In-cylinder Flow Characterisation of Heavy Duty Diesel Engines Using Combustion Image Velocimetry

Sammanfattning: In-cylinder flow in diesel engines has a large impact on combustion and emission formation. In this work, the flow is characterised with a new measurement method called combustion image velocimetry (CIV). This technique is used to explain how airflow introduced during induction affects soot emissions and interacts with injection pressures up to 2500 bar. The CIV measurements enable flow analysis during the combustion and post-oxidation phases. The flow velocities inside the cylinder of a heavy duty optical engine, was measured with a crank angle (CA) resolution of 0.17° at injection pressures of 200–2500 bar and up to nearly full load (20 bar indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP)), were investigated with this method. The flow field results were combined with optical flame temperature and soot measurements, calculated according to Planck’s black body radiation theory.At the high injection pressures typical of today’s production standard engines and with rotational in-cylinder flow about the cylinder axis, large deviations from solid-body rotational flow were observed during combustion and post-oxidation. The rotational flow, called swirl, was varied between swirl number (SN) 0.4 and 6.7. The deviation from solid-body rotational flow, which normally is an assumption made in swirling combustion systems, formed much higher angular rotational velocities of the air in the central region of the piston bowl than in the outer part of the bowl. This deviation has been shown to be a source for turbulent kinetic energy production, which has the possibility to influence soot burn-out during the post-oxidation period.The measured CIV data was compared to Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) CFD simulations, and the two methods produced similar results for the flow behaviour. This thesis describes the CIV method, which is closely related to particle image velocimetry (PIV). It was found in this work that the spatial plane in the cylinder evaluated with CIV corresponds to a mean depth of 3 mm from the piston bowl surface into the combustion chamber during combustion. During the post-oxidation phase of combustion, the measured spatial plane corresponds to a mean value of the total depth of the cylinder. The large bulk flow that contributes to the soot oxidation is thereby captured with the method and can successfully be analysed. The link between changes in in-cylinder flow and emissions is examined in this work.