Multiphysics Modeling of Spark Discharges in High Crossflow Ignition Environments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivek Subramaniam ◽  
Naveen Raj ◽  
Anand Karpatne ◽  
Douglas Breden ◽  
Laxminarayan Raja

Abstract In SI engines, the initial stages of flame kernel formation play an important role in determining the overall thermal efficiency and in reducing the cycle-to-cycle variability. Introducing a cross-flow within the spark gap has shown to reduce the combustion fluctuations by shortening this initial ignition period and activating a larger volume of the fuel-air mixture. This work presents a computational study of spark discharges in high cross-flow ignition environments using a high-fidelity, multi-physics equilibrium plasma solver. The numerical framework is designed to simultaneously model chemically reacting fluid flow coupled with electromagnetics, surface ablation physics and external circuit dynamics in a fully coupled manner. The spark channel is simulated in a constant volume combustion chamber under different operating conditions and cross flow velocities. The simulation model is validated by comparing several key parameters associated with the discharge such as the breakdown voltage, dwell current, restrike timing, and spark stretch against experimental measurements.

Author(s):  
Hua Zhu ◽  
Xiao Yu ◽  
Linyan Wang ◽  
Ming Zheng ◽  
Liguang Li ◽  
...  

Abstract The early flame kernel initiation and development are essential to a successful combustion process, especially under lean burn/EGR diluted conditions. Multiple ignition sites strategy has shown promise to secure the flame kernel initiation under extreme engine operating conditions. Two factors are considered to contribute to the enhanced ignition capability, i.e. the higher ignition energy and the multiple initial flame kernels. However, the mechanism why the multiple ignition sites help combustion is less understood. In this work, the impacts of the ignition energy distribution strategy on the flame inception process are investigated in a constant volume combustion chamber. A multi-coil ignition system, along with a sparkplug with three high-voltage electrodes, is used to adjust the discharge energy from 10 mJ to 240 mJ, as well as the energy deposition strategies. Experimental results have shown that the distributed energy strategy with sufficient discharge energy can establish a bigger initial flame kernel, leading to faster flame growth rates, as compared to the concentrated energy strategy.


1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 149-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. L. Pillay ◽  
C. A. Buckley

Cross-flow microfiltration (CFMF) has potentially wide application in the processing of industrial and domestic waste waters. Optimum design and operation of CFMF systems necessitates a knowledge of the characteristic system behaviour, and an understanding of the mechanisms governing this behaviour. This paper is a contribution towards the elucidation and understanding of the behaviour of a woven fibre CFMF operated in the turbulent flow regime. The characteristic flux-time curve and effects of operating variables on flux are presented for a limestone suspension cross-flow filtered in a 25 mm woven fibre tube. The phenomena contributing to the shape of the flux-time curve are discussed. A model of the mechanisms governing cake growth and limit is presented. Predicted steady-state fluxes show a notably good correspondence with experimentally measured values. It is also found that the flux may not be uniquely defined by the operating conditions, but may also be a function of the operating path taken to reach the operating point. This is of significance in the start-up and operation of CFMF units.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 607
Author(s):  
Tommy R. Powell ◽  
James P. Szybist ◽  
Flavio Dal Forno Chuahy ◽  
Scott J. Curran ◽  
John Mengwasser ◽  
...  

Modern boosted spark-ignition (SI) engines and emerging advanced compression ignition (ACI) engines operate under conditions that deviate substantially from the conditions of conventional autoignition metrics, namely the research and motor octane numbers (RON and MON). The octane index (OI) is an emerging autoignition metric based on RON and MON which was developed to better describe fuel knock resistance over a broader range of engine conditions. Prior research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) identified that OI performs reasonably well under stoichiometric boosted conditions, but inconsistencies exist in the ability of OI to predict autoignition behavior under ACI strategies. Instead, the autoignition behavior under ACI operation was found to correlate more closely to fuel composition, suggesting fuel chemistry differences that are insensitive to the conditions of the RON and MON tests may become the dominant factor under these high efficiency operating conditions. This investigation builds on earlier work to study autoignition behavior over six pressure-temperature (PT) trajectories that correspond to a wide range of operating conditions, including boosted SI operation, partial fuel stratification (PFS), and spark-assisted compression ignition (SACI). A total of 12 different fuels were investigated, including the Co-Optima core fuels and five fuels that represent refinery-relevant blending streams. It was found that, for the ACI operating modes investigated here, the low temperature reactions dominate reactivity, similar to boosted SI operating conditions because their PT trajectories lay close to the RON trajectory. Additionally, the OI metric was found to adequately predict autoignition resistance over the PT domain, for the ACI conditions investigated here, and for fuels from different chemical families. This finding is in contrast with the prior study using a different type of ACI operation with different thermodynamic conditions, specifically a significantly higher temperature at the start of compression, illustrating that fuel response depends highly on the ACI strategy being used.


Author(s):  
Laslo Šereš ◽  
Ljubica Dokić ◽  
Bojana Ikonić ◽  
Dragana Šoronja-Simović ◽  
Miljana Djordjević ◽  
...  

Cross-flow microfiltration using ceramic tubular membrane was applied for treatment of steepwater from corn starch industry. Experiments are conducted according to the faced centered central composite design at three different transmembrane pressures (1, 2 and 3 bar) and cross-flow velocities (100, 150 and 200 L/h) with and without the usage of Kenics static mixer. For examination of the influence of the selected operating conditions at which usage of the static mixer is justified, a response surface methodology and desirability function approach were used. Obtained results showed improvement in the average permeate flux by using Kenics static mixer for 211 % to 269 % depending on experimental conditions when compared to the system without the static mixer. As a result of optimization, the best results considering flux improvement as well as reduction of specific energy consumption were obtained at low transmembrane pressure and lower feed cross-flow rates.


Author(s):  
Elisabeth Longatte

This work is concerned with the modelling of the interaction of a fluid with a rigid or a flexible elastic cylinder in the presence of axial or cross-flow. A partitioned procedure is involved to perform the computation of the fully-coupled fluid solid system. The fluid flow is governed by the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and modeled by using a fractional step scheme combined with a co-located finite volume method for space discretisation. The motion of the fluid domain is accounted for by a moving mesh strategy through an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation. Solid dyncamics is modeled by a finite element method in the linear elasticity framework and a fixed point method is used for the fluid solid system computation. In the present work two examples are presented to show the method robustness and efficiency.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammadrasool Morovatiyan ◽  
Martia Shahsavan ◽  
John Hunter Mack

A constant volume combustion chamber (CVCC) was constructed to enable material synthesis procedures that are sensitive to temperature, pressure, and ambient species concentrations. Material synthesis processes require specific operating conditions in order to carry out the desired chemical reactions and property transformations, including the creation of paper-templated metals and nanoparticles. The 1.13 liter combustion chamber includes a test stand for conducting the material synthesis experiments. A premixed fuel-air mixture is ignited at a desired equivalence ratio in order to produce the required synthesis conditions. In comparison to furnaces and ovens, this approach provides greater flexibility for materials synthesis procedures. Computational modeling using adaptive mesh refinement, alongside preliminary experimental testing results, confirms that the CVCC can provide the appropriate conditions to synthesize paper-templated metals. The approach demonstrates that the CVCC can be a viable alternative to a furnace for use in materials synthesis applications.


Author(s):  
Shinyoung Jeon ◽  
Changmin Son ◽  
Jangsik Yang

Turbine generator operates with complex cooling system due to the challenge in controlling the peak temperature of the stator bar caused by ohm loss, which is unavoidable. Therefore, it is important to characterise and quantifies the thermal performance of the cooling system. The focus of the present research is to investigate the heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics of typical cooling system, so-called stator ventilation duct. A real scale model was built at its operating conditions for the present study. The direction of cooling air is varied to consider its operation condition, so that there are (1) outward flow and (2) inward flow cases. In addition, the effect of (3) cross flow (inward with cross flow case) is also studied. The transient heat transfer method using thermochromic liquid crystals is implemented to measure full surface heat transfer distribution. A series of Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis is also conducted to support the observation from the experiment. For the inward flow case, the results suggest that the average Nusselt number of the 2nd duct is about 30% higher than the 3rd duct. The trend is similar with the effect of cross flow. The CFD results are in good agreement with the experimental data.


Author(s):  
Suneel Nagar ◽  
Ajay Singh ◽  
Deepak Patel

The objective of this study is to provide modern analytical and empirical tools for evaluation of the thermal-flow performance or design of air-cooled heat exchangers (ACHE) and cooling towers. This review consist various factors which effect the performance of ACHE. We introduced systematically to the literature, theory, and practice relevant to the performance evaluation and design of industrial cooling. Its provide better understanding of the performance characteristics of a heat exchanger, effectiveness can be improved in different operating conditions .The total cost of cycle can be reduced by increasing the effectiveness of heat exchanger.


Author(s):  
Ali Mohammadi ◽  
Ali Koşar

This article presents a computational study to investigate the hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics of the flow inside a rectangular microchannel with the dimensions of 5000 × 1500 × 100 μm3 (l × w × h’) with different inline arrangements of cylindrical micro pin fins. A parametric study is performed on the effect of different geometrical specifications of micro pin fins on the wake-pin fin interaction. Three values of (50, 100 and 200 μm) are considered for the pin fin diameters (D) while the overall height (H) of the system is set to be constant (100 μm). For the first two cases, two longitudinal and vertical pitch ratios (SL/D and ST/D) of 1.5 and 3 are considered while for H/D ratio of 0.5, only ST/D ratio of 1.5 and SL/D ratios of 1.5 and 3 are considered. As a result, a total number of ten different geometries are analyzed in five different Reynolds numbers of 20, 40, 80, 120 and 160. A constant heat flux is applied through the bottom surface of the microchannel as well as the micro pin fins surfaces. All other surfaces are assumed to be thermally isolated. Thermodynamic properties of water are set to vary with temperature and it is assumed that the working flow remains in the liquid form in all operating conditions. ANSYS commercial package v14.5 with an academic license is utilized to generate the 3D models, applying the appropriate grid networks and simulating the flow fields for each configuration. Results show major dependencies of pressure drops, friction factors, Nusselt numbers and Thermal Performance Index values on ST/D ratio and Reynolds number while minor dependencies of these parameters on SL/D and H/D ratios are observed.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifei Lv ◽  
Jun Lu ◽  
Yongcai Li ◽  
Ling Xie ◽  
Lulu Yang ◽  
...  

The heat source tower (HST), as a cleaner energy production, which can absorb the low-grade energy from ambient air to drive the heat pump unit without emissions has attracted more and more interest. In addition, HST has excellent economic applicability by using cooling tower equipment, which was idle in winter. However, there are few studies on comparative analysis of thermal behavior between counter-flow and cross-flow HST. A mathematical model suitable for both HST types was developed to identify the performance discrepancies between them. Then a parametric study was carried out in order to investigate the impact of solution and air as well as packing material properties on energy transfer of HSTs. Finally, the characteristics of solution dilution and dehumidification were investigated. As the inlet solution temperature increases, increases first, then decreases gradually, but a transition point occurs in the solution at −5 °C. Moreover, the transition section of moisture transfer direction for counter-flow HST was located in the 0.78 m and 0.26–1.56 m of packing material height, under the condition that the air relative humidity was 50%. In summary, this work intuitively indicates the thermal performance difference between counter-flow and cross-flow HST, also could assist the selection of proper operating conditions in HSTs.


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