An Improved Prediction of Pre-Combustion Processes, Using the Discrete Multicomponent Model

Islam Kabil, Mansour Al Qubeissi, Jihad Badra, Walid Abdelghaffar, Yehia Eldrainy, Sergei Sazhin, Hong Im, Ahmed Elwardany

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

An improved heating and evaporation model of fuel droplets is implemented into the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software CONVERGE for the simulation of sprays. The analytical solutions to the heat conduction and species diffusion equations in the liquid phase for each time step are coded via user-defined functions (UDF) into the software. The customized version of CONVERGE is validated against measurements for a single droplet of n-heptane and n-decane mixture. It is shown that the new heating and evaporation model better agrees with the experimental data than those predicted by the built-in heating and evaporation model, which does not consider the effects of temperature gradient and assumes infinitely fast species diffusion inside droplets. The simulation of a hollow-cone spray of primary reference fuel (PRF65) is performed and validated against experimental data taken from the literature. Finally, the newly implemented model is tested by running full-cycle engine simulations, representing partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI)
using PRF65 as the fuel. These simulations are successfully performed for two start of injection timings, 20 and 25 crank angle (CA) before top-dead-centre (BTDC). The results show good agreement with experimental data where the effect of heating and evaporation of droplets on combustion phasing is investigated. The results highlight the importance of the accurate modelling of physical processes during droplet heating and evaporation for the prediction of the PPCI engine performance.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2937
Pages (from-to)1-13
Number of pages13
JournalSustainability
Volume13
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Mar 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Funding: This research was funded by the European Commission and the British Council, grant numbers: 2018‐1‐UK01‐KA107‐047386 and 2020‐1‐UK01‐KA107‐078517 (M.AQ.) and UK EPSRC, grant number: EP/M002608/1 (S.S.S.).

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Keywords

  • Combustion
  • Computational fluid dynamics
  • Droplet evaporation
  • Engine simulation
  • Spray

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