Effect of split injection on mixture formation and combustion processes of diesel spray injected into two-dimensional piston cavity

The objective of this study is to obtain an enhanced understanding of the effect of split injection on mixture formation and combustion processes of diesel spray. A two-dimensional (2D) piston cavity of the same shape as that used in a small-bore diesel engine was employed to form the impinging spray flame. The fuel was injected into a high pressure, high temperature constant volume vessel through a single-hole nozzle with a hole diameter of 0.11 mm. The injection process comprised a pre-injection followed by the main injection. The main injection was carried out either as a single injection of injection pressure 100 MPa (Pre+S100), or by two types of split injection of injection pressure 160 MPa. The latter two types were defined by mass fraction ratios 1:1 and 3:1 (Pre+D160_1-1, Pre+D160_3-1). In order to observe the spray mixture formation process, the tracer laser absorption scattering (LAS) techique was adopted. Tracer LAS fuel with 97.5 vol% of n-tridecane and 2.5 vol% of 1-methylnaphthalene (α-MN) was employed. The spatial distributions of the vapor and liquid phases and the spray mixture formation characteristics in the 2D piston cavity for the three injection strategies were investigated. The diesel spray combustion and soot formation processes were studied using a high-speed video camera. The flame structure and soot formation process were examined using two-color pyrometry. The experimental results revealed that the split-injection vapor distribution was significantly more homogeneous than that of the single injection. The main injection fuel caught up with the pre-injection fuel and provided the spray tip with substantial additional momentum, enabling it to advance further. A high soot concentration and low temperatures appeared near the cavity wall region under the three injection strategies. The soot reduction rate for split injection was higher than that for single injection. The second main injection caught up with the previous injection’s flame, which deteriorated the combustion and resulted in higher soot generation. The effect of split injection on the process of soot evolution finished at the same time as that of single injection.