Qingluan Xue

Modeling Fuel Spray Vapor Distribution With Large Eddy Simulation of Multiple Realizations

A state-of-the-art spray modeling methodology, recently presented by Senecal et al. [1, 2, 3], is applied to Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of vaporizing sprays. Simulations of non-combusting Spray H (n-heptane fuel) from the Engine Combustion Network are performed. Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) cell sizes of 0.03125 mm to 0.25 mm are utilized to further demonstrate grid convergence of the Dynamic Structure LES model for diesel sprays.Twenty-eight different realizations are simulated by changing the random number seed used in the spray submodels. Multi-realization (ensemble) averaging, which has been shown to be necessary when comparing to local spray measurements, is performed. Global quantities such as liquid and vapor penetration are compared, as well as local mean mixture fraction and mixture fraction standard deviation. The results suggest that the current model does a reasonable job predicting the major features of the n-heptane spray when appropriate grid resolution is utilized.© 2014 ASME

Large Eddy Simulation of Vaporizing Sprays Considering Multi-Injection Averaging and Grid-Convergent Mesh Resolution

A state-of-the-art spray modeling methodology, recently presented by Senecal et al. [1, 2], is applied to Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of vaporizing sprays. Simulations of non-combusting Spray A (n-dodecane fuel) from the Engine Combustion Network are performed. An Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) cell size of 0.0625 mm is utilized based on the accuracy/runtime tradeoff demonstrated by Senecal et al. [2]. In that work it was shown that grid convergence of key parameters for non-evaporating and evaporating sprays was achieved for cell sizes between 0.0625 and 0.125 mm using the Dynamic Structure LES model.The current work presents an extended and more thorough investigation of Spray A using multi-dimensional spray modeling and the Dynamic Structure LES model. Twenty different realizations are simulated by changing the random number seed used in the spray sub-models. Multi-realization (ensemble) averaging is shown to be necessary when comparing to local spray measurements of quantities such as mixture fraction and gas-phase velocity. Through a detailed analysis, recommendations are made regarding the minimum number of LES realizations required for accurate prediction of Diesel sprays. Finally, the effect of a spray primary breakup model constant on the results is assessed.Copyright

Validation of a Three-Dimensional Internal Nozzle Flow Model Including Automatic Mesh Generation and Cavitation Effects

Fuel injectors often experience cavitation due to regions of extremely low pressure. In this work, a cavitation modeling method is implemented in the CONVERGE CFD code to model the flow in fuel injectors. CONVERGE includes a Cartesian mesh based flow solver. In this solver, a Volume Of Fluid (VOF) method is used to simulate the multiphase flow. The cavitation model is based on a flash-boiling method with rapid heat transfer between the liquid and vapor phases. In this method, a homogeneous relaxation model is used to describe the rate at which the instantaneous quality, the mass fraction of vapor in a two-phase mixture, will tend towards its equilibrium value. The model is first validated with the nozzle flow case of Winklhofer by comparing the mass flow rate with experimentally measured values at different outlet pressures. The cavitation contour shape is also compared with the experimental observations. Flow in the Engine Combustion Network Spray-A nozzle configuration is simulated. The mesh dependency is also studied in this work followed by validation against discharge coefficient data. Finally, calculations of a five-hole injector, including moving needle effects, are compared to experimental measurements.Copyright

Fuel Effects on Nozzle Flow and Spray Using Fully Coupled Eulerian Simulations

Abstract : The objective of this study is to examine the impact of single and multi-component surrogate fuel mixtures on the atomization and mixing characteristics of non-reacting isothermal diesel engine sprays. An Eulerian modeling approach was adopted to simulate both the internal nozzle flow dynamics and the emerging turbulent spray in the near nozzle region in a fully-coupled manner. The Volume of Fluids (VoF) methodology was utilized to treat the two-phase flow dynamics including a Homogenous Relaxation approach to account for nozzle cavitation effects. To enable accurate simulations, the nozzle geometry and in-situ multi-dimensional needle lift and off-axis motion profiles have been characterized via the X-ray phase-contrast technique at Argonne National Laboratory. The flow turbulence is treated via the classical k-e Reynolds Average Navier Stoke (RANS) model with in-nozzle and near field resolution of 30 mum. Several multi-component surrogate mixtures were implemented using linear blending rules to examine the behavior of petroleum, and alternative fuels including: JP-8, JP-5, Hydro-treated Renewable Jet (HRJ), Iso-Paraffinic Kerosene (IPK) with comparison to single- component n-dodecane fuel on ECN Spray A nozzle spray dynamics. The results were validated using transient rate-of- injection measurements from the Army Research Laboratory at Spray A conditions as well as projected density fields obtained from the line-of-sight measurements from X-ray radiography measurements at The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The conditions correspond to injection pressure, nominal fuel temperature, and ambient density of 1500 bar, 363 K, and 22.8 kg/m3, respectively. The simulation results provide a unique high-fidelity contribution to the effects of fuels on the spray mixing dynamics. The results can lead to improvements in fuel mixture distributions enhancing performance of military vehicles.

Large Eddy Simulation of a Turbulent Non-Reacting Spray Jet

We performed Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of a turbulent non-reacting n-Heptane spray jet, referred to as Spray H in the Engine Combustion Network (ECN), and executed a data analysis focused on key LES metrics such as fraction of resolved turbulent kinetic energy and similarity index. In the simulation, we used the dynamic structure model for the sub-grid stress, and the Lagrangian-based spray-parcel models coupled with the blob-injection model. The finest mesh-cell size used was characterized by an Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) cell size of 0.0625 mm. To obtain ensemble statistics, we performed 28 numerical realizations of the simulation. Demonstrated by the comparison with experimental data in a previous study [7], this LES has accurately predicted global quantities, such as liquid and vapor penetrations. The analysis in this work shows that 14 realizations of LES are sufficient to provide a reasonable representation of the average flow behavior that is benchmarked against the 28-realization ensemble. With the current mesh, numerical schemes, and sub-grid scale turbulence model, more than 95% of the turbulent kinetic energy is directly resolved in the flow regions of interest. The large-scale flow structures inferred from a statistical analysis reveal a region of disorganized flow around the peripheral region of the spray jet, which appears to be linked to the entrainment process.Copyright

LES for Simulating the Gas Exchange Process in a Spark Ignition Engine

The gas exchange process is known to be a significant source of cyclic variability in Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). Traditionally, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are expected to capture these cycle-to-cycle variations. This paper reports a numerical effort to establish best practices for capturing cyclic variability with LES tools in a Transparent Combustion Chamber (TCC) spark ignition engine. The main intention is to examine the sensitivity of cycle averaged mean and Root Mean Square (RMS) flow fields and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) modes to different computational hardware, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) and LES sub-grid scale (SGS) models, since these aspects have received little attention in the past couple of decades. This study also examines the effect of near-wall resolution on the predicted wall shear stresses. LES is pursued with commercially available CONVERGE code. Two different SGS models are tested, a one-equation eddy viscosity model and dynamic structure model. The results seem to indicate that both mean and RMS fields without any SGS model are not much different than those with LES models, either one-equation eddy viscosity or dynamic structure model. Computational hardware results in subtle quantitative differences, especially in RMS distributions. The influence of AMR on both mean and RMS fields is negligible. The predicted shear stresses near the liner walls is also found to be relatively insensitive to near-wall resolution except in the valve curtain region.Copyright