple stage injection conditions. The results indicate that cross-flow has a beneficial effect on the diffusion of fuel spray. Average fuel adhesion thickness decreases with an increase in cross-flow velocities. Furthermore, cross-flow promotes the evaporation of fuel adhesion, which leads to a reduction in the fuel adhesion mass/mass ratio. The improvement of injection strategy has guidance on low-carbon future.

The effect of injection pressure ranging from 100 to 300MPa on the ignition, flame development and soot formation characteristics of biodiesel fuel spray using a common rail injection system for direct injection (D.I.) diesel engine was investigated. Experiments were carried out in a constant volume vessel under conditions similar to the real engine condition using a single hole nozzle. Biodiesel fuels from two sources namely; palm oil (BDFp) and cooked oil (BDFc) with the commercial JIS#2diesel fuel were utilized in this research. The OH chemiluminescence technique was used to determine the ignition and the lift-off length of the combusting flame. The natural luminosity technique was applied to study the flame development and the two color pyrometry was applied for the soot formation processes. Ignition delay decreased as the injection pressure progressed from 100 to 300MPa. This was as a result of the enhanced mixing achieved at higher injection pressures.

Owing to the short impingement distance and high injection pressure, it is difficult to avoid the fuel spray impingement on the combustion cylinder wall and piston head in Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI) engine, which is a possible source of hydrocarbons and soot emission. For better understanding of the mechanisms behind the spray-wall impingement, the fuel spray and adhesion on a flat wall using a mini-sac injector with a single-hole was examined. The microscopic characteristics of impinging spray were investigated through Particle Image Analysis (PIA). The droplet size and velocity were compared before impingement. The adhered fuel on the wall was measured by Refractive Index Matching (RIM). The fuel adhesion mass and area were discussed. Moreover, the relationships between droplets behaviors and fuel adhesion on the wall were discussed.