First International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology

Effect of Engine Speed on Intake Valve Flow Characteristics of a Diesel Engine

- An Analysis Using Particle Image Velocimetry
Murali Krishna. B and J. M. Mallikarjuna*
Internal Combustion Engines Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, India
*email: jmmallik@iitm.ac.in
(tracing) particles put in the flow field by a high power
laser sheet and acquiring two successive images of the
flow field within a known time interval by a highresolution CCD camera. Then the analysis of the data will
be carried out using cross-correlation techniques from the
captured images [9 & 10]. Figure 1 shows the
arrangement of PIV system.
Previously, Li et al., Yasar et al and Valentino et al.,
have made PIV investigations to study the engine incylinder fluid flow. They found that, large-scale incylinder swirl and tumble motions generated during the
induction and the compression strokes; later dissipated as
micro-scale turbulence before ignition [1, 2 & 5]. Reuss et
al., have measured in-cylinder velocity distributions using
PIV and have compared them with the results of
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). They found that
high swirl and tumble motion were responsible for a very
large mean velocity and thereby high dissipation rates
were achieved [7]. Nadarajah et al, Zhu et al and
Auriemma et al., have made experimental investigations
using Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) on swirl flow
through an axisymmetric port and poppet valve assembly.
They found that the generation of the swirl inside cylinder
alters the flow structure particularly below the intake
valve. Also, they found that both the mean tangential and
axial velocity components increase during the intake
valve opening period and reach the maximum value at the
closing of the valve [3, 4 & 6].
However, the previous investigations were lacking the
investigations of in-cylinder fluid motion under different
airflow rates or engine speeds. Therefore, the present
study deals with the analysis of the fluid flow fields at the
exit of the intake valve of an I.C engine using PIV
technique under different airflow rates corresponding to
different engine speeds at full intake valve lift under static
conditions.

Abstract
In this work, an attempt was made to study the effect of
engine speed on the intake valve flow characteristics of a
single-cylinder, direct-injection, diesel engine using
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The analysis of flow
was made at the exit of the intake valve of the engine on a
vertical plane passing through the axis of the valve, at
different airflow rates corresponding to the different
engine speeds at the maximum valve lift under static
conditions. For every airflow condition, average velocity
fields along with streamline pattern, contours of turbulent
kinetic energy, radial and axial velocity components were
estimated and analyzed. From the analysis of results, it
was observed that the engine speed does not affect the
direction of the velocity vectors significantly. However, its
effect on the radial and axial velocity components is
pronounced. Finally, it is suggested that the intake
airflow analysis carried out in this work would be very
much useful for the optimization of the combustion
chamber of the modern internal combustion engines.

Key words - Fluid motion, flow rate, PIV, valve lift

1. Introduction
In the internal combustion (I.C) engines, in-cylinder
fluid motion has great influence on the heat transfer to the
cylinder walls, combustion process and the exhaust
emissions. It governs the flame propagation rate in the
spark-ignition engines and controls air-fuel mixing
phenomenon in the diesel engines [8]. It is controlled by
many engine parameters viz., intake valve and manifold
geometry and orientations, piston geometry, compression
ratio, engine speed etc. Therefore, understanding
thoroughly the in-cylinder fluid motion is very much
essential in order to optimize the design of combustion
chambers for modern I.C engines viz., Gasoline Direct
Injection (GDI) engines, Homogeneous Charge
Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines and stratified
charge engines etc.
Today, optical diagnostic tools like Particle Image
Velocimetry (PIV) have enabled the engine researchers to
gain much deeper understanding of the in-cylinder fluid
motion. The principle of a two-dimensional PIV
technique involves the illumination of known seeding

978-0-7695-3267-7/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/ICETET.2008.97

2. Experimental Setup and Procedure

In this work, PIV investigations were carried out at the
exit of the intake valve of a four-stroke, single-cylinder,
direct-injection, diesel-engine at six different airflow rates
corresponding to the engine speeds of 500 to 3000 rpm in
steps of 500 rpm at a maximum intake valve lift under

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static conditions. The intake valve was of axisymmetric

poppet type with maximum lift of 7.6 mm.
To facilitate the measurements with PIV, the engine
cylinder was made of transparent material with the actual
dimensions of bore (87.5 mm) and stroke (110 mm). The
transparent cylinder was mounted below the actual engine
cylinder head (Figure 1). The inlet manifold of the test
engine was connected to an air blower through a settling
chamber. An orifice meter was installed in between for
the measurement of airflow rate. Airflow rate was varied
by changing the air blower speed through an electronic
speed controller connected to it. The photographic view
of the experimental setup is shown in Figures 2. The PIV
system consists of a double pulsed Nd-YAG laser of 200
mJ/pulse energy at 532 nm wave length, a CCD camera of
resolution 2048x2048 pixels with 16 frames per second,
laser and camera controllers, and a data acquisition
system and a software. Triggering of the laser and camera
was controlled by a PC through a LaVision software
called as DAVIS7.2. In this work, synthetic oil Di-EthylHexyl-Sebacat (C26H50O4) was used as the seeding
material. The seeding particles of 1 m size were
generated in the form of a fine mist by a particle generator
and mixed to the supplied air in the intake manifold.
The laser sheet was allowed to pass through the test
section on a vertical plane at the axis of the intake valve.
At the test plane, the field of view (FOV) considered was
about 88 x 110 mm. Within this area, region of interest
(ROI) was selected as shown by the dotted lines in Figure
3. For each airflow condition, 150 image pairs were
recorded for reliable estimation of velocity fields. The
actual air supplied to the engine and corresponding time
interval (dt) between image pairs required were estimated
by assuming a volumetric efficiency of 90% for all the air
flow rates. In addition, within the FOV, one vertical and
one horizontal location were selected at distance of 3 mm
away from the intake valve tip as shown in Figure 3 and
at these locations, the radial and axial velocity
components were estimated. From the instantaneous
velocity fields; average velocity fields with stream-line
patterns, contours of turbulent kinetic energy, radial and
axial velocity components were estimated, plotted and
discussed in the following section.

12
11

10

1. Blower, 2.Settling Chamber, 3.Connecting Pipe, 4. Engine,

5.Camera, 6.Seeder, 7. Compressor, 8. Nd -YAG Laser, 9.Laser
Sheet, 10. Laser Controller, 11.Acquisition System, 12.Camera
Controller

Figure 1. PIV system

Figure 2. Photographic view of the experimental

setup
The cross-correlation was carried out with 32x32 pixel
interrogation window with 50% overlap [10]. During post
processing of the data, it was observed that the initial
velocity fields were consisting many spurious vectors.
These vectors were removed and replaced by the mean
value vectors during post processing operation. From the
corrected velocity vector fields, average and root mean
square (RMS) velocity vector fields were evaluated for
each flow condition. In addition, the radial and axial
velocity components were estimated at the specified
locations as mentioned earlier (Figure 3).

3. Results and Discussion

The recorded image pairs (150 for each test condition)
were processed by using LaVision DAVIS7.2 (data
acquisition and visualization) commercial software. The
typical raw image at full intake valve lift is as shown in
Figure 3. A multi-pass cross-correlation algorithm was
used to compute the velocity vector fields from the raw
image pairs.

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engine speed. It is also observed that the maximum

velocity of about 8.5 m/s occurs at the airflow rate
corresponding to the engine speed of 3000 rpm.
9
at 500 rpm

at 1000rpm

Radial velocity, m\s

at 1500rpm

at 2000rpm

at 2500 rpm

4
3

at 3000 rpm

at full lift

2
1
0
-5.0 -3.9 -2.8 -1.6 -0.5 0.7 1.8 3.0 4.1 5.2 6.4 7.5 8.7 9.8 11.0 12.1 13.2 14.4 15.5 16.7
-1

Horizontal location, mm

Figure 3. Typical raw image

Figure 4. Radial velocity at the horizontal location

3.1. Axial and Radial Velocity Profiles

Figures 4-7 show the profiles of radial and axial

velocity components at the specified locations, which
were calculated from the average velocity fields for
different engine speeds at full intake valve lift. These
profiles are very useful in estimating the velocity gradient
properties viz., vorticity and strain rate, which influence
the fundamental characteristics of turbulence. From
Figures 4-7, it is observed that both the axial and radial
velocity profiles are smooth and identical for all the
engine speeds considered. However, the magnitudes of
axial and radial velocity components are increasing with
increase in engine speed. This may be due to the higher
absolute velocities of airflow at higher engine speeds. In
addition, the angular momentum of the air stream is
higher at higher engine speeds due to reduced rate of
decay of it due to viscous friction at the walls. Thereby
the radial and axial velocity components are higher at
higher engine speeds.

A xial velocity, m\s

1
0
-5.0 -3.9 -2.8 -1.6 -0.5 0.7 1.8 3.0 4.1 5.2 6.4 7.5 8.7 9.8 11.0 12.1 13.2 14.4 15.5 16.7
-1
at 500 rpm

-2

at 1000rpm
at 1500rpm

-3

at 2000rpm
at 2500 rpm

-4

at 3000 rpm

-5

at full lift

-6

Horizontal location, mm

Figure 5. Axial velocity at the horizontal location

8
at 500 rpm

Radail velocity, m\s

3.2. Velocity Vector Fields and Total Kinetic

Energy Distribution
Figure 8 shows an average velocity fields with
superimposed streamline patterns for various engine
speeds at full intake valve lift. From Figure 8, it is
observed that, the overall direction of velocity vectors is
almost identical for all the engine speeds at full intake
valve lift. However, the magnitude of the velocity is
increasing with increase in the engine speed. Air flows
into the cylinder through the intake port in the form of a
jet with maximum velocity at the exit of the valve. After
leaving the intake port, the jet of air interacts and mixes
with surrounding air and diffuses into it and moves
downwards with deterioration of velocity. As expected,
the airflow velocities are strongly dependent on the

at 1000rpm
at 1500rpm

at 2000rpm

at 2500 rpm
at 3000 rpm

4
3

at full lift

2
1
0
45.0

43.9

42.8

41.6

40.5

39.3

38.2

37.1

35.9

34.8

33.6

32.5

31.3

30.2

Vertical location, mm

Figure 6. Radial velocity on the vertical location

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speeds, but the magnitudes are higher at higher

engine speeds.

0.5

A xial velocity, m\s

0
45.0 43.9 42.8 41.6 40.5 39.3 38.2 37.1 35.9 34.8 33.6 32.5 31.3 30.2
-0.5

-1
at 500 rpm

-1.5
-2

at 1000rpm
at 1500rpm
at 2000rpm

-2.5
-3
-3.5

5. References

at 2500 rpm
at 3000 rpm

[1] Li. Y, H. Zhao, Z. Peng and N. Ladommatos, Particle

image velocimetry measurement of in-cylinder flow in
internal combustion enginesexperiment and flow
structure analysis, Proceedings of the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, vol 216, Part D, D08701, IMechE
2002.

at full lift

-4

Vertical location, mm

Figure 7. Axial velocity at the vertical location

From the streamline patterns (Figure 8), one can also
observe that the formation of jet at the exit of intake
valve. Later, it impinges onto the cylinder wall and
diverting back causing the formation of small and largescale vortices near the exit of the intake valve. In addition,
it is observed that the radius of the large vortex below the
intake valve increases with increase in the engine speed. It
is largest at the engine speed of 3000 rpm than other
engine speeds considered in this study. It may be due to
more reversal effect (diverting back) at this speed.
Figure 9 shows the contour plots of turbulent kinetic
energy (TKE) which are calculated based on the RMS
velocity fields (not shown). From Figure 9, it is observed
that the variation of TKE was higher at higher engine
speeds than at lower engine speeds at full intake valve lift.
It may be due to large vortex flow or swirl formation
inside the cylinder at higher engine speeds.

[2] Yasar. A, B. Sahin_, H. Akilli and K. Aydin, Effect of

inlet port on the flow in the cylinder of an internal
combustion engine, Proceedings of the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers Vol. 220 Part C: J. Mechanical
Engineering Science, C16904 IMechE 2006.
[3] Nadarajah. S, S. Balabani, M. J. Tindal and M. Yianneskis,
The effect of swirl on the annular flow past an
axisymmetric poppet valve, Proceeding of the Institution
of Mechanical Engineers, vol 212, Part C, C04597,
IMechE, 1998.
[4] Zhu Yuanxian, Dick Evers, Gerrit Huigen and Gerrit
Hommersom, LDA Measurements of steady and unsteady
flow through the induction system of a heavy duty diesel
engine, SAE Paper No. 901576.
[5] Valentino Gerardo, Duane Kaufman and Patrick Farrell,
Intake Valve Flow Measurements Using PIV, SAE Ppaer
No. 932700.

4. Conclusions
From the present PIV investigations, the following
conclusions are drawn:

Finally, it is suggested that the present flow analysis

will be useful in optimization of design of
combustion chamber for modern engines like GDI,
HCCI, etc.

[6] Auriemma. M, F. E. Corcione, U. Di Martino and G.

Valentino, Analysis of the intake flow in a diesel engine
head using dynamic steady flow conditions, SAE Paper
No.2001-01-1307.

At the exit of the intake valve of the engine, the

overall flow patterns are similar for all the airflow
rates considered in this study. However, magnitudes
of the average velocities are higher at higher engine
speeds.

[7] Reuss L. David, Tang-Wei Kuo, Bahram Khalighi, Dan

Haworth and Martin Rosalik, Particle Image Velocimetry
measurements in a high-swirl engine used for evaluation of
computational fluid dynamics Calculations, SAE Paper
No.952381.

The high velocity jet of air at the exit of intake valve

interacts with the cylinder wall and produces large
vortex inside the cylinder and the radius of it is
increasing with increase in engine speeds.

At the intake valve exit, the turbulent kinetic energy

of airflow was higher at higher engine speeds.

The radial and axial velocity profiles near the intake

valve exit are smooth and identical for all the engine

[8] Heywood John B., Internal Combustion Engine

Fundamentals, McGraw Hill International Editions, 1988.
[9] Raffel. M, C. Willet and J. Kompenhans, Particle Image
Velocimetry-A practical guide, Springer-Verlag Berlin
Heidelberg, Germany, 1998.
[10] DAVIS7.2 - Software Manuals, LaVision, Germany, 2006.

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Figure 8. Average velocity fields for various flow rates at full intake valve lift

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Figure 9. Contours of total kinetic energy for various flow rates at full intake valve lift

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