A physics-based control-oriented combustion model is developed to accurately predict in-cylinder pressure and temperature of a diesel engine. The model is under the assumption that the combustion chamber consists of three zones: a liquid fuel zone, a reaction zone, and an unmixed zone. These zones are formulated to account for three key events in diesel combustion: fuel evaporation, chemical reaction, and fuel-air mixing, respectively. The liquid fuel zone is assumed to be of spherical shape. The evaporation of fuel is governed by Fick’s first law of diffusion. The reaction zone is modeled as a reactive system consisting of six species and two reaction steps. The burn rate is calculated based on species concentrations and reaction zone temperature. The unmixed zone contains only air and inert gas. The results of simulations are compared to the test data from a GM 6.7 L 8-cylinder Duramax diesel engine. The multi-zone model is shown to be capable of predicting in-cylinder pressure accurately with more degree of freedoms, compared to the singlezone reaction-based model.
