Publications

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This study shows fuel film measurements in a spark-ignited direct injection engine using refractive index matching (RIM). The RIM technique is applied to measure the fuel impingement of a high research octane number gasoline fuel with 30 vol% ethanol content at two intake pressures and coolant temperatures. Measurements are conducted for an alkylate fuel at one operating case, as well. It is shown that the fuel volume on the piston surface increases for lower intake pressure and lower coolant temperature and that the alkylate fuel shows very little spray impingement. The fuel films can be linked to increased soot emissions. A detailed description of the calibration technique is provided and measurement uncertainties are discussed. The dependency of the RIM signal on refractive index changes is measured. The RIM technique provides quantitative film thickness measurements up to 0.9 µm in this engine. For thicker films, semi-quantitative results of film thickness can be utilized to study the distribution of impinged fuel.

Ever tighter fuel economy standards and concerns about energy security motivate efforts to improve engine efficiency and to develop alternative fuels. This project contributes to the science base needed by industry to develop highly efficient direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engines that also beneficially exploit the different properties of alternative fuels. Here, the emphasis is on lean operation, which can provide higher efficiencies than traditional non-dilute stoichiometric operation. Since lean operation can lead to issues with ignition stability, slow flame propagation and low combustion efficiency, the focus is on techniques that can overcome these challenges. Specifically, fuel stratification is used to ensure ignition and completeness of combustion but this technique has soot and NOx emissions challenges. For ultra-lean well-mixed operation, turbulent deflagration can be combined with controlled end-gas autoignition to render mixed-mode combustion for sufficiently fast heat release. However, such mixed-mode combustion requires very stable inflammation, motivating studies on the effects of near-spark flow and turbulence, and the use of small amounts of fuel stratification near the spark plug.

Improved engine efficiency is required to comply with future fuel economy standards. Alternative fuels have the potential to enable more efficient engines while addressing concerns about energy security. This project contributes to the science base needed by industry to develop highly efficient direct injection spark igniton (DISI) engines that also beneficially exploit the different properties of alternative fuels. Here, the emphasis is on quantifying autoignition behavior for a range of spark-ignited engine conditions, including directly injected boosted conditions. The efficiency of stoichiometrically operated spark ignition engines is often limited by fuel-oxidizer end-gas autoignition, which can result in engine knock. A fuel’s knock resistance is assessed empirically by the Research Octane Number (RON) and Motor Octane Number (MON) tests. By clarifying how these two tests relate to the autoignition behavior of conventional and alternative fuel formulations, fuel design guidelines for enhanced engine efficiency can be developed.

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This study evaluates the applicability of the Octane Index (OI) framework under conventional spark ignition (SI) and “beyond Research Octane Number (RON)” conditions using nine fuels operated under stoichiometric, knock-limited conditions in a direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine, supported by Monte Carlo-type simulations which interrogate the effects of measurement uncertainty. Of the nine tested fuels, three fuels are “Tier III” fuel blends, meaning that they are blends of molecules which have passed two levels of screening, and have been evaluated to be ready for tests in research engines. These molecules have been blended into a four-component gasoline surrogate at varying volume fractions in order to achieve a RON rating of 98. The molecules under consideration are isobutanol, 2-butanol, and diisobutylene (which is a mixture of two isomers of octene). The remaining six fuels were research-grade gasolines of varying formulations. The DISI research engine was used to measure knock limits at heated and unheated intake temperature conditions, as well as throttled and boosted intake pressures, all at an engine speed of 1400 rpm. The tested knock-limited operating conditions conceptually exist both between the Motor Octane Number (MON) and RON conditions, as well as “beyond RON” conditions (conditions which are conceptually at lower temperatures, higher pressures, or longer residence times than the RON condition). In addition to directly assessing the performance of the Tier III blends relative to other gasolines, the OI framework was evaluated with considerations of experimental uncertainty in the knock-limited combustion phasing (KL-CA50) measurements, as well as RON and MON test uncertainties. The OI was found to hold to the first order, explaining more than 80% of the knock-limited behavior, although the remaining variation in fuel performance from OI behavior was found to be beyond the likely experimental uncertainties. This indicates that the effects of specific fuel components on knock which are not captured by RON and MON ratings, and complicating the assessment of a given fuel by RON and MON ratings alone.

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The use of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) in spark ignition engines has been shown to have a number of beneficial effects under specific operating conditions. These include reducing pumping work under part load conditions, reducing NOx emissions and heat losses by lowering peak combustion temperatures, and by reducing the tendency for engine knock (caused by end-gas autoignition) under certain operating regimes. In this study, the effects of EGR addition on knocking combustion are investigated through a combined experimental and modeling approach. The problem is investigated by considering the effects of individual EGR constituents, such as CO2, N2, and H2O, on knock, both individually and combined, and with and without traces species, such as unburned hydrocarbons and NOx. The effects of engine compression ratio and fuel composition on the effectiveness of knock suppression with EGR addition were also investigated. A parametric, experimental matrix of diluents, compression ratio, and fuels was tested to measure knock-limited combustion phasing of each combination. The resulting knock limits were evaluated in the context of thermodynamic effects on the closed cycle, chemical interactions between the EGR constituents and the fuel-oxidizer mixture, and the effect of altered pressure-temperature trajectories on fuel-autoignition behavior. This paper provides an overview of the experimental results, and uses chemical-kinetic modeling to investigate the behavior of a particular fuel - diluent combination which had a strong sensitivity to compression ratio variation. The numerical results shed light on the complex interactions between fuel chemistry, the engine's thermodynamic cycle, and the effect of residence times on the autoignition chemistry which leads to knock. An important and fuel-dependent role of thermal stratification in the end-gas is also suggested by the chemical-kinetics modeling of the experimentally observed knock limits.

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This work identifies classes of cool flame intermediates from nheptane low-temperature oxidation (e.g., < 750 K) in a jet-stirred reactor (JSR) and a cooperative fuel research (CFR) engine. The sampled species from the JSR were analyzed using a synchrotron vacuum ultraviolet radiation photoionization time-of-flight molecular-beam mass spectrometer and an atmospheric pressure chemical ionization orbitrap mass spectrometer; the latter was also used to analyze the sampled species from the CFR engine. The products can be classified by species with molecular formulas of C7H14Ox (x=0-5), C7H12Ox (x=0-4), C7H10Ox (x=0-4), CnH2n (n=2-6), CnH2n-2 (n=4-6), CnH2n+2O (n=1-4, 6), CnH2nO (n=1-6), CnH2n-2O (n=2-6), CnH2n-4O (n=4-6), CnH2n+2O2 (n=0-4, 7), CnH2nO2 (n=1-6), CnH2n-2O2 (n=2-6), CnH2n-4O2 (n=4-7), and CnH2nO3 (n=3-6). The identified intermediate species include mainly alkene, dienes, aldehyde/keto compounds, olefinic aldehyde/keto compounds, diones, cyclic ethers, peroxides, acids, and alcohols/ethers. Reaction pathways forming intermediates with the same carbon number as n-heptane are proposed and discussed. These experimental results should be helpful in the development of kinetic models for n-heptane and longer-chain alkanes.

Fundamental engine research is primarily conducted under steady-state conditions, in order to better describe boundary conditions which influence the studied phenomena. However, light-duty automobiles are operated, and tested, under heavily transient conditions. This mismatch between studied conditions and in-use conditions is deemed acceptable due to the fundamental knowledge gained from steady-state experiments. Nonetheless, it is useful to characterize the conditions encountered during transient operation and determine if the governing phenomena are unduly influenced by the differences between steady-state and transient operation, and further, whether transient behavior can be reasonably extrapolated from steady-state behavior. The transient operation mode used in this study consists of 20 fired cycles followed by 80 motored cycles, operating on a continuous basis. The intention of the cycle is to provide a significant transient condition, namely the change from motored to knock-limited fired operation, while also maintaining a repeatable cycle that allows for the collection of statistics during quasi- steady-state operation. This study investigates the effect of transient operation on Knock-Limited Combustion Phasing (KL-CA50) compared to steady-state operation. Three compositionally dissimilar matched Research Octane Number (RON) = 98 fuels are used in this study, allowing for the assessment of fuel-specific effects on differences between steady-state and transient operation. This study first characterizes the 20/80 firing cycle described above, before comparing the transient KL-CA50 measurements to the steady-state KL-CA50 measurements. Analysis of both the steady-state and transient results are used to gain insights into the effects of transient operation on end-gas autoignition, relative to steady-state operation and as a function of fuel composition. The results of this study indicate the significant effect that transient operation has on KL-CA50 behavior of a fuel. This is both universal, in that all fuels show responses to the differences in compression temperatures of the charge, as well as fuel specific, in that the fuel response varies based on the fuel's sensitivity to temperature, [O2], and trace species. All fuels showed a significant load extension under transient operation, based on tolerance of higher intake pressures. However, transient operation moved operating conditions to "beyond RON" (Octane Index K < 0) conditions, which favored higher-sensitivity fuels. Based on the analysis of system time constants (e.g. cylinder head temperature dynamic response, exhaust gas temperature dynamic response), it is expected that transient operation, and the benefits for knock-limited operation, are highly influential on drive-cycle performance.

The need to avoid SI engine knock often comes with an efficiency penalty, motivating efforts to understand its causes. In this study, the relationship between knock and end-gas autoignition is examined based on experiments in a DISI engine with CR = 12, using three different gasoline fuels. The three gasolines are an alkylate blend (RON=98, MON=97), a blend with high aromatic content (RON=98, MON=88), and a blend of 30% ethanol by volume (RON=98, MON=87). Fuel/air-equivalence ratio (φ) sweeps show that the response of the knock limits to changes in φ varies between the fuels. Furthermore, it is observed that the statistics of knock and heat-release vary in a complex manner between the fuels. Since knock originates from end-gas autoignition, a robust heat-release-based metric of "trace autoignition" is developed to determine knock occurrence. The metric is based on the observation that autoigniting cycles exhibit a faster heat-release rate decay at the end of the combustion event, even if no knock oscillations are detected. In general, the acoustic knock trends match the trends of the "trace autoignition" metric. However, for rich operation, the Alkylate fuel needs to be operated with an average CA50 that is somewhat retarded relative to trace autoignition. Furthermore, the data reveal that the dependence of autoignition on φ varies in manner that relates to the RON-MON octane sensitivity of the fuel. For example, the Alkylate fuel with low octane sensitivity displays no benefit of fuel enrichment, which is in strong contrast to the two high octane-sensitive fuels. Further, the Alkylate fuel shows a strong reduction of its anti-knock quality for lean operation, which correlates with the development of low-temperature heat release.

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