Search Results

The authors have explored the potential of fuel to control spray and its combustion processes in a diesel engine. Fuel has some potential for low emission and high thermal efficiency because its volatility and ignitability are one of the ultimate performing factors of the engines. In present study, the ignition process of mixed fuel spray was investigated in a constant volume combustion vessel and in a rapid compression and expansion machine, The ignition delay based on the diagram of rate of the heat release, the imaging of natural flame emissions and the numerical simulation were carried out to clarify the effect of the physical and chemical properties of mixed fuel on ignition characteristics.

This study proposes a hybrid model which consists of modified TAB(Taylor Analogy Breakup) model and DVM(Discrete Vortex Method). In this study, the simulation process is divided into three steps. The first step is to analyze the breakup of droplet of injected fuel by using modified TAB model. The second step based on the theory of Siebers' liquid length is analysis of spray evaporation. The liquid length analysis of injected fuel is used for connecting both modified TAB model and DVM. The final step is to reproduce the ambient gas flow and inner vortex flow injected fuel by using DVM. In order to examine the hybrid model, an experiment of a free evaporating fuel spray at early injection stage of in-cylinder like conditions had been executed. The numerical results calculated by using the present hybrid model are compared with the experimental ones.

The slit nozzle in the fuel injection valve for a direct injection spark ignition gasoline engine forms a thin, fan-shaped spray. The fan-shaped spray is characterized by high dispersion, comparatively high penetration, and fine atomization. This enables it to form a stable air-fuel mixture. However, further improvement of engine performance requires that the spray characteristics (particularly the level of atomization) be improved. Since the spray characteristics are strongly influenced by the fuel flow within the nozzle, it was clarified this effect by visual analyses of the fuel flow inside the nozzle using enlarged acrylic slit nozzles. The results demonstrated that vortices that are formed within the nozzle sac are continuously propagated in a periodic manner within the sac and that they influence the streamline of fuel flow from the sac to the slit.

In the direct injection spark ignition gasoline engine (D-4), thin fan-shaped high-dispersion, high-penetration and high-atomization spray formed by the slit nozzle generates a stratified mixture cloud without depending on a strong intake air motion, subsequently realizing stable stratified charge combustion. To improve fuel economy further in actual traffic, the region of stratified charge combustion in torque-engine speed map must be expanded by improving spray characteristics. Since the fuel flow inside the nozzle has a large effect on the spray characteristics, it was clarified this effect by visual analysis of the fuel flow inside the nozzle using an enlarged acrylic slit nozzle of 10 magnifications. Consequently, it was found that vortices are generated frequently within a sac even in the case of steady state conditions. The effect on the spray characteristics is corresponding to the vortex scale.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation is widely used in the development and validation of automotive engine performance. In engine simulation, spray breakup submodels are important because spray atomization has a significant influence on mixture formation and the combustion process. However, no breakup models have been developed for the fuel spray with plate-type multi-hole nozzle installed in port fuel injection spark ignition (SI) engines. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to simulate spray formation in port fuel injection precisely. The authors proposed the heterogeneous sheet breakup model for gasoline spray injected from plate type multi-hole nozzle. The novel breakup model was developed by clarifying the phenomenological mechanism of the spray atomization process. In this paper, this model was improved in dispersion characteristics and evaluated by the comparison of the model calculation results with experimental data.

This paper presents an atomization mechanism of a spray injected into the low-pressure field, as the subject of injection system in a suction manifold of gasoline engine. Pure liquid fuel, which is n-Pentane or n-Hexane is injected into quiescent gaseous atmosphere at room-temperature and low- pressure through pintle type electronic control injector. Fuel sprays are observed by taking photographs for variation of the back pressure and the changes in spray characteristics with the back pressure below atmospheric pressure are examined in detail. In particular, in the case of the back pressure below the saturated vapor pressure of fuel, the atomization mechanism is discussed from a viewpoint of flash boiling phenomena, those are bubble growth rate and so on.

In a small high-speed DI diesel engine, injected fuel sprays impinge on the wall of piston cavity. Discussion and analysis of the combustion phenomena in the diesel engine demand the measurement of the characteristics of the impinging spray. In the experiments presented here, diesel fuel oil was injected into a high pressure chamber in which compressed air or CO2 gas at room temperature was charged. The single spray was impinged on a flat wall at a normal angle. The growth of the spray was photographed, not only with transmitted light but also with scattered light through a narrow slit. The temporal and spatial distribution of the droplets density in the impinging spray applying the concentric circle model was calculated using the data of the laser light extinction method. From these results, the detailed information concerning the droplets density in the impinging diesel spray was obtained.

In this paper, spray characteristics were examined to deduce the effect of ambient gas properties. Considered ambient properties were the viscosity μa and density ρa, and thus the kinematic viscosity νa. The objective of this paper is to reveal the effect of compressibility of the ambient gas to spray formation. In the experiments, the changed ranges were And a standard-sac volume nozzle of hole diameter dn =0.25 mm (ln/dn=3.0) was used at constant injection pressure difference (Δp=16.2 MPa). Also the injection pressure was varied in the range of 55 to 120 MPa with a mini-sac volume nozzle of hole diameter dn =0.20 mm (ln/dn =5.5). Several different gases were used to change the ambient viscosity at a room temperature. From the experiments, it is obtained that larger the viscosity, the more the spray spreads in the radial direction, thus the spray angle gets larger and the tip penetration became shorter.

In this study, a numerical experiment using a 2D convective equation and LES of an evaporative diesel spray for different convective schemes has been performed to examine effects of convective schemes on a fuel-air mixture formation of the diesel spray simulation and to determine the convective scheme used in KIVALES. In addition to KIVALES original schemes, such as QSOU, PDC and IDC, CIP was incorporated into KIVALES in order to calculate the convective terms with low numerical diffusion. The numerical experiment using the 2D convective equation showed that the numerical diffusion of CIP scheme was lowest in the convective schemes used in present study. However CIP scheme used was not a monotone scheme completely due to the overshoot and the undershoot of the scalar provided near the boundary. Hence, CIP scheme was employed for only the convective term of the LES momentum equation, while the other convective schemes were calculated using QSOU, which is a monotone scheme.

A single cylinder engine has been run with direct-injection premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) operation. The operation is fueled with primary reference fuels for a wide variety of injection timing and equivalence ratio to investigate the effect of charge stratification and octane rating on PCCI combustion. The test results showed that although the change of the injection timing can gain the high combustion efficiency for a wide range of equivalence ratio, the combustion phasing where the high combustion efficiency is accomplished is not varied only by changing the injection timings. Therefore, the only change of injection timings does not improve the thermal efficiency which is influenced by the combustion phasing. On the other hand, at the fixed compression ratio, inlet air temperature and so on, the octane rating is useful in altering the combustion phasing.

This work presents the ignition delay time characteristics of oxygenated fuel sprays under simulated diesel engine conditions. A constant volume combustion vessel is used for the experiments. The fuels used in the experiments were three oxygenated fuels: diethylene glycol dibutyl ether, diethylene glycol diethyl ether, and diethylene glycol dimethyl ether. JIS 2nd class gas oil was used as the reference fuel. The ambient gas temperature and oxygen concentration were ranging from 700 to 1100K and from 21 to 9%, respectively. The results show that the ignition delay of each oxygenated fuel tested in this experiments exhibits shorter than that of gas oil fuel for the wide range of ambient gas conditions. Also, NTC (negative temperature coefficient) behavior which appears under shock tube experiment for homogenous fuel-air mixture was observed on low ambient gas oxygen concentration for each fuel. And at the condition, the ignition behavior exhibits two-stage phase.

Considering the bell-shaped temperature dependence of soot particle formation, the control of flame temperature has a possibility to drastically suppress of soot formation. Furthermore, oxygenated fuels are very effective on soot reduction, and the use of these kinds of fuels has a potentiality for smokeless diesel combustion. In this paper, the effects of flame lift-off and flame temperature on soot formation in oxygenated fuel sprays were experimentally investigated using a constant volume combustion vessel which simulated diesel engine conditions. The diffusion flame lift-off length was measured in order to estimate the amount of the oxygen entrained upstream of the flame lift-off length in the fuel jet. This was determined from time-averaged OH chemiluminescence imaging technique. Also, the flame temperature and soot concentration were simultaneously evaluated by means of two-color method.

The flash boiling by fuel heating is a useful method to control the time spatial spray characteristics such as atomization of droplets, vaporization and air-fuel mixture concentration. It is one of the important phenomena for a direct injection gasoline engine (D.I.S.I) as a next generation powertrain. This report focuses on flash boiling spray using fuel heating. The purpose of this study is to understand its physical phenomena with scattered light method, schlieren photography, and Super High Spatial Resolution Photography (SHSRP). Fuel is iso-octane and injectors are a single hole nozzle and a multi hole nozzle. These are used for the basic phenomenon analysis. The influence on spray shape can be shown by schlieren photography. Spray droplet diameter and spray dispersion at the nozzle exit are observed by super high spatial resolution photography that is our original development technique. This is the first time that this SHSRP is applied to the measurement of the heating spray.

In this study, the novel fuel design concept has been proposed in order to realize the low emission and combustion control in engine systems. In this fuel design concept, the mixed fuels with a high volatility fuel (gasoline or gaseous fuel components) and a low volatility fuel (gas oil or fuel oil components) are used in order to improve the spray characteristics by flash boiling. In our previous papers on this study, the fundamental characteristics of spray and its combustion of mixed fuel were reported. In this paper, heat release and exhaust emission (smoke, NOx and THC) characteristics of single cylinder diesel engine operated with the mixed fuels were investigated under each load. The exhaust performance of diesel engine could be improved using mixed fuel, because fuel properties and spray characteristics were controlled by changing mixing fraction of the mixed fuel.

In a high-speed DI diesel engine, fuel sprays impinge surely on a wall of a piston cavity. Then the phenomenon of the heat transfer between the impinged spray and the wall appears and it has the strong effect on the combustion processes of the engine. The purpose of this study are to clarify basically the heat transfer characteristics. In the experiments, the fuel was injected into the quiescent inert atmosphere with a high temperature under high pressure field, and an evaporative single diesel spray was impinging upon a flat wall. And, the temperature distribution on the wall surface in a radial direction was detected by the Loex-Constantan thin film thermo-couples. Thus, the heat flux between the impinged spray and the wall surface was calculated from the temperature profile within the wall by Fourier's equation using the finite difference method, under the assumption of the one-dimensional heat conduction.

The CO2 gas dissolved fuel for the diesel combustion is effective to reduce the NOx emissions to achieve the internal EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) effect by fuel. This method has supplied EGR gas to the fuel side instead of supply EGR gas to the intake gas side. The fuel has followed specific characteristics for the diesel combustion. When the fuel is injected into the chamber in low pressure, this CO2 gas is separated from the fuel spray. The distribution characteristics of the spray are improved and the improvement of the thermal efficiency by reduction heat loss in the combustion chamber wall, and reduce soot emissions by the lean combustion is expected. Furthermore, this CO2 gas decreases the flame temperature. Further, it is anticipated to reduce NOx emissions by the spray internal EGR effect.

Instantaneous and statistical spray structures of diesel sprays are examined with numerical simulation and experiment. KIVALES, which is LES version of KIVA code, is used as the computational code. Injection velocity profiles measured by momentum method are employed for the initial condition of the calculation. In the experiment, shadowgraph photography is performed to measure macroscopic spray structure. LES approach predicts the instantaneous structure, which are the heterogeneity and intermittency in the periphery of the spray and the cyclic variability of each injection event. Moreover, LES can predict both the instantaneous and statistical spray structures.

In SI engines with port injection system, the injected fuel spray adheres surely on the port wall and the inlet valve, consequently, the spray-wall interaction process leads to the generation of unburned hydrocarbons and uncontrollable mixture formation. This paper deals with the fuel mixture preparation process including basic research on characteristics of the wall-wetted fuel film on a flat wall inside a constant volume vessel. In the experiments, iso-octane mixed with biacetyl as a tracer dopant was injected through a pintle type injector against a flat glass wall under the ambient conditions of atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The thickness of the adhered fuel film on the wall was quantitatively measured by using laser induced fluorescence (LIF) technique, which provides 2-D distribution information with high special resolution as a function of the injection duration, the impingement distance from the injector to the wall, and the impingement angle against the wall.

In this study, the authors analyze the concentration distribution of an evaporative spray mixture with LIEF (Laser induced exciplex fluorescence) method, which is a type of optical measurement. LIEF method is one of the optical measurements for obtaining the spray concentration distribution for separating vapor/liquid phases based on the fluorescence characteristics. In this paper, a quantitative concentration distribution analysis method for wall impingement spray in heterogeneous temperature field has been proposed. Then, a series of experiments were performed in varying injection pressure and ambient density. As a result, a two-dimensional concentration distribution was obtained for the free spray and wall impingement spray.

Flash-boiling occurs when a fuel is injected to a combustion chamber where the ambient pressure is lower than the saturation pressure of the fuel. It has been known that flashing is a favorable mechanism for atomizing liquid fuels. On the other hand, alternative fuels, such as gaseous fuels and oxygenated fuels, are used to achieve low exhaust emissions in recent years. In general, most of these alternative fuels have high volatility and flash-boiling takes place easily in fuel spray, when they are injected into the combustion chamber of an internal combustion engine under high pressure. In addition, fuel design concept the multicomponent fuel with high and low volatility fuels has been proposed in the previous study in order to control the spray and combustion processes in internal combustion engine. It is found that the multicomponent fuel produce flash-boiling with an increase in the initial fuel temperature.