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Fuel spray atomization process is known to play a key role in affecting mixture formation, combustion efficiency and soot emissions in direct injection engines. The fuel spray Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technology can be an effective means to study and predict spray characteristics such as penetration, droplet size and droplet velocity, and as a consequence, to drastically reduce experimental work during the engine development process. For this reason, an accurate numerical simulation of the spray evolution process is imperative. Different approaches and various models based on aerodynamically induced breakup mechanism have been implemented to simulate spray atomization process in earlier studies, and the effects of turbulence and cavitation from the injector nozzle is recently being concerned increasingly by engine researchers. In this study, an enhanced turbulence and cavitation induced primary breakup model combining aerodynamic breakup mechanism is developed.

The urea NOx selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is an effective technique for the reduction of NOx emitted from diesel engines. Urea spray quality has significant effect on NOx conversion efficiency. The droplet diameter and velocity distribution of air-assisted and airless urea injection systems were obtained by particle dynamics analyzer (PDA) measurement under different spray injection flow rates. It was found that the atomization quality of air-assisted urea injection system is better than that of airless urea injection system. The penetration and spray cone angle were also investigated by high-speed photography. Especially the spray characteristics of air-assisted urea injection system were measured in the constant-volume-bomb by high-speed photography. The atomization and evaporation of airless urea injection systems were modeled using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based on the experimental results. The numerical model was validated by the experimental results.

The design and optimization of a modern spray-guided gasoline direct injection engine require a thorough understanding of the fuel spray characteristics and atomization process. The fuel spray Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling technology can be an effective means to study and predict spray characteristics, and as a consequence, to drastically reduce experimental work during the engine development process. For this reason, an accurate numerical simulation of the spray evolution process is imperative. Different models based on aerodynamically-induced breakup mechanism have been implemented to simulate spray atomization process in earlier studies, and the effect of turbulence from the injector nozzle is recently being concerned increasingly by engine researchers. In this study, a turbulence-induced primary breakup model coupled with aerodynamic instability is developed.

HCCI combustion was studied in a 4-stroke gasoline engine with a direct injection system. The electronically controlled two-stage gasoline injection and spark ignition system were adopted to control the mixture formation, ignition timing and combustion rate in HCCI engine. The engine could be operated in HCCI combustion mode in a range of load from 1 to 5 bar IMEP and operated in SI combustion mode up to load of 8 bar IMEP. The HCCI combustion characteristics were investigated under different A/F ratios, engine speeds, starts of injection, as well as spark ignition enabled or not. The test results reveal the HCCI combustion features as a high-pressure gradient after ignition and has advantages in high thermal efficiency and low NOx emissions over SI combustion. At the part load of 1400rpm and IMEP of 3.5bar, ISFC in HCCI mode is 25% lower and NOx emissions is 95% lower than that in SI mode.

This paper measured unsteady temperature fields of uncoated-monolith and catalytic monolith under real engine operating conditions using thermocouples. A multi-dimensional flow mathematical model of the turbulence, heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions in monoliths was established using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code and numerically solved in the whole flow field of the catalytic converter. The purpose of this paper is to study unsteady warm-up characteristics of the monoliths and to investigate effects of inlet cone structure on temperature distribution of the catalytic converter. Experimental results show that the warm-up behaviors between uncoated-monolith and catalytic monolith are quite different. Simulation results indicate that the established model can qualitatively predict the warm-up characteristics.

Diesel particulate filter (DPF) is indispensable for diesel engines to meet the increasingly stringent emission regulations. Both the peak temperature and the maximum temperature gradient of the DPF during active regeneration should be well controlled in order to enhance the reliability and durability of the filter. In this paper, the temperature field of the DPF during active regeneration with hydrocarbon (HC) injection was investigated with engine bench tests and numerical simulation. For the experimental study, 24 thermocouples were inserted into the DPF channels to measure the inner temperature of the filter to capture its temperature field, and the circumferential, axial and radial distribution of the filter temperature was analyzed to understand the DPF temperature field behavior during active regeneration.

A new combustion mode namely multiple premixed compression ignition (MPCI) for gasoline engines was proposed. The MPCI mode can be realized by two or more times gasoline injections into cylinder with a high pressure around the compression TDC and featured with a premixed combustion after each injection in the cylinder, which is different from the existed gasoline direct injection compression ignition (GDICI) modes such as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) mode with gasoline injection occurred in intake stroke, and partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode with multiple gasoline injections in intake and compression strokes before the start of combustion (SOC). Therefore the spray and combustion of the MPCI mode are alternatively occurred as "spray-combustion-spray-combustion" near the TDC, rather than "spray-spray-combustion" sequence as traditional PPCI gasoline engines.

Homogeneous charge combustion and emissions of ethanol ignited by pilot diesel fuel were investigated on a two-cylinder diesel engine. The results show that emissions depend on loads and ethanol volume fraction. At low loads, ethanol has little effects on smoke. With the increase of ethanol, NOx decreases, but CO emissions increase. At high loads, smoke emissions reduce greatly with increasing ethanol, but NOx and total hydrocarbon (THC) emissions increase. With the increase of ethanol, ignition delays, combustion duration shortens. The maximum rates of heat release for the fuel containing 10 vol% ethanol (E10) and 30 vol% ethanol (E30) increase. Brake specific energy consumption (BSEC) of E10 and E30 is improved slightly only at full loads. Compared to smoke emissions obtained on the same engine using ethanol blended diesel fuels, the tendency of smoke reduction is similar to that of homogeneous charge combustion of ethanol at the same operating conditions.

The detailed chemical kinetics was implemented into the 0D single-zone model, 1D engine cycle model and 3D CFD model respectively. Both simulation and experiment were carried out on a four-stroke gasoline HCCI engine with direct injection. The 0D model (HRG) was developed to study the isolating effect of HCCI parameters. The 1D engine cycle model with HRG was established to study the gas exchange process and the direct injection strategy in the gasoline HCCI engine with two-stage direct injection (TSDI) and negative valve overlap (NVO). The 3D model with HRG was constructed to study the ignition control mechanism in “two-zone HCCI” combustion via analysis the auto-ignition spots distribution in combustion chamber. “Two-zone HCCI” is defined in this paper as premixed ultra-lean compression ignition combining with premixed ultra-rich compression ignition. The three models were validated by experiments.

This study improved the computational efficiency significantly using parallel computation and reduced mechanisms. A 3-dimensional engine moving mesh of intake port, exhaust port and combustion chamber was established for HCCI engine cycle simulation. To achieve a more accurate analysis, chemical kinetics was implemented into the CFD code to study the intake, spray, ignition, combustion, and pollution formation process in HCCI engine. The simulations were run on a cluster of 16-CPU, parallelized by Message-Passing Interface (MPI) mode. The cases with detailed and reduced reaction mechanisms were calculated using 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 CPUs respectively and the corresponding computational time and speed-up were discussed. Using MPI 8-CPU with reduced mechanism (less than 40 species) is the optimal scheme for CFD/Chemistry calculation of typical HCCI engine.

Two premixed compression ignition modes for low octane gasoline are numerically investigated. The multiple premixed compression ignition (MPCI) mode is featured with a sequence of “spray- combustion- spray- combustion”, while the partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode is a sequence of “spray- spray- combustion”. This paper compares the combustion process of the two modes using multi-dimensional CFD code, KIVA-3v, which can perform chemical reaction calculations for different fuels by a discrete multiple component (DMC) method. The fuel used for simulation consists of 58.5% i-C8H18 and 41.5% n-C7H16 in volume, and has the same RON and similar physical properties to straight-run naphtha used in the experiment. The engine operating condition is fixed at a 1600rpm and 0.7 MPa IMEP. The injection strategies for these two modes are different. All of the parameters in the simulation come from the single cylinder engine experiments.

In this paper, the detailed chemical kinetics was implemented into the three-dimensional CFD code to study the combustion process in HCCI engines. An extended hydrocarbon oxidation reaction mechanism (89 species, 413 reactions) used for high octane fuel was constructed and then used to simulate the chemical process of the ignition, combustion and pollutant formation in HCCI conditions. The three-dimensional CFD / chemistry model (FIRE/CHEMKIN) was validated using the experimental data from a Rapid Compression Machine. The simulation results show good agreements with experiments. Finally, the improved multi-dimensional CFD code has been employed to simulate the intake, spray, combustion and pollution formation process of the gasoline direct injection HCCI engine with multi-stage injection strategy. The models account for intake flow structure, spray atomization, spray/wall interaction, droplet evaporation and gas phase chemistry in complex multi-dimensional geometries.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion concept has advantages of high thermal efficiency and low emissions. However, how to control HCCI ignition timing is still a challenge in the application. This paper tries to control HCCI ignition timing using gasoline direct injection (DI) into cylinder to form a desired mixture of fuel and air. A homogeneous charge can be realized by advancing injection timing in intake stroke and a stratified charge can be obtained by retarding injection timing in compression stroke. Multi-stage injection strategy is used to control the mixture concentration distribution in the cylinder for HCCI combustion. A three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code FIRE™ is employed to simulate the effects of single injection timing and multi-stage injection on mixture formation and combustion. Effects of mixture concentration and inlet temperature on HCCI ignition timing are also investigated in this paper.

In this paper a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to measure flow velocity fields in different inlet cones under different mass flux conditions on a steady state flow rig. Meanwhile, a mathematical model of the flow in catalytic converters was established and simulated using CFD code. Validation of the model shows that simulation results have a good agreement with experiments, which means that the established model is feasible and can be applied to predict the flow characteristics in catalytic converters with different inlet cone configurations. Experimental and computational results indicate that the inlet cone configuration significantly affects flow distribution. For a conventional inlet cone, the cone angle is one of the key factors to affect flow characteristics and should be kept as small as possible in a design. An enhanced inlet cone can greatly improve flow uniformity in catalytic converters.

A conceptual approach to help understand and simulate droplet induced pre-ignition is presented. The complex phenomenon of oil-fuel droplet induced pre-ignition has been decomposed to its elementary processes. This approach helps identify the key fluid properties and engine parameters that affect the pre-ignition phenomenon, and could be used to control LSPI. Based on the conceptual model, a 3D CFD engine simulation has been developed which is able to realistically model all of the elementary processes involved in droplet induced pre-ignition. The simulation was successfully able to predict droplet induced pre-ignition at conditions where the phenomenon has been experimentally observed. The simulation has been able to help explain the observation of pre-ignition advancement relative to injection timing as experimentally observed in a previous study [6].

This paper studied the knock combustion process in gasoline HCCI engines. The complex chemical kinetics was implemented into the three-dimensional CFD code with LES (Large eddy simulation) to study the origin of the knock phenomena in HCCI combustion process. The model was validated using the experimental data from the cylinder pressure measurement. 3D-CFD with LES method gives detailed turbulence, species, temperature and pressure distribution during the gasoline HCCI combustion process. The simulation results indicate that HCCI engine knock originates from the random multipoint auto-ignition in the combustion chamber due to the slight inhomogeneity. It is induced by the significantly different heat release rate of high temperature oxidation (HTO) and low temperature oxidation (LTO) and their interactions.

Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines developed at nineties of the twentieth century can greatly improve the fuel economy. But the combustion chamber design and mixture control of the engines are very complex compared with Port Fuel Injection (PFI) gasoline engines. A two-stage gasoline direct injection (TSGDI) combustion system is developed and aimed to solve the problem of the complexity. Two-stage fuel injection and flexible injection timings are adopted as main means to form reasonable stratified mixture in the cylinder. A simple combustion chamber and helical intake port are designed to assist the mixture's stable combustion, which reduces the difficulties of the combustion system design. Systematical simulation and experimental studies of the effects of injection strategies such as different first,second injection timings and injection ratios, on the mixture formation processes and engine performanc are made in detail.

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) has been demonstrated as one of the most promising technologies to reduce NOx emissions from heavy-duty diesel engines. To meet the Euro VI regulations, the SCR system should achieve high NOx reduction efficiency even at low temperature. In the SCR system, NH3 is usually supplied by the injection of urea water solution (UWS), therefore it is important to improve the evaporation and decomposition efficiency of UWS at low temperature and minimize urea deposits. In this study, the UWS spray, urea decomposition, and the UWS impingement on pipe wall at low temperature were investigated based on an engine test bench and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The decomposition of urea and deposits was analyzed using thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).

In order to enhance the thermal efficiency of gasoline engines, a combustion mode namely Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) was introduced and examined in this paper. Port-injected gasoline was used as the main fuel and formed a homogeneous charge in the cylinder. Diesel was used as the pilot fuel, directly injected into the cylinder, and self-ignited and this induced the ignition of the premixed gasoline-air charge. The images of HCII combustion process were taken on an optical engine through a high-speed CMOS camera. The multi-point induced ignition phenomena were observed and the parameters like flame luminance, ignition delay and combustion duration were analyzed by image analysis. The result shows that as the gasoline/diesel ratio increases with a fixed low pilot amount, the ignition delay increases, the initial ignition area extends from the center towards the periphery of the combustion chamber, and the combustion velocity increased.