Search Results

This computational study compares predictions and experimental results for the use of direct injected iso-octane fuel during the negative valve overlap (NVO) period to achieve HCCI combustion. The total fuel injection was altered in two ways. First the pre-DI percent, (the ratio of direct injected fuel during the NVO period “pre-DI” to the secondary fuel supplied at the intake manifold “PI”), was varied at a fixed pre-DI injection timing, Secondly the timing of the pre-DI injection was varied while all of the fuel was supplied during the NVO period. A multi-zone, two-dimensional CFD simulation with chemistry was performed using KIVA-3V release 2 implemented with the CHEMKIN solver. The simulations were performed during the NVO period only.

Multi-dimensional computational efforts using comprehensive and skeletal kinetics have been made to investigate the cool flame region in HCCI combustion. The work was done in parallel to an experimental study that showed the impact of the negative temperature coefficient and the cool flame on the start of combustion using different fuels, which is now the focus of the simulation work. Experiments in a single cylinder CFR research engine with n-butane and a primary reference fuel with an octane number of 70 (PRF 70) were modeled. A comparison of the pressure and heat release traces of the experimental and computational results shows the difficulties in predicting the heat release in the cool flame region. The behavior of the driving radicals for two-stage ignition is studied and is compared to the behavior for a single-ignition from the literature. Model results show that PRF 70 exhibits more pronounced cool flame heat release than n-butane.

A detailed comparison of cylinder pressure derived combustion performance and engine-out emissions is made between an all-metal single-cylinder light-duty diesel engine and a geometrically equivalent engine designed for optical accessibility. The metal and optically accessible single-cylinder engines have the same nominal geometry, including cylinder head, piston bowl shape and valve cutouts, bore, stroke, valve lift profiles, and fuel injection system. The bulk gas thermodynamic state near TDC and load of the two engines are closely matched by adjusting the optical engine intake mass flow and composition, intake temperature, and fueling rate for a highly dilute, low temperature combustion (LTC) operating condition with an intake O2 concentration of 9%. Subsequent start of injection (SOI) sweeps compare the emissions trends of UHC, CO, NOx, and soot, as well as ignition delay and fuel consumption.

This paper reports the results of two parallel investigations: An investigation on the solubility of alcohols in diesel fuels, and the diesel engine performance with the blended fuels. The investigation proposes an empirical formula for the solubility of alcohols in diesel fuels, as a function of temperature, water content, additive concentration and specific gravity of the diesel fuel. The engine performance when using the blended fuels was also investigated. Compared with conventional diesel fuels, the blended fuels show promise of better thermal efficiency, smoke free operation, and reduction of HC, NOx, and CO emissions.

A procedure has been developed to build system level predictive models that incorporate physical laws as well as information derived from experimental data. In particular a soot model was developed, trained and tested using experimental data. It was seen that the model could fit available experimental data given sufficient training time. Future accuracy on data points not encountered during training was estimated and seen to be good. The approach relies on the physical phenomena predicted by an existing system level phenomenological soot model coupled with ‘weights’ which use experimental data to adjust the predicted physical sub-model parameters to fit the data. This approach has developed from attempts at incorporating physical phenomena into neural networks for predicting emissions. Model training uses neural network training concepts.

An engine cycle simulation code with detailed chemical kinetics has been developed to study Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion with hydrogen as the fuel. In order to attain adequate combustion duration, resulting from the self-accelerating nature of the chemical reaction, fuel and temperature inhomogeneities have been brought to the calculation by considering the combustion chamber to have various temperature and fuel distributions. Calculations have been done under various conditions including both perfectly homogeneous and inhomogeneous cases, changing the degree of inhomogeneity. The results show that intake gas temperature is more dominant on ignition timing of HCCI than equivalence ratio and that there is a possibility to control HCCI by introducing appropriate temperature inhomogeneity to in-cylinder mixture.

This report describes the possibility of quantitative analysis of Schlieren photographs as an internal combustion engine diagnostic. Using a recently developed photographic analysis system, it was attempted to analyze Schlieren photographs. Results showed simple integration calculations produced significant distortion in the analyzed results. To eliminate the distortion, some correction techniques were developed in this research. Accuracy of the analyzed results were evaluated roughly with uncertainty analysis. The results showed that this analysis technique can be one of the approximate diagnostics for the measurement of fuel vapor and density distribution in internal combustion engine research. SCHLIEREN photography is one of the most popular visualization techniques in the research of internal combustion engines. Although the photographs have density information in themselves, they are used mainly for the purpose of qualitative visualization.

In the present work, an attempt was made to predict engine noise from the shape of the burning rate curve. Thus, the influence of the shape of the burning rate curve on engine noise, especially on combustion noise was studied in detail and clarification of the relationship was successfully made. At first, an approximation of burning rate curve using a function was attempted. And in second, the transfer rate from cylinder pressure to combustion noise was obtained. Then, the relation between the deciding parameters of burning rate curve and noise and performance of engine were studied.

Engine operation with blended SRC-II and pyridine doped diesel fuel were compared relative to regular #2 diesel fuel in a 4-stroke, turbocharged, direct injection, high speed commercial diesel engine. The brake specific fuel consumption, (M-Joule/hp-hr), turbocharging, combustion characteristics and smoke did not change between blended SRC-II and regular #2 diesel fuel. This was expected since the sample fuels were blended to be of the same cetane number. The maximum torque, hydrocarbon and NOx emissions were higher for blended SRC-II. There was essentially no difference in the NOx measurements of the pyridine doped fuel and regular #2 diesel fuel. The NOx emission increase for the blended SRC-II is believed to be caused by the increased aromatic content of the blended SRC-II and not the fuel nitrogen conversion.

Lean-burn engines now being developed employ in-cylinder injection which requires high pressures and so necessitates expensive injection equipment. The injection system proposed here is an air assisted in-cylinder injection system which is injecting a mixture of air and fuel in the cylinder during the intake stroke and allowing atomization at lower injection pressures than those necessary in compressing fuel with a usual solid injection. This time, the experiments used a testing engine of a 4 stroke gasoline OHV type replacing the Side Valve type. Performance with a small depression in the main combustion chamber was investigated with a spark plug and reed valve installed in the depression. The engine was operated then following the same method as last year (SAE 982698). As a result, the lean burn method employed here was possible over a wide range of engine speeds and loads. Moreover, it was also shown that this operation was possible with a fully opened throttle valve.

Dimethyl ether (DME) can be converted easily from methanol in a catalytic reactor, and it has very good compression ignition characteristics. This paper presents experimental results on a compression ignition methanol engine with DME as an ignition improver. The results show that engine operation is sufficiently smooth with high efficiency without spark or glow plugs. In the experiments, two methods for DME introduction were investigated: an aspiration and a torch ignition method. The aspiration method introduces DME into the intake manifold, and is structurally simple but suffers from poor emission characteristics at partial loads, and a large amount of DME is required for ignition. With the torch ignition method, DME is introduced into a torch ignition chamber during the intake stroke, and significant reductions in both the necessary DME quantity and emissions were obtained. Engine operation was also attempted with DME-dissolved methanol fuel without ignition aids.

The Dual-Fuel (DF) combustion is a promising technology for efficient, low NOx and low exhaust particulate matter (PM) engine operation. To achieve equivalent performance to a DF engine with only the use of conventional liquid fuel, this study proposes the implementation of an on-board fuel reformation process by piston compression. For concept verification, DF combustion tests with representative reformed gas components were conducted. Based on the results, the controllability of the reformed gas composition by variations in the operating conditions of the reformer cylinder were discussed.

Small two stroke SI engines supplied with natural gas in the intake port are advantageous for low maintenance and low cost when used in co-generation systems for residential use. However in the engines with port injection systems, the unburned HC emissions are higher and thermal efficiency is lower than with 4 stroke engines. To overcome these disadvantages, an in-cylinder injection with a special low pressure injection nozzle system was attempted. The results showed that improvements in unburned HC emissions and thermal efficiency are possible due to the remarkable reduction in scavenging loss and the lean combustion.

Spark-assisted diesel engines operated with alcohol fuels usually display misfiring or knocking problems. This paper presents an analysis of the factors influencing the ignition characteristics of ethanol in a swirl chamber diesel engine with a multi-spark ignitor. In the experiments, cycle-to-cycle combustion variations and the degree of knocking were investigated by changing engine parameters over a wide operating range. The results of the investigations showed that stable ignition and smooth combustion is achieved when a flammable mixture is formed in the vicinity of the spark plug when only a small amount of the injected fuel has evaporated. By optimizing the design factors, operation with high efficiency and low exhaust emissions was achieved.

A Texaco L-163S TCCS (Texaco Controlled Combustion System) engine was operated with pure methanol to investigate the origin and mechanism of unburned fuel (UBF) and formaldehyde emissions. The effects of engine load, speed and coolant temperature on the exhaust emissions were studied using both continuous and time-resolved sampling methods. Within the range studied, increasing the engine load resulted in a decrease of the exhaust UBF emissions and an increase in the formaldehyde emissions. Engine speed had little effect on both UBF and formaldehyde emissions. Decreasing the engine coolant temperature from 85°C to 45°C caused the exhaust UBF emissions to approximately double and the formaldehyde emission to increase approximately 20 percent. It is hypothesized that both fuel impingement and spray tailing are responsible for the high UBF emissions. In-cylinder formation of formaldehyde was found to be the major source of the exhaust aldehyde emissions in this experiment.

In this paper we report the results of experiments done during the transient operation of a single cylinder Cummins NH engine. The data taken include cycle resolved pressure, combustion chamber surface temperatures and ignition delay. The data was taken during a special type of engine operation in which the engine was repeatedly hopped from one load to another. In this way cycle to cycle variations could be averaged out by ensemble averaging individual cycles after the step load change. For analysis of the heat transfer a unique finite difference temperature probe was developed to delineate the 3-D heat transfer effects in place of the standard 1-D assumptions and a new analysis technique was developed to calculate the instantaneous heat flux during the transient. Analysis of the data indicates that the combustion reaches an equivalent steady state condition within 2000 engine cycles after the load change.

A single cylinder CFR research engine has been run in HCCI combustion mode for a range of temperatures and fuel compositions. The data indicate that the best HCCI operation, as measured by a combination of successful combustion with low ISFC, occurs at or near the rich limit of operation. Analysis of the pressure and heat release histories indicated the presence, or absence, and impact of the fuel's NTC ignition behavior on establishing successful HCCI operation. The auto-ignition trends observed were in complete agreement with previous results found in the literature. Furthermore, analysis of the importance of the fuel's octane sensitivity, through assessment of an octane index, successfully explained the changes in the fuels auto-ignition tendency with changes in engine operating conditions.

This paper presents a study on the effects of the engine size and rotation speed on diesel combustion characteristics and engine performance of two differently sized diesel engines (85 mm and 135 mm bores). For simplification of the evaluation, the experimental conditions were set based on the similarity rules proposed by Chikahisa. The combustion characteristics and the indicated thermal efficiencies were compared for the small and the large engines at the same engine speed. To examine the effects of the velocities of the in-cylinder gas and the fuel spray on the combustion and the thermal efficiency, the engine speed was changed in the small engine, while maintaining a non-dimensional engine speed.

To monitor emission-related components/systems and to evaluate the presence of malfunctioning or failures that can affect emissions, current diesel engine regulations require the use of on-board diagnostics (OBD). For diesel particulate filters (DPF), the pressure drop across the DPF is monitored by the OBD as the pressure drop is approximately linear related to the soot mass deposited in a filter. However, sudden acceleration may cause a sudden decrease in DPF pressure drop under cold start conditions. This appears to be caused by water that has condensed in the exhaust pipe, but no detailed mechanism for this decrease has been established. The present study developed an experimental apparatus that reproduces rapid increases of the exhaust gas flow under cold start conditions and enables independent control of the amount of water as well as the gas flow rate supplied to the DPF.

This paper presents experimental results of the reduction of both particulate and NOx emitted from direct injection diesel engines by a two stage combustion process. The primary combustion is made very rich to reduce NOx and then the particulate is oxidized by strong turbulence generated during the secondary combustion. The rich mixture is formed by low pressure fuel injection and a small cavity combustion chamber configuration. The strong turbulence is generated by a jet of burned gas from an auxiliary chamber installed at the cylinder head. The results showed that NOx was reduced significantly while maintaining fuel consumption and particulate emissions. An investigation was also carried out on the particulate reduction process in the combustion chamber with the turbulence by gas sampling and in-cylinder observation with an optical fiber scope and a high speed camera.