A modern diesel engine is capable of running efficiently with low exhaust gas emissions over a wide operating range. This is thanks to techniques such as turbocharging, EGR, charge air cooling and an advanced fuel injection process. The fuel injection process is important for the combustion and emission formation in the diesel engine. The fuel injector has to atomize and vaporize the fuel as it is injected. During the combustion the emission formation has to be kept to a minimum. Very strong pressure gradients are present in a modern diesel injection nozzle, this causes cavitation to occur in the nozzle holes. The influence of cavitation on flow parameters such as the various discharge coefficients is discussed. The occurrence of cavitation helps the spray break up and it can keep the nozzle holes free from deposits. Excessive amounts of cavitation can lead to hole erosion and thus impact the long term operation of the nozzle in a negative way. Hole erosion as well as other mechanisms can cause hole to hole variations in fuel spray impulse, mass flow, penetration etc. This is a very important issue in any low emission diesel engine, especially during transients, as less than optimal conditions have to be handled. The influence of hole to hole variation on fuel consumption and emissions is not very well known and this thesis contributes to the field. As a part of this work a fuel spray momentum measurement device was developed and tested. Any automotive engine needs to be able to perform quick transitions between different loads and speeds, so called transients. In a turbocharged diesel engine with EGR issues related to the turbocharger and the EGR-circuit arise. A diesel engine has to run with a certain air excess in order to achieve complete combustion with low emissions of soot. When turbocharging is used the turbocharger turbine uses some of the exhaust enthalpy to drive the turbo compressor, in this way the engine is provided with boost pressure. In order for the engine and turbocharger to function at the higher load and thus higher mass flow rate the turbocharger has to increase its rotational speed and the surface temperatures have to settle at a new thermodynamic state. Both of these processes take time and during this time the combustion process may have to proceed under less than optimum circumstances due to the low boost pressure.
In this thesis various aspects of the diesel engine fuel injection, combustion and emission formation processes have been evaluated. Several types of evaluation tools and methods have been applied. Fuel spray momentum was used to characterize injection rate and hole-to-hole variations in fuel injectors. Using both instantaneous fuel impulse rates and instantaneous mass flow measurements, spray velocity and nozzle flow parameters were evaluated. Several other hole-to-hole resolved injector characterization methods were used to characterize a set of fuel injectors subjected to long term testing. Fuel injector nozzle hole-to-hole variations were found to have a large influence on engine efficiency and emissions. The degree of hole-to-hole variations for an injector has been shown to correlate well with the performance deterioration of that injector. The formation and atomization of fuel sprays, ignition onset and the development of diffusion flames were studied using an optical engine. Flame temperature evaluations have been made using two different methods. NO-formation depends strongly on flame temperature. By applying a NO-formation evaluation method based on both heat release rate and flame and gas temperature it was possible to achieve a reasonable degree of correlation with measured exhaust emissions for very varying operating conditions. The prediction capability of the NO-formation evaluation method was utilized to evaluate spatially and temporally resolved NO-formation from flame temperature distributions. This made it possible to pinpoint areas with a high degree of NO-formation. It was found that small hot zones in the flames can be responsible for a large part of the total amount of NO that is produced, especially in combustion cases where no EGR is used to lower the flame temperature. By applying optical diagnostics methods the combustion and emission formation phenomena encountered during production engine transients were evaluated. The transient strategy of the engine involved reducing the EGR-rate to zero during the initial parts of the transient. Increased general flame temperature and the occurrence of small hot zones were found to explain the increase in NO-emissions during these transients.
In order to identify some of the special combustion and emission formation phenomena that occur in a turbocharged heavy-duty diesel engine during transient operation, the transient strategy of a production engine has been characterized at four different engine speeds. From each transient some points have been selected for further investigation by recreating these load points as steady-state points in a single-cylinder engine. This allows the emissions to be measured with a high degree of accuracy. An endoscope which makes it possible to evaluate flame temperatures was used in both engines. An empirically derived method of calculating nitric oxide (NO) formation from a combination of measured flame temperature, calculated gas temperature, and heat release rate has been developed and applied. This provides an increased understanding of combustion and emission formation phenomena during transient operation. An optical engine was also used to provide a full combustion chamber view for some of the operating points, and a specially developed software was used to calculate temperature distributions based on high-speed camera colour information. The NO formation formula was applied on these images, which resulted in spatially resolved NO formation distributions.
The fuel injection process plays an important role in the combustion and emission formation processes of the DI diesel engine. One important fuel spray characteristic is the spray impulse. The most commonly used method to measure fuel spray impulse is the impingement method where the fuel spray impinges perpendicularly on the surface of a force transducer. This work deals with the theoretical background of such measurements as well as with developing and testing some different impulse measurement setups. The measured impulse is compared to measurements of the instantaneous mass flow and theoretical flow calculations. When measuring the impulse by impingement on the transducer membrane a fuel temperature related measurement error was encountered. This problem was solved by gluing a strike plate to the transducer membrane. The plate shielded the membrane from direct contact with the fuel. Initially plates made out of aluminum were used, they were however found to be sensitive to erosion. After a number of injections a small pit was formed and this led to an overestimation of the impulse as the fuel more effectively was reflected back towards the direction where it came from. It is crucial for the accuracy of the method that the spent fuel exits the plate perpendicularly, if some of the fuel bounces back towards the direction where it comes from the spray impulse is overestimated. With a flat strike plate it is difficult to be sure that all the spent fuel exits the plate perpendicularly. Therefore a plate with a rotationally symmetrical curvature which allows a gradual and thus more controlled direction change was manufactured and evaluated. When the injection rate of an injector is characterized using a conventional rate tube a number of problems are caused by pressure fluctuations in the fuel volume inside the rate tube. The measurements are disturbed by superimposed fluctuations which are especially problematic when small post injections are to be evaluated. The post injection rate can be disturbed by fluctuations introduced by the main injection, such fluctuations does not occur with impulse measurements. The new impulse measurement device produces measurements with high precision in both rate shape and absolute value. Because of this it is well suited for injection rate evaluation and when a high precision value of fuel spray impulse is required, for instance when calculating nozzle flow loss factors. Flow calculations based on the instantaneous mass flow and the fuel spray impulse are made.
Increasingly stringent emission legislation as well as increased demand on fuel efficiency calls for further research and development in the diesel engine field. Spray formation, evaporation and ignition delay are important factors that influence the combustion and emission formation processes in a diesel engine. Increased understanding of the mixture formation process is valuable in the development of low emission, high efficiency diesel engines. In this paper spray formation and ignition under real engine conditions have been studied in an optical engine capable of running close to full load for a real HD diesel engine. Powerful external lights were used to provide the required light intensity for high speed camera images in the combustion chamber prior to ignition. A specially developed software was used for spray edge detection and tracking. The software provides crank angle resolved spray penetration data. The images also provide data of ignition delay, ignition location and premixed flame propagation. The evaluation was made for an array of engine operation points with variations in fuel rail pressure, injection timing, boost pressure and charge air temperature. The influence of using pilot injections has also been investigated. This set of experiments makes it possible to analyze the impact of the various engine parameters on the spray formation and ignition processes. Some of the results are compared with the exhaust emission measurements in order to provide an insight into how the emission formation process is influenced by the spray formation and ignition processes.
A simplified one-dimensional model for combustion and emission formation in diesel engines has been developed in a project where the long-term objective is to predict the emissions during transient operation. The models are intended to be used as a tool for pre-development of after-treatment systems and for offline calibration of engine controls. These applications imply that the final model must be both computationally inexpensive and comprehensive. The model is based on a correlation for the air entrainment rate which is applied to a discretized injection event. On this, the combustion rate and the emission formation rate are imposed with simple models. In this publication, the model is validated for the targeted conditions and transient operation. The model is based on a previously presented model which was evaluated for steady state conditions. The model presented here has been modified to address the shortcomings that were identified in the previous evaluation. The model was able to predict the heat release rate and the emissions of nitrogen oxide ( NO) and soot with reasonable accuracy and also the requirement regarding the computational time was met. The average time for simulation of one engine cycle was approximately 3 s on a standard laptop.