Combustion Development Investigation in a Common Rail Multi-Jet Diesel Engine With Up to 4 Injections per Engine Cycle

Newly developed technologies for modern diesel engines allow designing injection patterns with many degrees of freedom. Multi-jet engines, for example, can perform up to 5 injections within the same engine cycle: Position and duration of each injection, together with rail pressure and EGR rate can be chosen in order to properly design the desired in-cylinder combustion process. This means that during the injection system setup process all the free parameters have to be set to the desired value. If all the injection parameters variations have to be investigated in order to properly set their values, a huge amount of experimental tests should be needed. From this point of view, in order to reduce the need for test bench experimental work, the development of a combustion model can be very useful, to help determining the best injection configuration, and therefore the desired combustion into the cylinder. Single zone combustion models seem to be suitable for this task, thanks to the quick response they can give, and the possibility of using them for control purposes. In the paper a model developed for injection patterns with up to 4 injections is used in order to describe the combustion behavior as a function of the injection parameters. A properly designed set of tests has been performed in order to identify the combustion model. The obtained results give information on the way the combustion parameters, for example the combustion delays (i.e. the time delays between each Start Of Injection SOI, and the corresponding Start Of Combustion SOC), or the amount of fuel burnt for each injection are modified as the combustion process proceeds into the cylinder or as the injection parameters change. The information obtained can be in the following used in order to design the desired injection pattern, using the identified model as a virtual experimental tests generator.