Modeling and Control of a High Pressure Combined Air/Fuel Injection System

A high pressure combined air-fuel injection system is designed and tested for an experimental free liquid-piston engine compressor. The application discussed utilizes available high pressure air from the compressor’s reservoir, and high pressure fuel to mix and then inject into a combustion chamber. This paper addresses the modeling, design and control for this particular high-pressure air-fuel injection system, which features an electronically controlled air/fuel ratio control scheme. This system consists of a fuel line and an air line, whose mass flow rates are restricted by metering valves. These two lines are connected to a common downstream tube where air and fuel are mixed. By controlling the upstream pressures and the orifice areas of the metering valves, desired A/F ratios can be achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated by a lumped-parameter model in simulation and validated by experiments.