Ph.D.

Student: Ettore Musu

Tutor: Prof. Roberto Gentili

Ph.D. Title: Improvement of IC engines combustion. Research activity

1. CFD analysis of mixture formation in a S.I. two-stroke 50 cc engine with direct injection and charge stratification 2. Applicability of Gasoline Direct Injection in a high performance engine 3. CFD Study of an Innovative Diesel HCCI Concept 4. Examination of Initialization and Geometrical Details on the Results of CFD Simulations of Diesel Engine

1. CFD analysis of mixture formation in a S.I. two-stroke 50 cc engine with direct injection and charge stratification
1.1. Direct-injection and charge-stratification in two-stroke engines
Although motorcycles are much less than cars it should be considered that the percentage of two-wheelers (mainly with two-stro ke engines) running in cities is very high, with a significant contribution to urban pollution. As a result, at least in Europe and in the other developed countries, two-wheeler emissions are subjected to increasingly stringent regulations that will exclude the conventional two-stroke S. I. engines with carburettor or indirect injection from the market in a short time, on account of their typical very high emissions of unburned hydrocarbons. The solution is direct fuel injection that allows scavenging the cylinder just with air. It prevents the loss of fuel from the exhaust port due to mere short-circuiting and to piston upward stroke before the exhaust port is closed. Direct fuel injection, combined with proper solutions, also allows getting charge stratification, facing another well-known negative aspect of carburetted two-stroke engines: bad combustion and/or misfire at light load, which as well cause large exhaust emission of unburned hydrocarbons and poor fuel economy. This problem is due to air-intake throttling, which reduces the scavenging ratio, leading to excessive ratio of residual gas to fresh charge. To avoid air throttling, combustion must be kept efficient with excess air thanks to charge stratification: in the region of ignition, the mixture should be stoichiometric or slightly rich at every engine load and speed, with the rest of the combustion chamber filled with lean mixture or pure air.

1.2. CFD analysis of mixture formation

The calculations have been carried out using AVL FIRE code that performs 3-dimension compressible unsteady flow simulation. The actual geometry of the engine has been modeled without important simplifications. The scavenging and the exhaust ports, as well as the combustion chamber, have been carefully reproduced in the CFD model. Gas temperature and pressure time-history obtained by the experiments have been assumed as boundary conditions at the entrance and outlet of the fluid volume.

The injection rate and the spray cone angle experimentally verified in a constant volume chamber have been assumed in the calculation. CFD simulations have been performed at 4000 and 7000 rpm at light load and full load and proved stratification correctness and full load satisfactory charge homogeneity.

1.3. Throttling influence in stratified charge operation

Correct charge stratification allows the engine to operate unthrottled at every load and speed, thus engine behavior in unthrottled condition is a meaningful index of stratification quality. However unthrottled operation does not necessarily lead to the best overall result. Experimental test-bench results proved that a suitable amount of throttling is advisable to reduce exhaust emissions, to improve fuel economy and to increase exhaust gas temperature, with obvious benefits for catalytic converter efficiency at light loads. CFD analysis demonstrated that throttling does not change tumble motion intensity significantly, but appreciably increases gas temperature and internal EGR. The higher in-cylinder temperature engenders better and faster fuel vaporization leading to a HC emissions reduction. The higher internal EGR level reduces NOx emissions. Moreover, in throttling condition the smaller amount of oxygen mass within the cylinder leads to a better behavior in stratified charge operations promoting combustion completeness.

2. Applicability of Gasoline Direct Injection in a high performance engine

2.1. Direct-injection and charge-stratification in four-stroke engines
In four-stroke S.I. engines, direct injection allows reducing fresh charge temperature (fuel evaporation heat is subtracted from air, not from inlet valves and inlet ducts), with benefits for volumetric efficiency, combustion efficiency and knocking resistance that allows higher compression ratios. As a re sult, engine power and fuel economy increase. If direct injection is associated with charge stratification, further benefits in fuel economy occur at partial loads, due to lower combustion temperatures, unthrottled operation and smaller heat flow to combustion chamber walls. For these reasons gasoline direct injection has been used for racing S.I. engines and is arriving on the market also for high-performance engines.

2.2. Aims of the study

A numerical study has been conducted, aimed at verifying feasibility and at predicting benefits of direct injection, in the case of Lamborghini V12 engine, presently equipped with an indirect injection system. Till now, the study has only considered homogeneous-charge operation. Calculations have been carried out using AVL FIRE code that performs 3-dimension compressible unsteady flow simulation. Simulations have been performed at the maximum power speed (8000 rpm) in full load condition in order to investigate the applicability of direct injection in the worse condition for mixture formation.

2.3. Validation of the CFD model: PFI simulation

The simulation of the PFI engine has been conducted in order to validate the CFD model by comparing the CFD results with the available experimental data. In-cylinder pressure comparison between test bench and CFD model results are nearly identical. Moreover the volumetric efficiency is predicted by the CFD model with a disagreement of less than 3% in respect of experimental measurements.

2.4. GDI simulation results

Two injection timings and two fuel temperature have been considered. The in-cylinder temperatures, compared to PFI, are considerably lower especially in the case of low gasoline temperature. Lower temperature during the intake phase leads to better volumetric efficiency and to lower combustion temperature that provides better efficiency because reduces adiabatic exponent, gas dissociation and wall heat losse s. Knocking tendency decreases as well, therefore compression ratio can be increased. Results shows an increment of the volumetric efficiency of the 2-7%, and a reduction of the in-cylinder of 30-50 K at the end of compression phase that allow the use of an increased compression ratio with benefits in thermodynamic efficiency. With this study is also proved that gasoline direct injection is also possible at very high engine speed thanks to the outward opening injector performance.

3. CFD Study of an Innovative Diesel HCCI Concept

3.1. HCCI combustion
Homogeneous-charge, compression-ignition (HCCI) combustion is triggered by spontaneous ignition in dilute homogeneous mixtures. The combustion rate must be reduced by suitable solutions such as high rates of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) and/or lean mixtures. HCCI is considered to be a very effective way to reduce engine pollutant emissions, however only prototypes have been constructed until now that are based on this concept, with the exception of a few production engines. HCCI combustion currently is not able to cover the whole engine operating range, and thus the engine must be designed to operate also as a conventional engine, especially at high loads as the use of EGR displaces air from the cylinder, reducing the engines maximum mean effective pressure.

3.2. Aims of the study

This study concerns an innovative concept to control HCCI combustion in diesel-fueled engines. The main purposes of the research are the achievement of diesel HCCI combustion even when operating at high mean effective pressures, as well as positive control of combustion behavior. The concept consists in forming a pre-compressed homogeneous charge outside the cylinder and in gradually admitting it into the cylinder during the combustion process. In this way, combustion can be controlled by the transfer flow rate, and high pressure rise rates, typical of standard HCCI combustion, can be avoided. This new combustion concept has been called Homogenous Charge Progressive Combustion (HCPC).

CFD analysis was conducted to understand the feasibility of the HCPC concept and to identify the parameters that control and influence this novel HCCI combustion. A CFD code with detailed kinetic chemistry (AVL FIRE) was used in the study. The code was also validated by means of experimental data from conventional HCCI and diesel combustion. In the HCPC concept the compression is performed by an external reciprocating compressor which drives the air into a tank sized to keep the pressure nearly constant and which performs the same compression work accomplished by the engine piston in a four stroke engine. The high-temperature compressed air is transferred to the cylinder through an inlet valve during the engine combustion phase. Contemporary with the air transfer, fuel is injected into the transfer duct, which evaporates and mixes with the air, bringing about the conditions needed for homogeneous combustion.

3.3. Results and discussions

24 cases were considered for the CFD simulations that represent all the combinations of the two valve lift curves considered (CAM 40, 46), two injection rate profiles (SQUARE, LINEAR) and six A/F (ALFA 17-45) for each case. The designation of each case is CAM 40/46, SQUARE/LINEAR INJECTION, ALFA 1745. The spray is located in the intake duct in a vertical orientation. HCPC engine performance was calculated using the CFD results for the combustor and by modelling the external compressor considering an adiabatic compression with 90% polytrophic indicated efficiency. The power is seen to decrease with increasing A/F because the fuel amount injected decreases. With a wider cam phase angle the air mass delivered increases as well as the compressor work that is directly proportional to it. However part of the compressor work is recovered, due to engine work produced by the transferred air in the combustor during the expansion stroke of the piston. The net effect is that the power increases with a wider cam phase. The indicated efficiency varies with A/F ratio and reaches a maximum for A/F around 30 for all cases with CAM 40 and at around 35 for the cases with CAM 46. The best results were obtained using the linear injection ramp rate, especially with higher A/F ratios. The HC emissions are not high when compared with those produced by PCCI and HCCI combustion. Moreover, they can be reduced by using a different injection strategy because most of them come from the wall-film on the inlet valve surfaces. The NOx emissions are not very low because the present HCPC process is not a low temperature combustion process and the peak combustion temperature is very high (around 2700 K). In all the cases the NOx emissions increase with increasing oxygen partial pressure that is proportional to the A/F ratio. As regards CO emissions, they increase with decreasing A/F ratio. With A/F = 17 they are one order of magnitude higher than in the cases with A/F greater than 24, indicating that the fuel oxidation is not completely accomplished. No big difference was noticed between the two injection profiles in terms of soot emissions. Using A/F lower than 24 the soot emissions are predicted to be very high. With A/F = 28 the soot is around 2 g/kg-f and with higher A/F the soot emissions are on the same order of magnitude as the PCCI combustion. Results of the new HCPC concept are sufficiently promising to encourage further research, including experimental activity.

4. Examination of Initialization and geometrical details on the results of CFD simulations of diesel engine
4.1. Introduction
CFD has gained acceptance as a tool for engine design and to evaluate changes to engine operating parameters. In order to save computational time, an axisymmetric combustion chamber can be assumed if the engine has a centrally located injector with a prescribed number of equally spaced holes. However, this assumption necessitates sacrificing details of the engine geometry. For example, machining done to the piston and cylinder head to accommodate the valves is not laid out in an axisymmetric fashion. The additional volume created by these features also contributes to the volumetric compression ratio. The clearance between the piston and the head at TDC, referred to as the squish height, is often not constant in actual engine geometry. To be able to make the axisymmetric assumption some compromise must be made to adequately account for the squish height since its value has a significant effect on the squish flow created when the working fluid moves from the outer edges of the cylinder into the smaller bowl diameter during the compression process. The same phenomenon is responsible for the increase in swirl as the total volume decreases and the corresponding reduction in swirl as the volume increases in the expansion stroke. The swirl flow is an important operating parameter to consider when initializing a CFD simulation of diesel engine combustion. Often full optical characterization of the flow field is not available. Although studies using PIV, LDV and hot wire anemometry are available for particular engines, initial swirl conditions for CFD simulations are often derived from steady-state flow bench experiments. Here the head is mounted to a cylindrical section which matches the bore size and ranges from 1 to 1-1/2 bore diameters in length. An impulse swirl meter converts the angular momentum of the flow to a torque and is located at the bottom of the cylindrical section. The valve lift is then varied over its operating range and the corresponding flow and torque numbers are integrated over the lift profile and a composite swirl number is determined.

4.2. Aims of the study

This work examines the following details of the axisymmetric assumption and the swirl initialization. First a steady-state simulation of a flow-bench case was used to validate the CFD codes ability to predict the global swirl behaviour. Then, a series of motored simulations were run to determine the effect of the real engine geometry on the swirl history. Combusting cases in both detailed and axisymmetric geometries were used to determine real engine geometry effects. Finally, a low temperature combustion sector mesh case with a lower swirl ratio that more closely matches the swirl history was compared.

4.3. Steady state intake flow simulation

The simulation was performed using AVL FIRE release 8.52. The turbulence model based on the RANS (Reynolds Average Navier Stokes) method is the two-equation K--f model, which takes the effects of turbulence in the mean flow into account. The honeycomb of the impulse swirl meter and the engine domain were meshed separately with boundaryfitted grids consisting of only hexahedral cells. The grids were then joined together to form one single mesh by means of the arbitrary-connection tool of Fire software.

The torque was calculated considering the pressure and shear forces acting in each face of the honey comb wall. The comparison between numerical and experimental data shows a very good agreement. The torque is predicted with CFD with an error of 8% and the mass flow rate with an error of 16% demonstrating the consistency of this model to predict the swirl ratio.

4.4. Influence of the geometry details in the flow field

The CFD code used in the present simulations is a version of the KIVA-3V Release 2 code with improvements in various physical and chemical models developed at the Engine Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The KIVA code was coupled with the CHEMKIN II code to solve for the detailed diesel fuel chemistry during the multidimensional engine simulations. In order to test the effects of the different possibilities for geometrical features on the results, a series of tests with different grid details were used: 1. Detailed geometry with head and piston valve recesse s 2. Piston and head valve cutouts removed (flat head/piston) 3. Piston valve pockets removed 4. Head valve recesse s removed Figure 34 shows the swirl history for the four different geometries referenced above. Observe that the total swirl is not recovered after the swirl spin up (compressing) and spin down (expanding) processes due to viscous effects. As expected, the geometry with the fewest geometric details exhibited the highest swirl ratio at TDC. The geometry with the most detail has the lowest swirl ratio, indicating that details of the valve recesse s in the head and piston impede the flow thereby changing the swirl history. The next lowest swirl is the one without head crevices indicating that the valve cutouts in the piston had a lesser affect than those in the head.

4.5. Effect of detailed geometry on combustion

Having shown that the details of the geometry affect the swirl history, cases were run under a low temperature diesel combustion operating point. The operating condition was chosen for its relatively high soot production and therefore could be useful in ascertaining the effects of mixing caused by the different geometrical details. The combustion cases the were performed in the detailed mesh, in the sector mesh with swirl=1.0, and in the sector mesh with swirl=0.8. The ignition delay is essentially identical for all cases, indicating that the mixing done prior to approximately -3 ATDC is similar for all cases and that the mixing is due primarily to the injection event itself. The results diverge slightly at this point and the detailed geometry case shows a greater amount of heat release during the early stages of the main heat release event. This slight difference in the phasing of the heat release biases the detailed geometry towards elevated temperatures relative to the sector mesh cases. For this rea son, the total in-cylinder CO mass fractions are higher for the sector mesh. The use of initial swirl as a means to compensate for the differences in swirl history. By approximately 5 ATDC, the sector mesh calculations start to diverge and the lower swirl case more effectively oxidizes CO. The predicted CO levels are not the same but the premise of matching the swirl histories better seems to be sound as the CO trends toward the detailed geometry results with the use of decreased swirl. Soot

emissions have a greater sensitivity to the geometry details than CO. There is a distinct difference in the behavior of the soot oxidation curve after 10ATDC .

5. Education
5.1. Leonardo Da Vinci courses attended:
Scientific English course Introduction to the software Mathematica Equazioni Differenziali della Fisica Matematica English course at CLI, level C1 achieved

5.2. Other educational activities

Auditor of the class ME 569 Applied Combustion (Prof. Jahl Ghandi) at ERC UW-Madison, fall semester 2008 English course at Wall Street Institute in Pisa (2006-2007) Seminar: Engine Fluid Dynamics June 11-12, 2007 AST User Meeting, Graz, Austria Seminar: Simulazione Fluidodinamica nei Motori a Combustione Interna University of Modena June 27, 2007 Several ERC student seminars and lectures (once a week for several months) at the ERC, UWMadison. The topics of those seminars were the latest modeling and experimental researches related to internal combustion engines

5.3. Conferences e Workshop attended

DERC Meeting, June, 7 2008, Madison (WI), USA. SAE World Congress 2008, April 14-18, 2008, Detroit (MI), USA. IMEM 2008, April 13, 2008, Detroit, (MI), USA ASME ICEF 2007, October 14-17 2007, Charleston, (SC), USA AVL AST User Meeting June 10-13, Graz, Austria SAE SETC 2006, November 14-17, 2006, San Antonio (TX), USA ASME ICEF 2006, November 5-8 2006, Sacramento, California, USA

6. Teaching activity
During the year 2006 the student was teaching assi stant for the class of Thermal Engines for Traction at the University of Pisa. The student held together with his re search group a seminar at Lamborghini S.p.A. with the topic: Direct injection in S.I engine. The student during the PhD has been a supervisor of 6 theses in the field of internal combustion engine simulations.

7. Publications
1. Zanforlin S., Musu E., Frigo S., Gentili R., Direct Injection and Charge Stratification in a 50 cc TwoStroke Engine: CFD Studies and Test Bench Results, 2006 Fall Technical Conference of the ASME Internal Combustion Engine Division, pp 1-8, Sacramento (CA),vol. CD & ASME Paper ICEF2006-1545, (2006) 2. Musu E., Frigo S., De Angelis F., Gentili R., DellOrto P., Evolution of a Small Two-Stroke Engine with Direct Liquid Injection and Stratified Charge SETC 2006, pp 1-11, San Antonio (TX),vol. CD & SAE Paper 2006 32 0066 (2006) 3. Tamagna D., Musu E., Gentili R., A Preliminary Study Towards an Innovative Diesel HCCI Combustion 2007 Fall Technical Conference of the ASME Internal Combustion Engine Division, pp 1-14, Charleston (SC),vol. CD & ASME Paper ICEF2007-1743 (2007) 4. Musu E., Reitz D.R., Gentili R., Comparison Between KIVA and AVL FIRE in Diesel and HCCI Engine Simulations Research Poster, Diesel Emission Reduction Consortium (DERC) Meeting, June, 7 2008, Madison (WI) (2008). 5. Musu E., Gentili R., Cacciatore D., CFD Study of GDI for Lamborghini V12 engine, 63 Congresso Nazionale ATI Associazione Termotecnica Italiana, , 63 Congresso Nazionale ATI, pp 1-6, Palermo,vol. CD (2008)

Soon to be published papers:

1. Musu E., Reitz D.R., Gentili R., Homogeneous Charge Progressive Combustion (HCPC): CFD Study of an Innovative Diesel HCCI Concept, SAE World congress 09 Paper 2009-01-1344, Detroit (MI) (2009) 2. Bergin M., Musu E., Kokjohn S., Reitz D.R., Examinatio n of Initia lization and Geometrical Details on the Results of CFD Simulations of Diesel Engin e ASME Paper ICES2009-76053 ASME Spring Technical Conference, Milwaukee (WI) (2009)