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In the first part of this work, ignition of methane-air mixtures under excess air dilution is studied. When excess air is used in SI engine operation, thermal efficiency is increased due to increase in compression ratio together with reduced pumping and heat loses. However, stable operation with excess air is challenging due to poor flammability of the resulting diluted mixture. Hence in order to achieve stable and complete combustion a turbulent jet ignition (TJI) system is used to improve combustion of lean methane-air mixtures. Various nozzle designs and operating strategies for a TJI system were tested in a rapid compression machine. 10-90% burn duration measurements were useful in assessing the performance of the nozzle designs while the 0-10% burn durations indicated if optimal air-fuel ratio is achieved within the pre-chamber at the time of ignition. The results indicated that distributed-jets TJI system offered faster and stable combustion while the concentrated-jets TJI system offered better dilution tolerance.Knock in a SI engine occurs due to autoignition of the end gas mixture and typically occurs in the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) region of the fuel-air mixture. Dilution of intake charge with cold exhaust recirculation gases (EGR) reduces combustion temperatures and decreases mixture reactivity thereby reducing knocking tendency. This enables optimal spark timings to be used, thereby increasing efficiency of SI engines which would otherwise be knock limited. Effect of cold EGR dilution is studied in the RCM by measuring the autoignition delay times of gasoline and gasoline surrogate mixtures diluted with varying levels of CO2. The autoignition experiments in the RCM were performed using a novel direct test chamber (DTC) charge preparation approach. The DTC approach enabled mixture preparation directly within the combustion chamber and eliminated the need for mixing tanks. Effect of CO2 dilution in retarding the autoignition delay times was more pronounced in the NTC region, while it was weaker in the low temperature and high temperature regions. The retarding effect was found to be dependent on both the octane number and the fuel composition of the gasoline being studied.Finally, the effect of substituting ethanol(biofuel) in gasoline surrogates for up to 40% by volume is studied. Ethanol is an octane booster, but it blends antagonistically with aromatics such as toluene and synergistically with alkanes with respect to the resulting octane number of the blends. In order to study this blending effect, two gasoline surrogates containing only alkanes (PRF), and alkanes with large amounts of toluene (TRF) are blended with varying levels of ethanol. The ignition delay times of the resulting mixtures are measured in a rapid compression machine and kinetic analysis was carried out using numerical simulations. The kinetic analysis revealed that ethanol controlled the final stages of ignition for the PRF blends when more than 10% by volume of ethanol is present. However, in the TRF blends, toluene controlled the ignition until mole fractions of ethanol became higher than the toluene indicating the reason for the antagonistic blending nature. It was found that the RON values of the resulting blends matched the trend of the ignition delay times recorded at 740K and 21 bar compressed conditions. This enables qualitative assessment of the RON numbers for new biofuel blends by measuring their ignition delay times in the RCM.
The objective of this thesis is to understand the influence of the non-ideal effects in Rapid Compression Machines (RCM), namely the vortex roll-up and mass flow into the crevice, on autoignition. The effect of the vortex roll-up is studied computationally using CFD simulations of autoignition in a RCM. Whereas, the effect of the crevice mass flow is investigated experimentally by studying isooctane autoignition. Over the last two decades, experimental data of the nature of species evolution profiles and ignition delays from RCMs has been used to develop and validate chemical kinetic mechanisms at low-to-intermediate temperatures and elevated pressures. A significant portion of this overall dataset is from RCMs that had not employed a creviced piston to contain the roll-up vortex. The detrimental influence of the roll-up vortex and the thermokinetic interactions due to the resulting temperature non-homogeneity during the negative temperature coefficient (ntc) regime have been documented in the literature. However, the adequacy of the homogeneous modeling of RCMs without creviced pistons during reactive conditions has not been investigated. In this work, computational fluid dynamics simulations of an RCM without a creviced piston are conducted for autoignition of n-heptane over the entire ntc regime over a range of compressed pressures from 5 to 18 bar. The results from the CFD simulations highlight the non-homogeneity of autoignition and reveal significant quantitative discrepancy in comparison to homogeneous modeling, particularly for the hot ignition delay in the ntc regime. Specifically, the roll-up vortex induced temperature non-homogeneity leads to diminution of the ntc behavior. The experimental data from RCMs without creviced piston needs to be taken with caution for quantitative validation and refinement of kinetic mechanism, particularly at conditions when ntc behavior is highly pronounced. Rapid Compression Machines (RCMs) often employ creviced pistons to suppress the formation of the roll-up vortex. However, the use of a creviced piston promotes mass flow into the crevice when heat release takes place in the main combustion chamber. This multi-dimensional effect is not accounted for in the prevalent volumetric expansion approach for modeling RCMs. The method of crevice containment, on the other hand, avoids post-compression mass flow into the crevice. In order to assess the effect of the crevice mass flow on ignition in a RCM, experiments were conducted for autoignition of isooctane in a RCM with creviced piston in the temperature range of 680-940 K and at compressed pressures of ~15.5 and 20.5 bar in two ways. In one situation, post-compression mass flow to the crevice is avoided by crevice containment and in other it is allowed. Experiments show that the crevice mass flow can lead to significantly longer ignition delays. Experimental data from both scenarios is modeled using adiabatic volumetric expansion approach and an available kinetic mechanism. The simulated results show less pronounced effect of crevice mass flow on ignition delay and highlight the deficiency of the volumetric expansion method owing to its inability to describe coupled physical-chemical processes in the presence of heat release. Results indicate that it is important to include crevice mass flow in the physical model for improved modeling of experimental data from RCMs for consistent interpretation of chemical kinetics. The use of crevice containment, however, avoids the issue of mass flow altogether and offers an alternative and sound approach.
Rapid compression machines (RCMs) are well characterized laboratory scale devices capable of achieving internal combustion (IC) engine relevant thermodynamic environments. These machines are often used to collect ignition delay times as targets for gas-phase chemical kinetic fuel autoigntion models. Modern RCMs utilize creviced piston(s) to improve charge homogeneity and allow for an adequate validation of detailed chemistry mechanisms against experiments using computationally efficient, homogeneous reactor models (HRMs). Conventionally, experiments are preformed by introducing a premixed gas of fuel + oxidizer + diluent into the machine, which is compressed volumetrically via a piston. Experiments investigating low-vapor pressure fuels (e.g. diesels, biodiesels, jet fuels, etc.) and surrogates can be conducted by preheating both the charge as well as the machine. This method of fuel loading can lead to pretest fuel pyrolysis as well as machine seal degradation. Under some conditions loading a fuel aerosol of finely atomized liquid droplets in an oxidizer + diluent bath gas (i.e. wet compression) has been suggested to extend the capabilities of RCM experiments to involatile fuels. This work investigates phase-change effects during RCM experiments, especially for aerosol-fueling conditions, while the methodology can be applied to gas-phase fuel experiments where fuel condensation can occur at the compressed conditions within the boundary layer region. To facilitate this study a reduced-order, physics-based model is used. This work highlights important machine-scale influences not investigated in previous work, and provides additional detail concerning an aerosol RCM{u2019}s capabilities and limitations. A transient formulation is developed for the multi-phase transport within the RCM reaction chamber as well as the flow to the piston crevice region during both the compression and delay periods. The goal of this work is threefold. First, an a priori knowledge of the stratification present under various conditions can help determine an optimum machine geometry so that discrepancies between experimental data sets and 0D kinetics simulations are minimized for involatile fuels. Second, the model is computationally tractable to prescribe heat loss rates to an HRM during simulations of experiments so that physical effects can be incorporated into simulations using detailed chemistry. Finally, heat loss rates that are prescribed to the HRM are only a function of machine geometry, and are independent of ad hoc and empirically derived fits that vary between facilities. Thus a more adequate comparison of data between RCM facilities and with existing literature can be made.
Rapid Compression Machines (RCMs) typically incorporate creviced pistons to suppress the formation of the roll-up vortex. The use of a creviced piston, however, can enhance other multi-dimensional effects inside the RCM due to the crevice zone being at a lower temperature than the main reaction chamber. In this work, such undesirable effects of the creviced piston are first highlighted through computational fluid dynamics simulations of n-heptane ignition in an RCM. Specifically, the results show that in an RCM with a creviced piston, additional mass flow takes place from the main combustion chamber to the crevice zone during the first-stage ignition. This phenomenon is not captured by the conventional zero-dimensional modeling approaches. Consequently, a novel approach of 'crevice containment' is introduced and evaluated. According to this approach, in order to avoid the undesirable effects of the creviced piston, the crevice zone is separated from the main reaction chamber at the end of compression. The computational results with this novel approach show significant improvement in the fidelity of the zero-dimensional modeling in terms of predicting the overall ignition delay and pressure rise in the first-stage ignition. In addition, this approach also offers other advantages, namely a reduction in the rate of post-compression pressure drop and improved data during species sampling experiments. An RCM is subsequently designed and successfully fabricated with the feature of 'crevice containment' for the purpose of chemical kinetics studies at elevated pressures and temperatures. Characterization experiments for the newly built RCM show that the operation of the RCM is free from any vibrations, allows fast compression (22 ms), compressed pressures up to 100 bar and the experimental data obtained is highly reproducible. Using this facility, autoignition investigations are conducted for Hydrogen at a pressure of 50 bar. The experiments are modeled using the kinetic mechanism of O'Conaire et al. (2004). Results showed that the mechanism of O'Conaire et al. agree very well with the experimental data.
The use of gasoline in homogeneous charge compression ignition engines (HCCI) and in duel fuel diesel - gasoline engines, has increased the need to understand its compression ignition processes under engine-like conditions. These processes need to be studied under well-controlled conditions in order to quantify low temperature heat release and to provide fundamental validation data for chemical kinetic models. With this in mind, an experimental campaign has been undertaken in a rapid compression machine (RCM) to measure the ignition of gasoline mixtures over a wide range of compression temperatures and for different compression pressures. By measuring the pressure history during ignition, information on the first stage ignition (when observed) and second stage ignition are captured along with information on the phasing of the heat release. Heat release processes during ignition are important because gasoline is known to exhibit low temperature heat release, intermediate temperature heat release and high temperature heat release. In an HCCI engine, the occurrence of low-temperature and intermediate-temperature heat release can be exploited to obtain higher load operation and has become a topic of much interest for engine researchers. Consequently, it is important to understand these processes under well-controlled conditions. A four-component gasoline surrogate model (including n-heptane, iso-octane, toluene, and 2-pentene) has been developed to simulate real gasolines. An appropriate surrogate mixture of the four components has been developed to simulate the specific gasoline used in the RCM experiments. This chemical kinetic surrogate model was then used to simulate the RCM experimental results for real gasoline. The experimental and modeling results covered ultra-lean to stoichiometric mixtures, compressed temperatures of 640-950 K, and compression pressures of 20 and 40 bar. The agreement between the experiments and model is encouraging in terms of first-stage (when observed) and second-stage ignition delay times and of heat release rate. The experimental and computational results are used to gain insight into low and intermediate temperature processes during gasoline ignition.
As it becomes more and more difficult to find "easy" oil, various alternative fuels are introduced to the markets. These fuels have chemical properties that are different from the traditional gasoline and diesel fuels so that engine efficiency and other engine behaviors may be affected To improve engine efficiency and to identify which alternative fuel is the cleanest fuel solution, it is necessary to compile information about the ignition delay, which governs auto-ignition in spark-ignition (SI), compression-ignition (CI) and homogeneous charge compression-ignition (HCCI) engines. In this study, we measured ignition delay on the Rapid Compression Machine (RCM). RCM is a single-stroke device, which compresses uniform mixtures to engine-like condition. We can interpret from the pressure the detailed heat release process. A comprehensive ignition delay database of toluene/n-heptane mixtures and gasoline/ethanol mixtures was established The data allow us to calculate the auto-ignition behavior in engines. Depending on application the correct choice of alternative fuels may be made.