Presidential Young Investigators Award: Engine Heat Transfer and Combustion Studies

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A single-cylinder research engine will be instrumented for measurements of instantaneous wall surface temperatures, convective and radiative heat fluxes, combustion chamber pressure and other pertinent flow-field parameters, and exhaust emissions. The results will be used to develop a new generation of multi-dimensional process models which will be suitable for realistic simulation of Low-Heat Rejection (LHR) and conventional engines using available supercomputers. The basis for these models will be the Los Alamos Kiva-II program which can provide a detailed knowledge of in-cylinder fluid and combustion processes. Improved gas-to-wall heat transfer models will relate boundary layer phenomena to turbulence and combustion processes and in-cylinder radiation to soot dynamics. Multi-dimensional finite element descriptions of the combustion chamber components will also be incorporated into the code. Thus, cyclically-varying gas-to-wall heat transfer phenomena, transient heat conduction inside the components, unsteady boundary layer and deposit characteristics, and engine combustion and emissions phenomena will be studied. The proposed engine heat transfer and combustion studies will enhance our basic understanding of the unsteady thermal phenomena in conventional and LHR engine combustion chambers. This new knowledge will be used to optimize the performance and emissions trade-offs resulting from the introduction of ceramic materials, advanced component designs, and new fuels and lubricants in the engine combustion chamber. The experimental studies will also provide realistic boundary conditions which will be used in our analytical models to predict transient temperature distributions, thermal stress levels, and lubrication requirements of conventional and LHR combustion chamber components. This coordinated research effort which takes advantage of advanced instrumentation and ever-increasing computer capability can make a substantial contribution in our efforts to produce more fuel efficient engines with acceptable emissions characteristics.