The main purpose of the project is to develop new mathematical models for fuel spray evaporation and autoignition in the form suitable for applications by the developers of the new generation of Diesel engines.
Although the droplet evaporation process is essentially a kinetic one (its description requires the analysis of the distribution function of molecules), in practical engineering applications its analysis is almost universally based on the hydrodynamic approximation. Recent papers published by the applicant, together with the Russian partner from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, point out that the latter approximation may lead to noticeable underestimates of the evaporation time of droplets in diesel engines, where the applicability of this approximation has never, to the best of our knowledge, been questioned. However, the format in which the kinetic models have been developed is still to complex for practical engineering applications.
In this project, we intend to find simple approximations of the kinetic results, which could be potentially implemented into computational fluid dynamics codes suitable for engineering applications. The second direction of the work on the project will be focused on the coupled solution of equations describing spray heating and evaporation and the ignition of fuel vapour/ air mixture. So far these processes have been described either using computational fluid dynamics codes or oversimplified analytical models based on the geometrical version of the Method of Integral Manifolds developed by one of the participants of the project (Professor V Sobolev). The current project will be focused on the further development of this method, which would eventually enable its application to modelling realistic engineering processes.
Project participants
Professor Sergei Sazhin
Professor Morgan Heikal
Dr Vladimir Levashov
Dr Irina Shishkova
Project partners
Moscow Power Engineering Institute
Project funding
SHRL funding from Royal Society : £12,000 for two years