CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 GENERAL
Direct-Injection (DI) diesel engines have been used largely as prime movers
for heavy duty vehicles. With the increasingly stringent regulations on emissions from
diesel engines and continual pursuit for more efficient engines, a better understanding
of the combustion process in a diesel engine is necessary in order to optimise further
the engine performance and emissions.

The primary factor which controls the diesel combustion is the mixture
formation. The mixture formation is controlled by the characteristics of the injection
system, the nature of air swirl and turbulence in the cylinder and spray
characterization. The next factor of diesel combustion is ignition delay and the flame
development after the ignition, that is, combustion rate.

To achieve a better combustion with less pollutant emissions in direct injection

diesel engines, the method, which is widely used and proved effective, is accelerating
the fuel air mixing to improve the combustion in cylinder and reduce the combustion
period. The Oxides of Nitrogen (NOX) emission could be reduced by retarding
injection timing without causing a large increase in exhaust particulates and fuel
consumption. There are two approaches to reach this goal. One is to increase the fuel
injection pressure and the other one is to enhance the airflow in cylinder. It is
necessary to achieve a good spatial distribution of the injected fuel throughout the
entire space. This requires matching of the fuel sprays with combustion chamber
geometry to effectively make use of the gas flows. In other words, matching the
combustion chamber geometry, fuel injection and gas flows is the most crucial factor
for attaining a better combustion.

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The shape of the bowl-in-piston is a key parameter controlling the air motion
and mixing of fuel with air effectively leading to better combustion. Piston-bowl
configuration provides a compression-induced squish motion with consequent
formation of a toroidal vortex occupying the whole bowl space. Large-scale flow
structure in the engine cylinder is dependent on the port geometry, bowl-in-piston
geometry and their locations relative to the cylinder and varies linearly with engine
speed.

A re-entrant combustion chamber has been widely used in high-speed direct

injection (HSDI) diesel engines. The effect of combustion chamber geometry on
diesel engine performance and emission has been the subject of intensive research.
Here, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation can play a very important role
to reduce the number of experiments and to provide a detailed insight on combustion
and related issues. Figure 1.1 shows the schematic diagram of a typical re-entrant
bowl in a direct injection turbocharged diesel engine.

Fig. 1.1 Re-entrant bowl with main geometrical parameters

1.2 SCOPE OF THE PRESENT WORK

The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of re-entrant bowl
geometry of piston on a direct injection heavy-duty turbocharged diesel engines
performance and emissions. Based on the idea of enhancing diffusion combustion at
the later stage of the combustion period, three different bowl geometries were selected
and numerically analysed in this study. A baseline configuration of this engine has
been experimentally characterised, so that a complete set of data is available for
comparison with simulation and the results support a good degree of confidence in the

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numerical predictions. Such a comparison is carried out at peak power operating
conditions. After the validation, a set of calculations were performed again for other
two bowls at full load, peak power engine speed operation.
The goal of the study was not to optimise the combustion chamber shape. For
such a task, it would be necessary to consider a multitude of geometric and operating
parameters, as well as parameters interaction. Furthermore, an optimisation requires
the definition of targets and constraints, which would be related to each specific
application. Conversely, this study aims to assess the influence of a particular set of
parameters, characterising the piston bowl profile. All the other relevant parameters
(depth, maximum diameter of the bowl, squish clearance, compression ratio, injection
rate, etc) were kept constant.