Scaling liquid penetration in evaporating sprays for different size diesel engines

Abstract

Scaled model experiments can greatly reduce the cost, time and energy consumption in diesel engine development, and the similarity of spray characteristics has a primary effect on the overall scaling results of engine performance and pollutant emissions. However, although so far the similarity of spray characteristics under the non-evaporating condition has been studied to some extent, researches on scaling the evaporating sprays are still absent. The maximum liquid penetration length has a close relationship with the spray evaporation processes and is a key parameter in the design of diesel engine spray combustion system. In this article, the similarity of maximum liquid penetration length is theoretically derived based on the hypotheses that the spray evaporation processes in modern high-pressure common rail diesel engines are fuel–air mixing controlled and local interphase transport controlled, respectively. After verifying that the fuel injection rates are perfectly scaled, the similarity of maximum liquid penetration length in evaporating sprays is studied for three scaling laws using two nozzles with hole diameter of 0.11 and 0.14 mm through the high-speed diffused back-illumination method. Under the test conditions of different fuel injection pressures, ambient temperatures and densities, the lift-off law and speed law lead to a slightly increased maximum liquid penetration length, while the pressure law can well scale the maximum liquid penetration length. The experimental results are consistent with the theoretical analyses based on the hypothesis that the spray evaporation processes are fuel–air mixing controlled, indicating that the local interphase transports of energy, momentum and mass on droplet surface are not rate-controlled steps with respect to spray evaporation processes.