An Improved Phenomenological Soot Formation Submodel for Three-Dimensional Diesel Engine Simulations: Extension to Agglomeration of Particles into Clusters

An extension to a phenomenological submodel for soot formation to include soot agglomeration effects is developed. The improved submodel was incorporated into a commercial computational fluid dynamics code and was used to investigate soot formation in a heavy-duty diesel engine. The results of the numerical simulation show that the soot oxidation process is reduced close to the combustion chamber walls, due to heat loss, such that larger soot particles and clusters are predicted in an annular volume at the end of the combustion cycle. These results are consistent with available in-cylinder experimental data and suggest that the cylinder of a diesel engine must be split into several volumes, each of them with a different role regarding soot formation.