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Lecture-8
Course Instructor
Dr. Avinash Kumar Agarwal
Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
IIT Kanpur Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur
Features of SI Engine Combustion Process
The pressure reaches a maximum after TDC but before the cylinder charge is fully burned.
The pressure continues to decreases as the cylinder volume continues to increase during the
remainder of the expansion stroke.
Fig. Cylinder pressure for five consecutive cycles in a spark-ignition engine as a function of crank
angle. Ignition timing 30-degree BTC, wide open throttle, 1044 rev/min, = 0.98
Fig. Mass fraction burned, and volume fraction enflamed for five consecutive cycles in a spark-ignition
engine as a function of crank angle. Ignition timing 30-degree BTC, wide open throttle, 1044 rev/min, =
0.98
Volume fraction enflamed curves rise more steeply than the mass fraction burned curves,
because the density of the unburned mixture ahead of the flame is about four times the density of the
burned gases behind the flame.
Some unburned mixture (25% by mass) still to burn behind the visible front to the flame: even when
the entire combustion chamber is fully enflamed.
Empirical rules for relating the mass burning profile and maximum cylinder pressure to crank angle at
MBT timing are often used.
Since the combustion occurs through a flame propagation process, the changes in state and the
motion of burned and unburned gas are much more complex than ideal cycle analysis.
During combustion, the cylinder pressure increases due to release of fuel’s chemical energy.
As each element of fuel air mixture burns, its density decreases by about a factor of 4.
Fig. Schematic of flame in the engine cylinder during combustion: unburned gas (U) to left of burned gas to right. A
denotes adiabatic burned-gas core, BL denotes thermal boundary layer in burned gas, W is work-transfer rate to piston, Q
is heat transfer rate to chamber walls.
Burned gas
Unburned
gas
The conditions in burned and unburned gas are determined by conservation of mass:
….(1)
Where,
V is the cylinder volume, m is the mass of cylinder contents.
v is the specific volume, xb = mass fraction burned;
subscripts u and b denote unburned and burned gas properties .
….(2)
Where,
Uo = reference internal energy,
W = work done on piston, Burned gas
Unburned
gas
The work and heat transfers are
….(3)
….(4)
….(5)
Subscripts ‘e’ and ‘l’ denote early and late burning gas elements.
Tu, is unburned gas temperature, Tb, is burned gas temperature
A mixture element that burns right at the start of the combustion process reaches, in the absence of
mixing, a peak temperature after combustion about 400K higher than the element that burns at the
end of the combustion process.
Variation of burned
gas temperature in
the cylinder head
Fig. Burned gas temperatures measured using spectroscopic techniques through windows in the cylinder head, as a function of
cylinder pressure Temperatures measured closer to spark plug have higher values. Dashed lines show isentropic behavior.
Measurements of burned gas temperatures have been made in engines using spectroscopic
techniques through quartz windows in the cylinder head.
The solid lines marked A, B, and C are the burned gas temperatures measured by Rassweiler and
Withrow in an L-head engine, for the spark plug end (A), the middle (B), and the opposite end (C) of
the chamber, respectively.
Lecture-8 12 Alternate Fuels and Advances in I.C. Engines
Burned and Unburned Mixture States
Mass fraction burned of different fuels
Figure. represent the mass fraction burned curves obtained from measured pressure data with gasoline and methanol fuels .
With accurate P-θ records, value of final mass fraction burned should be close but lower than unity,
usually in the range 0.93- 0.98.
The difference from unity is the combustion inefficiency for lean mixtures and incomplete oxygen
utilization for rich mixtures.
Figure. pressure volume data from a firing SI engine on both a linear p-V and a log p –log V diagram.
….(6)
The change in sensible energy of the charge dUs is separated form that due to change in composition
Term δQch represents chemical energy released by combustion
Work done is piston work and is equal to p dV.
δQht is heat transfer to the chamber walls.
Figure. Open system boundary for combustion chamber for heat–release analysis
….(7)
Substituting for dUs and dmi (= dmcr = -dm) from the above equation in eq. 6, it becomes,
….(8)
dmcr > 0 when flow is out of the cylinder into the crevice
h’ is evaluated at cylinder conditions when dmcr > 0 and at crevice conditions when dmcr < 0
use of the ideal gas law (neglecting the change in gas constant R) with Eq. 8 then gives
….(9)
Net heat release: When the heat or energy release term δQch is combined with the heat-transfer
and crevice terms, the combination is termed net heat release.
It is equal to the first two terms on the right-hand side of Eq. 9. and represent the sensible energy
change and work transfer to the piston.
While heat losses during combustion are a small fraction of the fuel energy (10 to 15 percent), the
distributions of heat release and heat transfer with crank angle are different; heat transfer becomes
more important as the combustion process ends and average gas temperatures peak.
The convective heat-transfer rate to the combustion chamber walls:
Figure. represents the results of heat release analysis showing the effects of heat transfer, crevice and combustion efficiency.
Lowest curve is net heat release, addition of heat transfer and crevice models give chemical energy
release and the curve at the top is mass of the fuel in combustion chamber times its lower heating
value.
The difference between final value of Qch and (mf QLHV) is equal to the combustion inefficiency.
Where,
= crank angle
0 = start of combustion
Experimental observations:
The combustion process in the SI engine takes
place in a turbulent flow field.
Turbulent flow field is produced by the high shear
flows set up during the intake process and
modified during compression.
𝑚= 𝑚𝑢 +𝑚𝑏
Figure : Relation between mass fraction burned and volume fraction burned