Abstract The simulation of a diesel natural gas dual fuel combustion process is the topic of this paper. Based on a detailed chemical reaction mechanism, which was applied for such a dual fuel combustion, the complete internal combustion engine process was simulated. Two single fuel combustion reaction mechanisms from literature were merged, to consider the simultaneous reaction paths of diesel and natural gas. N-heptane was chosen as a surrogate for diesel. The chemical reaction mechanisms are solved by applying a tabulation method using the software tool AVL Tabkin™. In combination with a Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) combustion model, this leads to a reduction of computational effort compared to a direct solving of the reaction mechanism, because of a decoupling of chemistry and flow calculations. Turbulence was modelled using an unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (URANS) model. In comparison to conventional combustion models, this approach allows for detailed investigations of the complex ignition process of the dual fuel combustion process. The unexpected inversely proportional relationship between start of injection (SOI) and start of combustion (SOC), a later start of injection makes for an earlier combustion of the main load, is only one of these interesting combustion phenomena, which can now be analyzed in detail. Further investigations are done for different engine load points and multiple pilot injection strategies. The simulation results are confirmed by experimental measurements at a medium speed dual fuel single cylinder research engine.

Abstract In addition to a further reduction in fuel consumption and emissions, the current focus of internal combustion engine development is on system integration of the engine and its components to ensure perfect engine operation and high engine performance over the entire service life of the engine. Extensive sensor application allows acquisition, storage and intelligent processing of numerous engine parameters in digital engine control systems. Intelligent software platforms are increasingly being used to fully exploit the data generated by sensor systems and ensure optimal engine operation. This paper deals with new concepts for measuring physical quantities that are characteristic of sliding bearings. It describes the development of a flexible and multifunctional sensor technology for real-time measuring of temperature and pressure as well as the signal transfer and data acquisition from moving parts to outside the engine. The sensor technology required for such a system must meet the challenges of defining a quickly responding method that captures the measured variable as close to the bearing surface as possible in order to detect bearing failures in advance. The system must be able to withstand the high temperatures and mechanical loads inside the engine. In addition, fast wireless data transfer of signals acquired from moving components such as conrod bearings is necessary. A highly flexible sensor package based on thin-film technology was developed to meet these requirements. The sensor is integrated into the bearing shell and has the potential to be employed in series application. A robust telemetry unit able to withstand harsh environmental conditions such as high temperature and extremely high centrifugal forces was developed that transfers the measured data to engine ECU or other external devices. At the same time, transmission rate, distances and power demand are subject to stringent requirements. To create a comparative basis for further verification of bearings with thin film sensor technology and to gain insight into the temperature distribution in the bearing gap, measurements with conventional sensor technology that assesses temperatures directly inside the lubrication gap were undertaken on a bearing test rig as well as on a multicylinder heavy duty diesel truck engine. The results of these investigations also provide a fundamental understanding of the temperature distribution in the bearing gap for crankshaft as well as for conrod bearings. The results of ongoing investigations will include a validation of the new temperature measurement method based on thin film technology under real engine conditions.

For efficient modeling of engine (or powertrain) supported by non-linear elastic mounts, a special methodology has been elaborated. Based on it, software tool has been developed to analyze the motion of rigid body and elastic mounts, which comprises of three modules: • Non-linear static analysis; • Modal analysis (undamped and damped); • Forced response (in frequency domain). Application example of a large V12 marine engine illustrates the suggested workflow. The results are verified against other software tools and validated by measurements.

The Los Alamos turbulent reactive flow researchers, our modelers and simulation code developers have succeeded in providing the engine research and development community an encompassing, robust, accurate and easy to use software for engine modeling or simulations. This software is now known as the FEARCE Toolkit. In this paper we discuss the physics present in the engine by discussion the methods we’ve employed to solve the model equations within the toolkit. Provided are background on what has been developed recently at LANL for internal combustion engine modeling.

The use of 3D CFD combustion models based on tabulated chemistry is becoming increasingly popular. Especially the runtime benefit is attractive, as the tabulated chemistry method allows to include state-of-the-art chemical reaction schemes in CFD simulations. In this work, the Tabkin FGM combustion model in AVL FIRE™ is used to assess the predictivity on a large database of a light-duty Diesel engine measurements. The AVL TABKIN™ software is used to create the chemistry look-up tables for the Tabkin FGM model. The TABKIN software has been extended with the kinetic soot model, where the soot mass fraction calculation is done during the chemistry tabulation process, as well as an NO model using a second progress variable. From recent validation studies, a best-practice and nearly automated workflow has been derived to create the look-up tables for Diesel engine applications based on minimal input. This automated modeling workflow is assessed in the present study. A wide range of parameter variations are investigated for 5 engine load points, with and without EGR, in total 186 cases. This large number of CFD simulations is run in an automated way and the parameters of the CFD sub-models are kept equal as well as all numerical settings. Results are presented for combustion and emissions (NO and soot). Combustion parameters and NO emissions correlate very well to the experimental database with R 2 values above 0.95. Soot predictions give order-of-magnitude agreement for most of the cases; the trend however is not always respected, which limits the overall correlation for all cases together, as reported by other authors. Further fundamental research on modeling soot formation and oxidation process remains required to improve the models. In terms of CPU time, the present study was executed on an off-the-shelf HPC cluster, using 8 CPU cores per case and requiring around 3 hrs of wall-time per case, e.g. such a large set of calculations can be simulated overnight on a standard HPC cluster.

Downsizing of engines is a major area of interest in the combustion engines sector due to a variety of reasons, chief among which is the CO2 emission reduction due to increased power to weight ratio. Furthermore, the introduction of various auxiliary devices into an automotive product, as well as increased acoustic insulation, necessitate continuous trimming of the engine packaging space. In this paper, the potential and limitations of downsizing diesel engines to very small displacements is studied. The goal of the article is to determine the minimum displacement a diesel engine can achieve, given the limitations posed by state-of-the-art technology. At the same time, the objective is the maximization of power density with acceptable levels of fuel consumption. While the investigations focused on the thermodynamic behavior of downsizing, structural aspects were also considered. On the basis of a literature study, the article illustrates the benchmarking of existing small gasoline and diesel engines for different applications. Thereafter, a matrix of engine configurations, which were relevant to the investigations, was generated. This included, among others, various bore / stroke combinations, compression ratios, piston and nozzle geometries, as well as valve diameters. Further, the influence of injection pressure, swirl and air-fuel ratio were included in the study. With the aid of the 1D simulation software GT-Power and the 3D CFD code Kiva-3V, a detailed thermodynamic analysis was performed on the chosen variants. In the results detailed in this article, a promising downsizing potential for a cylinder displacement well below 200cm 3 /cylinder has been established. Further, best-in-class power densities at acceptable fuel consumption levels could be achieved. This opens up the possibility for the application of such small diesel engines in a new range of applications. The challenges on the thermodynamic and structural fronts, which need to be met in order to achieve targets, are also highlighted.

In this paper, a numerical investigation of the ignition process of dual fuel engines is presented. Optical measurements revealed that a homogeneous natural gas charge ignited by a small diesel pilot comprises the combustion phenomena of compression ignition of the pilot fuel as well as premixed flame propagation. The 3-Zones Extended Coherent Flame Model (ECFM3Z) was selected, since it can treat auto-ignition, pre-mixed flame propagation and diffusion flame aspects. Usually combustion models in multi-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software packages are designed to handle only one reactive species representing the fuel concentration. In the context of the ECFM3Z model the concept of a multi-component fuel is applied to dual fuel operation. Since the available ignition models were not able to accurately describe the ignition characteristics of the investigated setup, a new dual fuel auto-ignition model was developed. Ignition delay times of the fuel blend are tabulated using a detailed reaction mechanism for n-heptane. Thereby, the local progress of pre-ignition reactions in the CFD simulation can be calculated. The ignition model is validated against experiments conducted with a periodically chargeable constant volume combustion chamber. The proposed model is capable to reproduce the ignition delay as well as the location of the flame kernels. The CFD simulations show the effect of temperature stratification and variations in the injection pressure on the apparent ignition delay of the micro pilot.

The burning of natural gas (NG) in compression ignition dual fuel engines has been highlighted for its fuel flexibility, higher thermal efficiency and reduced particulate matter (PM) emissions. Recent research has reported the significant impact of the introduction of NG to the intake port on nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) emissions, particularly at the low loads. However, the research on the mechanism of NO 2 formation in dual fuel engines has not been reported. This research simulates the formation and destruction of NO 2 in a NG-diesel dual fuel engine using commercial CFD software CONVERGE coupled with a reduced primary reference fuel (PRF) mechanism consisting of 45 species and 142 reactions. The model was validated by comparing the simulated cylinder pressure, heat release rate, and nitrogen oxides (NO x ) emissions with experimental data. The validated model was used to simulate the formation and destruction of NO 2 in a NG-diesel dual fuel engine. The formation of NO 2 and its correlation with the local concentration of nitric oxide (NO), methane, and temperature were examined and discussed. It was revealed that NO 2 was mainly formed in the interface region between the hot NO-containing combustion products and the relatively cool unburnt methane-air mixture. NO 2 formed at the early combustion stage is usually destructed to NO after the complete oxidation of methane and n-heptane, while NO 2 formed during the post-combustion process would survive and exit the engine. This was supported by the distribution of NO and NO 2 in the equivalence ratio (ER)-T diagram. A detailed analysis of the chemical reactions occurring in the NO 2 containing zone consisting of NO 2 , NO, O 2 , methane, etc., was conducted using a quasi-homogeneous constant volume model to identify the key reactions and species dominating NO 2 formation and destruction. The HO2 produced during the post combustion process of methane was identified as the primary species dominating the formation of NO 2 . The simulation revealed the key reaction path for the formation of HO 2 noted as CH 4 ->CH 3 ->CH 2 O->HCO->HO 2 , with conversion ratios of 98%, 74%, 90%, 98%, accordingly. The backward reaction of OH+NO 2 = NO+HO 2 consumed 34% of HO 2 for the production of NO 2 . It was concluded that the increased NO 2 emissions from NG-diesel dual fuel engines was formed during the post combustion process due to higher concentration of HO 2 produced during the oxidation process of the unburned methane at low temperature.

This study discusses the motion of the articulated connecting rod of an integral-engine compressor and the effect of the kinematics on in-cylinder pressure and port timings. A piston position modeling technique based on kinematics and engine geometry is proposed in order to improve the accuracy of simulated in-cylinder compression pressures. Many integral-engine compressors operate with an articulated connecting rod. For this type of engine-driven compressor, two power pistons share a crank throw with the compressor. The hinge pins that attach the power piston connecting rods to the crank are offset, causing the piston locations for each cylinder to be out of phase with each other. This causes top dead center to occur at different crank angles, alters the geometric compression ratio, and also changes the port timings for each cylinder. In this study, the equations of motion for the pistons of the four possible compressor/piston configurations of a Cooper-Bessemer GMW are developed. With the piston profiles, the intake and exhaust port timings were determined and compared to those of a slider-crank mechanism. The piston profile was then inputted into GT-POWER , an engine modeling software developed by Gamma Technologies, in order to obtain an accurate simulation match to the experimental in-cylinder pressure data collected from a Cooper-Bessemer GMWH-10C. Assuming the piston motion of an engine with an articulated connecting rod is similar to a slider-crank mechanism can create a difference in port timings. The hinge pin offset creates asymmetrical motion about 180°aTDC, causing the port timings to also be asymmetrical about this location. The largest differences are shown in the intake port opening of about 10° and a difference in exhaust port opening of about 7° when comparing the motion of the correct configuration to the motion of a slider-crank mechanism. It is shown that properly calculating the piston motion profiles according to the crank articulation and engine geometry provides a good method of simulating in-cylinder pressure data during the compression stroke.

To enable sustainable power generation through increasing shares of renewable energy, it is necessary to find flexible solutions that use conventional fossil fuels to compensate for volatile energy production from the wind and sun in order to stabilize the electrical grid. Modern large bore engines fueled by gas are already able to ramp up or shut down production quickly and also provide high efficiency throughout all load conditions. Nevertheless, transient capabilities of these engines must be improved even more in order to compete with diesel engines in applications with the highest transient requirements. To meet these demands, sophisticated actuators and control strategies are required. Testing of these components and strategies should already be conducted in an early development phase using rapid prototyping simulation and measurements on single cylinder engines instead of expensive multicylinder engine tests. The first section of this paper shows how engine controller functions for transient operation based on rapid prototyping models and real-time capable models can be derived and tested. This enables the capabilities of different control strategies to be quantified in order to improve transient performance in an early stage of development. The second section of the paper presents a methodology for transferring the transient behavior of a large multicylinder engine to a single cylinder test bed using a hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) approach with real time capable simulation models. A description of the demands on hardware and software is provided followed by a description of the overall system, after which the application of the real-time capable models on the real-time controllers of the test bed system is introduced. Finally, the models with measurement data from the single cylinder engine are compared with the multicylinder engine with a special focus on block loads and ramping the engine at constant speed.

Dual fuel combustion has garnered attention in recent years because of its potential for reducing emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) while sustaining diesel-like fuel conversion efficiencies. However, most dual fuel combustion strategies suffer from higher engine-out hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, leading to poor combustion efficiencies, especially at low loads. The present work examined computationally the effect of in-cylinder swirl on diesel-ignited methane dual fuel combustion with a focus on devising strategies for improving part-load combustion efficiencies. For this purpose, diesel-methane dual fuel combustion was studied on a heavy-duty single cylinder research engine (SCRE) platform using CONVERGE computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. A typical low load condition (IMEP = 5.1 bar) was selected at an engine speed of 1500 rpm and a relatively high methane percentage energy substitution (PES) of 80 percent (because experiments show poorer combustion efficiencies at high methane PES) at a nominal diesel injection timing of 2 degrees BTDC (358 CAD). The closed cycle simulation was first validated with experimental results (cylinder pressure and heat release histories as well as engine-out exhaust emissions) for neat diesel and diesel-methane dual fuel combustion, respectively. Subsequently, the influence of increasing swirl ratio from 0 to 1.5 on diesel-methane dual fuel combustion was characterized. Analysis of the computational results showed that peak cylinder pressure and heat release rate increased with increasing swirl ratio while the combustion duration (as determined by CA10-80) decreases from 25 CAD at a swirl ratio of 0.05 to nearly 15 CAD at a swirl ratio of 1.5. Indicated-specific hydrocarbon (ISHC) and indicated-specific carbon monoxide (ISCO) emissions decreased by about 60 percent and 50 percent, respectively, when swirl ratio was increased from 0.05 to 1.2; however, these reductions were accompanied by a 26 percent increase in indicated-specific NOx (ISNOx) emissions under these conditions. Therefore, the present study indicates that swirl optimization is a potentially viable strategy for reducing engine-out HC and CO emissions and for improving low-load combustion efficiencies in dual fuel engines, assuming additional NOx mitigation strategies are also employed simultaneously.

Recent experimental observations show that lifted diesel flames tend to propagate back towards the injector after the end of injection under conventional high-temperature combustion conditions. Earlier studies have referred to this phenomenon as “flashback,” but more recently the term “combustion recession” has been adopted to reflect findings that the process appears dominated by “auto-ignition” reactions upstream of the lifted flame after the end of injection. Since this process is only initiated after the end of injection, it is also closely linked to the end-of-injection entrainment wave and its impact on the transient mixture-chemistry evolution upstream of the lift-off length. A few recent studies have explored the physics of combustion recession with experimental and simplified modeling approaches, but the details of the chemical kinetics and convective-diffusive transport of reactive scalars in this phenomenon are still largely unexplored. There are also uncertainties in the capability of engine computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to accurately capture entrainment wave and combustion recession phenomena. In this study, highly-resolved numerical simulations have been employed to explore the mixing and combustion of a diesel spray after the end of injection and the influence of modeling choices on the prediction of these phenomena. The simulations are centered on a temperature sweep around the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) Spray-A conditions, from 800–1000 K, where different combustion recession behaviors are observed experimentally. Reacting spray simulations are performed in the open-source CFD software OpenFOAM, using a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach with a traditional Lagrangian-Eulerian coupled formulation for two-phase mixture transport. Two reduced chemical kinetics models for n-dodecane by Yao et al. and Cai et al. are used to evaluate the impact of low-temperature chemistry and mechanism formulation on predictions of combustion recession behavior. Observations from the numerical simulations are consistent with recent findings that a two-stage auto-ignition sequence drives the combustion recession process; self-sustained reacting mixtures arise in distinct regions that are spatially separated from the lifted flame. Simulations with two different chemical mechanisms indicate that low-temperature chemistry reactions drive the likelihood for second-stage ignition and combustion recession that in turn strongly influence local entrainment in these mixtures and likelihood of combustion recession.

In order to ensure that every portion of the emission control software in a vehicle works, all fault conditions must be tested. Simply simulating faults in the software of the engine controller and reporting it to the OBD II scanner is inadequate; the fault condition must be injected externally to the Engine Control Unit (ECU). In the case of hard-to-reproduce mechanical failures, this is a challenging task. This paper discusses the development of a system capable of emulating various faults that a fuel injector can have while operating as part of a complete working vehicle. For the ECU to operate properly, all fuel injectors must be present in the vehicle, be fully functional, and must represent an accurate electrical load to the ECU. Then, the induced faults must be seamlessly inserted into the running system in less than 10μs and removed before the subsequent injection event. This was accomplished with a variety of COTS hardware, a simple custom circuit, and the use of a large, flexible FPGA platform.

This study describes the use of an analytical model, constructed using sequential design of experiments (DOEs), to optimize and quantify the uncertainty of a Diesel engine operating point. A genetic algorithm (GA) was also used to optimize the design. Three engine parameters were varied around a baseline design to minimize indicated specific fuel consumption (ISFC) without exceeding emissions (NOx and soot) or peak cylinder pressure constraints. An objective merit function was constructed to quantify the strength of designs. The engine parameters were start of injection (SOI), injection duration, and injector included angle. The engine simulation was completed with a sector mesh in the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software CONVERGE, which predicted the combustion and emissions using a detailed chemistry solver with a reduced mechanism for n-heptane. The analytical model was constructed using the SmartUQ software using DOE responses to construct kernel emulators of the system. Each emulator was used to direct the placement of the next set of DOE points such that they improve the accuracy of the subsequently generated emulator. This refinement was either across the entire design space or a reduced design space that was likely to contain the optimal design point. After sufficient emulator accuracy was achieved, the optimal design point was predicted. A total of 5 sequential DOEs were completed, for a total of 232 simulations. A reduced design region was predicted after the second DOE that reduced the volume of the design space by 96.8%. The final predicted optimum was found to exist in this reduced design region. The sequential DOE optimization was compared to an optimization performed using a GA. The GA was completed using a population of 9 and was run for 71 generations. This study highlighted the strengths of both methods for optimization. The GA (known to be an efficient and effective method) found a better optimum, while the DOE method found a good optimum with fewer total simulations. The DOE method also ran more simulations concurrently, which is an advantage when sufficient computing resources are available. In the second part of the study, the analytical model developed in the first part was used to assess the sensitivity and robustness of the design. A sensitivity analysis of the design space around the predicted optimum showed that injection duration had the strongest effect on predicted results, while the included angle had the weakest. The uncertainty propagation was studied over the reduced design region found with the sequential DoE in the first part. The uncertainty propagation results demonstrated that for the relatively large variations in the input parameters, the expected variation in the ISFC and NOx results were significant. Finally, the predictions from the analytical model were validated against CFD results for sweeps of the input parameters. The predictions of the analytical model were found to agree well with the results from the CFD simulation.

Computational modeling, an important task for design, research and development stages, is evolving fast with the increase of computational capabilities over the last decades. One-dimensional (1D) CFD simulation is commonly used to analyze the flow rates and pressures of an entire fluid system of interconnected parts such as pipes, junctions, valves, and pumps. In contrast, three-dimensional (3D) CFD simulation allows detailed modeling of components such as manifolds, heat exchangers, and combustion cylinders where the flow contains significant 3D effects. Coupling a 1D model with a 3D domain potentially offers the benefits of both simulation strategies in one co-simulation approach. The present study provides a deep understanding of the co-simulation approach by listing all necessary steps need to be followed before and during the coupling of the 1D and 3D simulation software. It analyses the simulation and convergence time requirements based on the 3D model mesh quality and compares this approach with the current 1D–3D uncoupled approach followed in the industry. The outputs of both simulation approaches are then compared with experimental results. The co-simulation time mainly depends on the mesh quality of the 3D domain and the number of inner iterations per time-step which is entirely determined by the nature and complexity of the simulation. The co-simulation time per engine cycle is almost identical to the uncoupled approach. However, it was found that the number of cycles required for convergence in the coupled approach is nearly double than the uncoupled approach. The comparison between the two simulation approaches and the experimental results demonstrated the very 3D nature of the flows, the sensitivity of the uncoupled approach to input conditions and the sensitivity of co-simulation to the averaged boundary conditions transferred from the 1D model back to the 3D domain.

To meet the increasingly stringent emissions standards, Diesel engines need to include more active technologies with their associated control systems. Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) approaches are becoming popular when the engine system is represented as a real-time capable model to allow development of the controller hardware and software without the need for the real engine system. This paper focusses on the engine model required in such approaches. A number of semi-physical, zero-dimensional combustion modelling techniques are enhanced and combined into a complete model, these include — ignition delay, pre-mixed and diffusion combustion and wall impingement. In addition, a fuel injection model was used to provide fuel injection rate from solenoid energizing signals. The model was parameterized using a small set of experimental data from an engine dynamometer test facility and validated against a complete data set covering the full engine speed and torque range. The model was shown to characterize Rate of Heat Release (RoHR) well over the engine speed and load range. Critically the wall impingement model improved R 2 value for maximum RoHR from 0.89 to 0.96. This reflected in the model’s ability to match both pilot and main combustion phasing, and peak heat release rates derived from measured data. The model predicted indicated mean effective pressure and maximum pressure with R 2 values of 0.99 across the engine map. The worst prediction was for the angle of maximum pressure which had an R 2 of 0.74. The results demonstrate the predictive ability of the model, with only a small set of empirical data for training — this is a key advantage over conventional methods. The fuel injection model yielded good results for predicted injection quantity (R 2 = 0.99), and enables the use of the RoHR model without the need for measured rate of injection.

Combustion instabilities in dilute internal combustion engines are manifest in cyclic variability (CV) in engine performance measures such as integrated heat release or shaft work. Understanding the factors leading to CV is important in model-based control, especially with high dilution where experimental studies have demonstrated that deterministic effects can become more prominent. Observation of enough consecutive engine cycles for significant statistical analysis is standard in experimental studies but is largely wanting in numerical simulations because of the computational time required to compute hundreds or thousands of consecutive cycles. We have proposed and begun implementation of an alternative approach to allow rapid simulation of long series of engine dynamics based on a low-dimensional mapping of ensembles of single-cycle simulations which map input parameters to output engine performance. This paper details the use Titan at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to investigate CV in a gasoline direct-injected spark-ignited engine with a moderately high rate of dilution achieved through external exhaust gas recirculation. The CONVERGE™ CFD software was used to perform single-cycle simulations with imposed variations of operating parameters and boundary conditions selected according to a sparse grid sampling of the parameter space. Using an uncertainty quantification technique, the sampling scheme is chosen similar to a design of experiments grid but uses algorithms designed to minimize the number of samples required to achieve a desired degree of accuracy. The simulations map input parameters to output metrics of engine performance for a single cycle, and by mapping over a large parameter space, results can be interpolated from within that space. This interpolation scheme forms the basis for a low-dimensional ‘metamodel’ (or model of a model) which can be used to mimic the dynamical behavior of corresponding high-dimensional simulations. Simulations of high-EGR spark-ignition combustion cycles within a parametric sampling grid were performed and analyzed statistically, and sensitivities of the physical factors leading to high CV are presented. With these results, the prospect of producing low-dimensional metamodels to describe engine dynamics at any point in the parameter space will be discussed. Additionally, modifications to the methodology to account for nondeterministic effects in the numerical solution environment are proposed.

The noise of diesel engines is dependent upon numerous factors such as: load, speed, fuel injection strategies and fuel type, design of the piston, piston-pin and cylinder and their tolerances, bearings, valves and rocker arm clearances, and designs of the manifolds. In this study, engine sound and vibrations analysis have been conducted using two types of fueling and combustion strategies: classical ULSD combustion and the new RCCI with n -butanol injected in the intake manifold. The analyses add to the understanding of the influence of combustion characteristics’ effect on mechanical noise and vibrations throughout the engine’s operating cycle. The sound and vibration signals were both analyzed in the frequency and angle domain spectrum. Overall NVH spectrum from ULSD combustion was compared to that of RCCI with 50% by mass PFI of n -butanol (the 50% remaining ULSD fuel was directly injected). Frequency analyses were performed using the FFT and CPB methods with Bruel & Kjaer’s Pulse sound and vibrations analysis software. Angle domain analyses were performed, referencing 0 CAD as TDC in combustion. The engine tests were conducted at 1500 rpm and 4 bar IMEP. The COV of IMEP for DI ULSD and RCCI were 2.4 and 2.2, respectively. The correlations between sound, three dimensional vibration levels, and timings were found for: pressure gradients from combustion process, intake and exhaust valve actuations and gas exchange, and piston slap on the cylinder liner. The measurements were extracted and analyzed, and the results determined that virtually all the noise and vibration values pertinent to RCCI were lower than those of ULSD classical combustion.

There are many NO x removal technologies: exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), selective catalytic reduction (SCR), selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR), miller cycle, emulsion technology and engine performance optimization. In this work, a numerical simulation investigation was conducted to explore the possibility of an alternative approach: direct aqueous urea solution injection on the reduction of NO x emissions of a biodiesel fueled diesel engine. Simulation was performed using the 3D CFD simulation software KIVA4 coupled with CHEMKIN II code for pure biodiesel combustion under realistic engine operating conditions of 2400 rpm and 100% load. To improve the overall prediction accuracy, the Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor (KH-RT) spray break up model was implemented in the KIVA code to replace the original Taylor Analogy Breakup (TAB) model for the primary and secondary fuel breakup processes modeling. The KIVA4 code was further modified to accommodate multiple injections, different fuel types and different injection orientations. A skeletal reaction mechanism for biodiesel + urea was developed which consists of 95 species and 498 elementary reactions. The chemical behaviors of the NO x formation and Urea/NO x interaction processes were modeled by a modified extended Zeldovich mechanism and Urea/NO x interaction sub-mechanism. Developed mechanism was first validated against the experimental results conducted on a light duty 2KD FTV Toyota car engine fueled by pure biodiesel in terms of in-cylinder pressure, heat release rate. To ensure an efficient NO x reduction process, various aqueous urea injection strategies in terms of post injection timing and injection rate were carefully examined. The simulation results revealed that among all the four post injection timings (10 °ATDC, 15 °ATDC, 20 °ATDC and 25 °ATDC) that were evaluated, 15 °ATDC post injection timing consistently demonstrated a lower NO emission level. In addition, both the urea/water ratio and aqueous urea injection rate demonstrated important roles which affected the thermal decomposition of urea into ammonia and the subsequent NO x removal process, and it was suggested that 50% urea mass fraction and 40% injection rate presented the lowest NO x emission levels.

A numerical study on the use of biogas and diesel in a dual-fueled directly-injected engine has been conducted. The objective of this study is to determine the effect of using biogas on engine performance, combustion, and emissions. The main fuel is biogas which is premixed with air in order to form a homogeneous mixture. The mixture is then compressed and ignited by injecting diesel fuel before TDC. The pilot fuel is expected to lead to multiple ignition points in the cylinder in order to achieve uniform combustion in the cylinder. The expected benefits are lower nitrogen oxides and soot compared to pure diesel combustion. Numerical simulations using CFD software were used to simulate fuel-air mixture, compression, fuel injection, combustion, and emissions. Different quantities of biogas and diesel were investigated to determine the optimum mixture ratio. Since biogas, which is natural gas produced from human waste, contains large quantities of carbon dioxide, the effect of carbon dioxide content in the fuel was investigated. The results of this study agree very well with results from other studies found in the literature.