Flame image velocimetry analysis of reacting jet flow fields with a variation of injection pressure in a small-bore diesel engine

Abstract

This study measures in-flame flow fields in a single-cylinder small-bore optical diesel engine using Flame Image Velocimetry (FIV) applied to high-speed soot luminosity movies. Three injection pressures were tested for a two-hole nozzle injector to cause jet-wall interaction and a significant jet-jet interaction within 45° inter-jet spacing. The high-pressure fuel jets were also under the strong influence of a swirl flow. For each test condition, soot luminosity signals were recorded at a high framing rate of 45 kHz with which the time-resolved, two-dimensional FIV post-processing was performed based on the image contrast variations associated with flame structure evolution and internal pattern change. A total of 100 combustion events for each injection pressure were recorded and processed to address the inherent cyclic variations. The ensemble-averaged flow fields were used for detailed flow structure discussion, and Reynolds decomposition using a spatial filtering method was applied to obtain high-frequency fluctuations that were found to be primarily turbulence. The detailed analysis of flow fields suggested that increased injection pressure leads to enhanced jet flow travelling along the bowl wall and higher flow vectors penetrating back towards the nozzle upon the impingement on the wall. Within the jet-jet interaction region, the flow vectors tend to follow the swirl direction, which increases with increasing injection pressure. The FIV also captured a turbulent ring vortex formed in the wall-jet head, which becomes larger and clearer at higher injection pressure. A vortex generated in the centre of combustion chamber was due to the swirl flow with its position being shifted at higher injection pressure. The bulk flow magnitude indicated significant cyclic variations, which increases with injection pressure. The turbulence intensity is also enhanced due to higher injection pressure, which primarily occurs in the wall-jet head region and the jet-jet interaction region.