Development and validation of spray models for investigating diesel engine combustion and emissions

Diesel engines intrinsically generate NOx and particulate matter which need to be reduced significantly in order to comply with the increasingly stringent regulations worldwide. This motivates the diesel engine manufacturers to gain fundamental understanding of the spray and combustion processes so as to optimize these processes and reduce engine emissions. Strategies being investigated to reduce engine's raw emissions include advancements in fuel injection systems, efficient nozzle orifice design, injection and combustion control strategies, exhaust gas recirculation, use of alternative fuels such as biodiesel etc. This thesis explores several of these approaches (such as nozzle orifice design, injection control strategy, and biodiesel use) by performing computer modeling of diesel engine processes.;Fuel atomization characteristics are known to have a significant effect on the combustion and emission processes in diesel engines. Primary fuel atomization is induced by aerodynamics in the near nozzle region as well as cavitation and turbulence from the injector nozzle. The breakup models that are currently used in diesel engine simulations generally consider aerodynamically induced breakup using the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability model, but do not account for inner nozzle flow effects. An improved primary breakup (KH-ACT) model incorporating cavitation and turbulence effects along with aerodynamically induced breakup is developed and incorporated in the computational fluid dynamics code CONVERGE. The spray simulations using KH-ACT model are "quasi-dynamically" coupled with inner nozzle flow (using FLUENT) computations. This presents a novel tool to capture the influence of inner nozzle flow effects such as cavitation and turbulence on spray, combustion, and emission processes.;Extensive validation is performed against the non-evaporating spray data from Argonne National Laboratory. Performance of the KH and KH-ACT models is compared against the evaporating and combusting data from Sandia National Laboratory. The KH-ACT model is observed to provide better predictions for spray dispersion, axial velocity decay, sauter mean diameter, and liquid and lift-off length interplay which is attributed to the enhanced primary breakup predicted by this model. In addition, experimentally observed trends with changing nozzle conicity could only be captured by the KH-ACT model. Results further indicate that the combustion under diesel engine conditions is characterized by a double-flame structure with a rich premixed reaction zone near the flame stabilization region and a non-premixed reaction zone further downstream. Finally, the differences in inner nozzle flow and spray characteristics of petrodiesel and biodiesel are quantified.;The improved modeling capability developed in this work can be used for extensive diesel engine simulations to further optimize injection, spray, combustion, and emission processes.