Experimental study on the improvement of spray characteristics of aero-engines using gliding arc plasma

A gliding arc plasma fuel atomization actuator suitable for aeroengines was designed,and a gliding arc plasma fuel spray experimental platform was built to address the fuel atomization problem in aeroengine combustion chambers.The spray characteristics for different airflows,fuel flows,and discharge voltages were analyzed using laser particle size analysis.The research shows that the fuel atomization effect is improved from the increased airflow.The decreased fuel flow not only reduces the injection pressure of the fuel but also changes the discharge mode of the gliding arc,which affects reductions in the discharge power and inhibits fuel atomization.Gliding arc discharges accelerate the breaking,atomization,and evaporation of fuel droplets while reducing the particle size,which increases the proportion of small droplets.Compared with the working conditions of plasma-assisted atomization without the gliding arc,the D0.5,D0.9,and average particle size of the fuel droplets are reduced by 4.7%,6.5%,and 4.1%,respectively,when the modulation voltage of the gliding arc power supply is 200 V.

Effect of Intake Conditions and Nozzle Geometry on Spray Characteristics of Group-Hole Nozzle

The group-hole nozzle concept is proposed to meet the requirement of nozzle hole minimization and reduce the negative impact of poor spatial spray distributions.However,there are limited researches on the effects of intake conditions and nozzle geometry on spray characteristics of the group-hole nozzle.Therefore,in this study,an accurate spray model coupled with the internal cavitating flow was established and computational fluid dynamics(CFD)simulations were done to study the effects of intake conditions and nozzle geometry on spray characteristics of the group-hole nozzle.Experimental data obtained using high-speed digital camera on the high-pressure common rail injection system was used to validate the numerical model.Effects of intake conditions(injection pressure and temperature)and nozzle geometry(orifice entrance curvature radius and nozzle length)on the flow and spray characteristics of the group-hole nozzle were studied numerically.The differences in Sauter mean diameter(SMD),penetration length and fuel evaporation mass between single-hole nozzle and group-hole nozzle under different nozzle geometry were also discussed.It was found that the atomization performance of the group-hole nozzle was better than that of the single-hole nozzle under same intake conditions,and the atomization effect of the short nozzle was better than that of the long nozzle.With increase in the orifice entrance curvature radius,the average velocity and turbulent kinetic energy of the fuel increased,which was conducive to improving the injection rate and flow coefficient of the nozzle.Meanwhile,the penetration length and SMD value rose,while evaporation mass dropped.When the ratio of the orifice entrance curvature radius(R)to the diameter of injection hole(D)was 0.12,the spray characteristics reached a constant state due to elimination of cavitation.Conclusions were made based on these.This study is expected to be a guide for the design of the group-hole nozzle.

Spray Characteristics of Air-Assisted Injector Under Different Ambient Pressures

Spray atomization of liquid fuel plays an important role in droplet evaporation,combustible mixture formation and subsequent combustion process.Well-atomized liquid spray contributes to high fuel efficiency and low pollutant emissions.Gasoline direct injection(GDI)has been recognized as one of the most effective ways to improve fuel atomization.As a special direct injection method,the air-assisted direct injection utilizes high-speed flow of high-pressure air at the injector exit to assist liquid fuel injection and promote spray atomization at a low injection pressure.This injection method has excellent application potential and advantages for high performance and lightweight engines.In this study,the hollow cone spray emerging from an air-assisted injector was studied in a constant volume chamber with the ambient pressures ranging from 5 kPa to 300 kPa.External macro characteristics of spray were obtained using high speed backlit imaging.Phase Doppler particle analyzer(PDPA)was utilized to study the microcosmic spray characteristics.The results show that under the flash boiling condition,the spray will generate a strong flash boiling point which causes the cone shape spray to expand both inwards and outwards.The axisymmetric inward expansion would converge together and form a lathy aggregation area below the nozzle and the axisymmetric outward expansion greatly increases the spray width.The sauter mean diameter(SMD)of flash boiling condition can be reduced to 5μm compared to the level close to 10μm in the non-flash boiling condition.

Effects of Blending Long-Chain Alcohols with Jet Fuel on the Macroscopic Spray Characteristics

Long-chain alcohols were considered to be promising alternative fuels and fuel additives. This study was aimed at figuring out the influences of blending long-chain alcohols with jet fuel on the macroscopic spray characteristic. n-Butanol and n-pentanol were chosen as tested alternative fuels. A common-rail injection system was used to create high-pressure injection conditions. The Schlieren imaging system was used to capture spray processes. Results showed that with the addition of long-chain alcohols, the spray tip penetration and the peak spray tip velocity increased, whereas the spray cone angle and the spray area decreased. Comparisons between those macroscopic spray characteristics of AKB blends and AKP blends were also conducted. Compared to AKB blends, AKP blends showed similar spray tip penetration, larger peak tip velocity, smaller spray cone angle, and smaller spray area.

Study on Spray Characteristics of Dimethyl Carbonate Blended Fuel in IC Engines

The spray characteristics of the blended fuel composed of biodiesel and dimethyl carbonate were compared with those of biodiesel and diesel.The macroscopic spray characteristic parameters including spray tip penetration,maximum spray width,average spray cone angle,and peak tip velocity were used to evaluate the spray characteristics of the blended fuel.The results showed that the spray tip penetration of blended fuel was lower than that of biodiesel,while the spray cone angle and maximum spray width of blended fuel were both larger than that of biodiesel.On the basis of the Hiroyasu and Arai mathematical model combined with the actual working conditions of this experiment,including physical parameters such as the viscosity and density of the fuel,a correct model of spray penetration was established,and the experimental results were compared.

Numerical Simulation of Spray Characteristics of an Effervescent Atomizer

Using fluid dynamics software Fluent, the spray characteristics of an effervescent atomizer in a downstream flow field was simulated and analyzed, the results show that on the cross sections of the atomizer downstream flow field, the distribution of the atomized droplet size is small and mainly concentrated about Sauter mean diameter （ SMD）, and the distribution of the axial velocity is large, but mainly concentrated about the gas peak velocity in the closer nozzle axis area; the gas peak velocity of the atomized droplet increases, while the droplet SMD decreases with increase of the nozzle caliber and the air pressure; with the increase of the flow rate of cuttingfluid, the atomized droplet SMD increases, while the gas peak velocity rises first and then decreases, but the decrease trend is very small after the air pressure is more than 0. 4 MPa. The simulation results have significance in guiding for designing and applying the effervescent atomizer.

Effect of the injection pressure and orifice diameter on the spray characteristics of biodiesel

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of the injection pressure and orifice diameter on the spray characteristics of soybean biodiesel.The macroscopic spray characteristics of the spray tip penetration(STP)and spray cone angle(SCA)were tested with a high-speed camera system.The microscopic spray characteristics,such as the statistical size distribution,Sauter mean diameter(SMD),representative diameters and dispersion boundary,were obtained using a Malvern laser particle size analyzer(PSA).The test results showed that with an increasing injection pressure,the STP and the SCA of the biodiesel increased,but the curves of size-volume distribution and cumulative volume distribution of the atomized droplets shifted to smaller diameters.The SMD and representative diameters decreased,and the dispersion boundary was reduced.Moreover,with a decreasing orifice diameter,longer STP and smaller SCA values were observed.Similarly,the size distribution curves of the atomized biodiesel droplets shifted to smaller diameters.The SMD and representative diameters were reduced,and the relative size range of the atomized biodiesel droplets was enlarged.Higher injection pressures and smaller orifice diameters improved the biodiesel atomization;however,the smaller orifice diameters caused an inhomogeneous size distribution of the atomized biodiesel droplets.

Experimental Studies on Fuel Spray Characteristics of Pressure-Swirl Atomizer and Air-Blast Atomizer

In this work,the effects of fuel temperatures and pressure drops on the flow field and spray characteristics of a pressure-swirl atomizer were discussed using the Particle Imaging Velocimetry(PIV),Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence(PLIF)and Laser Particle Size Analyzer(LPSA)methods.Then the air-blast atomizer was selected to study the interaction of initial atomization and flow field.The effect of fuel-air ratio on the air-blast atomizer were also considered,where the fuel-air ratio was varied by adjusting mass flow rate of the air and fuel respectively.The results show that the spray angle of the pressure-swirl atomizer increases first and changes a little after the pressure drop higher than 0.5 MPa.However,more fuel concentrate on the central region,which is mainly caused by the increase of the proportion of small droplets with lower centrifugal force.The fuel temperature can improve the spray angle only in lower pressure drop,and it has a little effect under higher pressure drops.In addition,the fuel pressure drop has an obvious influence on the fuel distribution and flow field near the nozzle exit compared with the downstream.For the air-blast atomizer,the spray angle increases compared with the pressure-swirl atomizer for the introduction of swirl air.Furthermore,the spray angle decreases with the air mass rate increasing,and it increases with the fuel mass rate increasing.The distribution of velocity and droplet near the nozzle exit is influenced by the air mass rate,and the fuel mass rate mainly affects the distribution in the downstream.The fuel accumulates in the annular area below the nozzle,and the distribution of it changes little with the development along the axial direction.

Spray characteristics and controlling mechanism of fuel containing CO2

This paper presents studies of spray characteristics and controlling mechanism of fuel containing CO2. Using diesel fuel containing CO2 gas, experiments were conducted on diesel hole-type nozzles and simple nozzles. The steady spray and transient spray characteristics were observed and measured by instantaneous shadowgraphy, high-speed photography, phase Doppler anemometry （PDA） and LDSA respectively. The effects of CO2 concentration in the fuel, the injection pressure, the nozzle L/D ratio, surrounding gas pressure and temperature on the atomization behavior and spray pattern were evaluated. The results show that the injection of fuel containing CO2 can greatly improve the atomization and produce a parabolic-shaped spray; and the CO2 gas concentration, surrounding gas pressure, temperature and nozzle config- uration have dominant influences on spray characteristics of the fuel containing CO2. New insight into the controlling mechanism of atomization of the fuel containing CO2 was provided.

Injector Nozzle Flow Model and Its Effects on the Calculations of High Pressure Sprays

This paper discusses the flowing process inside a nozzle, especially the formation mechanism of cavitations within the nozzle and puts forward a nozzle flow model, which takes account of the injection conditions and nozzle geometry. By the model being implemented to the KIVA codes, the spray characteristics (e. g., spray penetration and cone angle) of diesel and dimethyl ether (DME) are simulated. The comparisons between the computational and experimental results are performed, which show that the liquid spray characteristics could be more truly demonstrated by considering the existence of the cavitations. Key words nozzle model - spray characteristics - cavitation - atomization CLC number O 35 - TK 402 Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50376018) and the National 973 Basic Research Program of China (2001CB209207)Biography: WEI Ming-rui (1967-), male, Associate professor, Ph. D, research direction: computational combustion, computational fluid dynamics.

Optimization of Combustion Characteristics and Fuel Injection Timing of a New Type Dual-Pit Combustor Rotary Engine

In order to improve the performance of the rotary engine,this paper has designed a new type of dual-pit rotary engine combustion chamber structure,and compares the combustion and emission characteristics with the rotary engine with a traditional combustion chamber.The existence of the dual-pit combustion chamber strengthens the overall vortex intensity in the cylinder,effectively promotes the mixing process of fuel and air in the cylinder,the maximum combustion pressure in the cylinder increased by 8.6%,significantly increases the diffusion combustion speed,and significantly improves the dynamic performance of the rotary engine.On this basis,the effects of fuel injection timing parameters on fuel distribution,combustion and emission characteristics were studied.Fuel distribution is more even and dispersed during injection in the later stage of compression.When the fuel injection timing was 105°BTDC in the middle of the compression phase,the matching effect of fuel distribution law and ignition scheme was the best.When the injection timing was 75°BTDC and 85°BTDC in the late compression stage,the mass fraction of NOx remained at a low level.The correlation between soot generation and the change of fuel injection timing was weak.When the injection time was 85°BTDC,the soot generation remained at a relatively high level.

定容弹内柴油/丁醇混合燃料燃烧特性研究

In this paper,the spray and combustion characteristics of diesel/butanol-blended fuels were studied within a high-temperature and high-pressure constant volume chamber equipped with a single-hole injector.Two blends with 80%diesel/20%butanol and 60%diesel/40%butanol mixed by volume were tested in this study.The pure diesel B0 was also tested here as a reference.The spray penetration,flame lift-off length,and soot optical thickness were obtained through high-speed schlieren imaging,OH*chemiluminescence,and diffused back-illumination extinction imaging technique,respectively.The thermogravimetric curves of different fuels were obtained through a thermogravimetric analyzer.The results showed that butanol/diesel blends presented a longer ignition delay(ID)and flame lift-off length compared with pure diesel,and such finding was mainly caused by the lower cetane number and higher latent heat of vaporization of n-butanol.With the increase in the n-butanol ratio,soot production in the combustion process decreased significantly.Given the shorter ID period,the soot distribution of pure diesel reached a steady state earlier than the blends.

Motion model for describing the quantity of air in droplets through changing the structure of air induction nozzle

Air induction nozzles possess good anti-drift performance,the throat and orifice sizes of the nozzles are the main design parameters that affecting atomization.Therefore,Venturi tube nozzles and conventional flat fan nozzles were assembled together to investigate the flow rate,droplet size,the quantity of air in droplets affected by a single design parameter of nozzles with applying high speed camera and Spraytec laser diffraction system.The results showed that:the flow rate of the air induction nozzle depended only on the throat size of Venturi tube and pressure,and it was proportional to the throat size of Venturi tube at the same pressure;The flat fan nozzle’s orifice size and Venturi tube size significantly affected volume median diameter of droplets,which generally increased after adding surfactant;A new model was established after optimizing classical equation for calculating the percentage of intake air in droplets and studying the effects of throat and orifice size of air induction nozzles on spray characteristics.By variance analysis,it was verified that the new model of quantity of air in droplets produced by all connected nozzles was correct.The calculation showed that the bubbles sizes ranged at 200-900μm and were in proportion to the droplet size with the percentage of intake air of 10%to 90%.Contrast to the change of volume median diameter and droplet velocity,the existence of intake air could influence their change degree to some extent.