Impact Resistance of Spark Plug’s Ceramic Insulator During Ultra-high-Pressure Combustion Under Deto-Knock Conditions

The ceramic insulators of spark plugs in gasoline engines are especially prone to damage when deto-knock occurs.To under-stand the damage process and mechanism,the present work investigated the impact resistance of ceramic insulators using detonation waves as impact sources.A test device that generates detonation waves was developed,representing a novel means of evaluating the knock resistance of ceramic insulators.Various impact types and detonation intensities were employed,and detonation initiation and propagation at peak pressures greater than 100 MPa were assessed using synchronous high-speed direct photography and pressure measurements.The test results demonstrate that ceramic insulators tend to break at the base of the breathing chamber when damaged by a single high peak pressure detonation wave impact.In contrast,multiple low pressure impacts eventually break the insulator into multiple fragments.The data also show that the positioning of a ground electrode upstream of the ceramic insulator greatly increases the resistance of the ceramic to the detonation impact.A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulation coupled with a chemical kinetics analysis demonstrated that this improved resistance can be ascribed to a reduced peak pressure that appears after the detonation wave diffracts from the electrode prior to contacting the ceramic insulator.

Evaluation of Auto-Ignition Characteristics of Diesel Surrogate Fuels with the Same Derived Cetane Numbers at Changed Thermodynamic Environments

The ignition tendency of diesel fuels is highly sensitive to ambient conditions and fuel properties.In this study,the ignition characteristics of different diesel surrogate fuels with the same derived cetane numbers(DCN)were measured and compared in varied thermodynamic and oxidizing environments.The combustion pressures,heat release rates,ignition delays,and combustion delays of the test fuels were compared.The experimental results showed that the diesel surrogate fuels with the same DCNs exhibit similar ignition propensity at standard DCN test conditions.Further,for the test conditions of high cetane fuels,high ambient temperatures,and suficient oxygen concentrations,surrogate fuels with the same DCN have similar ignition behaviors,and using the DCN to evaluate fuel ignition tendency is appropriate.However,for the test conditions of low cetane fuels,low ambient temperatures,and reduced oxygen concentrations,different ignition behaviors are observed for the surrogate fuels with the same DCN,so at these conditions using DCN as the evaluation index for fuel ignition tendency may lead to higher uncertainty.

An experimental study on spray auto-ignition of RP-3 jet fuel and its surrogates

Jet fuel is widely used in air transportation,and sometimes for special vehicles in ground transportation.In the latter case,fuel spray auto-ignition behavior is an important index for engine operation reliability.Surrogate fuel is usually used for fundamental combustion study due to the complex composition of practical fuels.As for jet fuels,two-component or three-component surrogate is usually selected to emulate practical fuels.The spray auto-ignition characteristics of RP-3 jet fuel and its three surrogates,the 70%mol n-decane/30%mol 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene blend(Surrogate 1),the 51%mol n-decane/49%mol 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene blend(Surrogate 2),and the 49.8%mol n-dodecane/21.6%mol iso-cetane/28.6%mol toluene blend(Surrogate 3)were studied in a heated constant volume combustion chamber.Surrogate 1 and Surrogate 2 possess the same components,but their blending percentages are different,as the two surrogates were designed to capture the H/C ratio(Surrogate 1)and DCN(Surrogate 2)of RP-3 jet fuel,respectively.Surrogate 3 could emulate more physiochemical properties of RP-3 jet fuel,including molecular weight,H/C ratio and DCN.Experimental results indicate that Surrogate 1 overestimates the auto-ignition propensity of RP-3 jet fuel,whereas Surrogates 2 and 3 show quite similar auto-ignition propensity with RP-3 jet fuel.Therefore,to capture the spray auto-ignition behaviors,DCN is the most important parameter to match when designing the surrogate formulation.However,as the ambient temperature changes,the surrogates matching DCN may still show some differences from the RP-3 jet fuel,e.g.,the first-stage heat release influenced by low-temperature chemistry.