A two conserved scalar model for HCCI and PPCI engine applications

There is a strong demand for a versatile computational model in the design of modern engines such as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) and partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) engines. A robust model is required to describe accurately both the chemistry and turbulent mixing processes in the reacting flow. Although the existing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes coupled with detailed kinetics models may reproduce some realistic results, the excessive computational cost prevents them to be applicable as engineering tools. The present study aims at developing a new modeling approach that can describe the combustion process with high fidelity and computational efficiency.; In this study, a two-conserved scalar approach is proposed to model HCCI and PPCI combustion. The first conserved scalar, the mixture fraction Z, is introduced to capture the inhomogeneities in the fuel-air mixture, and the second conserved scalar, the initial EGR fraction J, is introduced to capture the inhomogeneities in the fresh mixture-EGR charge. The main benefits of this approach are the reduction of dimensionality and the compactness of the domain in the conserved scalar plane, and the capability to use different resolutions for the chemistry and the fluid mechanics calculation. To solve the flow in the conserved scalar plane, two algorithms are proposed. First, the flamelet (zone) creation strategy is introduced to discretize the conserved scalar space based on its mass distribution and reactivity. The second part is the regeneration procedure which accounts for the nonlinear effect of EGR on reaction rates.; Test results from the two-conserved scalar approach are compared to those obtained by direct calculation, and it is demonstrated that the regeneration process in the present approach can properly account for the nonlinear effects arising from chemical reactions, as an improvement over the representative interactive flamelet (RIF) approach. The two conserved scalar model is subsequently implemented into the KIVA-3v code to simulate HCCI combustion. The results show excellent agreement with experimental data, demonstrating that the present approach achieves the initial modeling objectives.; Finally, the two conserved scalar approach is applied to the modeling of direct injection (DI) combustion with an assumption of non-homogeneous EGR. Discrepancies relative to the results from direct calculations are identified. These are attributed to the limitation inherent to the flamelet model, and further improvements are suggested as future work.