Supersonic Virtual Valve Design for Numerical Simulation of a Large-Bore Natural Gas Engine

In many applications of supersonic injection devices, three-dimensional computation that can model a complex supersonic jet has become critical. However, in spite of its increasing necessity, it is computationally costly to capture the details of supersonic structures in intricate three-dimensional geometries with moving boundaries. In large-bore stationary natural gas fueled engine research, one of the most promising mixing enhancement technologies currently used for natural gas engines is high-pressure fuel injection. Consequently, this creates considerable interest in three-dimensional computational simulations that can examine the entire injection and mixing process in engines using high-pressure injection and can determine the impact of injector design on engine performance. However, the cost of three-dimensional engine simulations—including a moving piston and the kinetics of combustion and pollutant production—quickly becomes considerable in terms of simulation time requirements. One limiting factor is the modeling of the small length scales of the poppet valve flow. Such length scales can be three orders of magnitude smaller than cylinder length scales. The objective of this paper is to describe the development of a methodology for the design of a simple geometry supersonic virtual valve that can be substituted in three-dimensional numerical models for the complex shrouded poppet valve injection system actually installed in the engine to be simulated. Downstream flow characteristics of the jets from an actual valve and various virtual valves are compared. Relevant mixing parameters, such as local equivalent ratio and turbulence kinetic energy, are evaluated in full-scale moving piston simulations that include the effect of the jet-piston interaction. A comparison of the results has indicated that it is possible to design a simple converging-diverging fuel nozzle that will produce the same jet and, subsequently, the same large-scale and turbulent-scale mixing patterns in the engine cylinder as a real poppet valve.