Comparison of Representative Interactive Flamelet and Detailed Chemistry Based Combustion Models for Internal Combustion Engines

Representative Interactive Flamelet (RIF) and Detailed Chemistry based combustion models are two commonly used combustion models for non-premixed diesel engine simulations. RIF performs transient chemistry calculations on a one-dimensional grid based on the mixture fraction coordinate. Hence, the chemistry calculations are essentially decoupled from the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) grid. The detailed chemistry model, on the other hand, solves transient chemistry in the 3D CFD domain. An efficient parallelization strategy is used for the computation of the multiple flamelets RIF model. The multiple flamelets RIF and detailed chemistry combustion models are applied for modeling a constant volume spray combustion case and a diesel engine case, with a view to compare the differences between the two models. Results for ignition delay, flame lift-off length, cylinder pressure, and emissions are compared with experimental data. The effect of number of flamelets is evaluated. Finally, the effect of spray cooling is investigated based on the results from the RIF model and the detailed chemistry based combustion model.