SI engine combustion 

SI – engine combustion:
How to “burn” things?
Reactants  Products
Premixed
• Homogeneous reaction
– Not limited by transport process
– Fast/slow reactions compared with other time scale of interest
• Premixed flame
– Examples: gas grill, SI engine combustion
• Detonation
– Pressure wave driven reaction
Non-premixed
• Diffusion flame
– Examples: candle, diesel engine combustion

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 SI ENGINE COMBUSTION

• Premixed flame
– Laminar flame speed

• Turbulent enhancement of combustion

– Wrinkled laminar flame

LAMINAR FLAME SPEEDS

For inert diluent

Fig. 9-26 Effect of burned gas mole fraction in

Fig. 9-25 Laminar burning velocity of
several fuels as function of equivalence
ratio, at 1 atm and 300 K.
unburned mixture on laminar burning velocity.
Fuel: gasoline.
(Note that actual burned gas from non-stoichiometric
combustion would render the charge  different from
the metered .
4

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 Schematic of SI engine flame propagation
Heat transfer

Work
transfer

Fig. 9-4 Schematic of flame propagation in SI engine: unburned gas (U) to left of flame,
burned gas to right. A denotes adiabatic burned-gas core, BL denotes thermal
boundary layer in burned gas.
5

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Typical pressure
and mass fraction burned (xb) curves
P(bar); xb*10; d(xb)/d (% per CA-deg)

25
SI engine;1500 rpm, 0.38 bar intake pressure
Useful conversions:
20
P 1000 rpm:
6oCA/ms
15 mass fraction
burned xb 1200 rpm:
20 Hz
xb *10 (For 4 stroke engine
10 10 cycle/s
100 ms/cycle)
dxb/d
5

0
0 200 400 600
crank angle (deg) 6

3
 SI engine part-load operation
50
40 1500 rpm; 1
MAP=38kPa; =1;
Xb

P (bar)
30 ign @ 30oBTC

Xb
20 0.5
10
P

0 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
3000
Temperature (K)

2000 Tb

1000
Tu
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
cumulative flow (g)

0.6

0.4

0.2 mintake mexhaust

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Crank Angle, degree
7

SI engine part-load operation

4000
Burned gas
T(K)

2000
Unburned gas

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
2
Laminar expansion velocity
m/s

1
Laminar flame speed

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
(%/deg) and bar

20 Pressure
10 Mass burn rate
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
1
2*R/B
0.5 Vb/V

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Mass fraction burned
8

4
Combustion produced pressure rise
Flame Flame
u u
b b

m m
time t time t + t

1. Pressure is uniform, changing with time

2. For mass m: hb = hu (because dm is allowed to expand against prevailing pressure)
3. T rise is a function of fuel heating value and mixture composition
 e.g. at  = 1, Tu ~ 700 K, Tb ~ 2800 K
4. Hence burned gas expands: b ~ ¼ u ; Vb ~ 4 Vu

Combustion produced pressure rise

5. Since total volume is constrained. The pressure must rise by p, and all the
gas in the cylinder is compressed.
6. Both the unburned gas ahead of flame and burned gas behind the flame move
away from the flame front
7. Both the unburned gas and burned gas temperatures rise due to the
compression by the newly burned gas
8. Unburned gas state: since heat transfer is relatively small, the temperature is
related to pressure by isentropic relationship
 Tu/Tu,0 = (p/p0)(u-1)/u
9. Burned gas state:

Early burned gas, higher

Later burned gas, lower Tb Tb

Flame
10

5
 Thermodynamic
state of charge

Fig. 9-5 Cylinder pressure,

mass fraction burned, and
gas temperatures as function
of crank angle during
combustion.

11

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Burn duration
• Burn duration as CA-deg. : measure of burn progress
in cycle
• For modern fast-burn engines under medium speed,
part load condition:
– 0-10% ~ 15o
– 0-50% ~ 25o
– 0-90% ~ 35o
• As engine speed increases,
burn duration as CA-deg. :
– Increases because there is less time per CA-deg.
– Decreases because combustion is faster due to
higher turbulence
 Net effect: increases approximately as rpm0.2

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 Optimum Combustion Phasing

• Heat release schedule has to phase correctly with piston motion for
optimal work extraction
• In SI engines, combustion phasing controlled by spark
• Spark too late
– heat release occurs far into expansion and work cannot be fully
extracted
• Spark too early
– Effectively “lowers” compression ratio
– increased heat transfer losses
– Also likely to cause knock
• Optimal: Maximum Brake Torque (MBT) timing
– MBT spark timing depends on speed, load, EGR, , temperature,
charge motion, …
– Torque curve relatively flat: roughly 5 to 7oCA retard from MBT
results in 1% loss in torque

Spark timing effects

Fig. 9-3 (a) Cylinder pressure versus crank angle for overadvanced spark timing
(50o BTDC), MBT timing (30o BTDC), and retarded timing (10o BTDC). (b) Effect
of spark advance on brake torque at constant speed and A/F, at WOT

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7
 Control of spark timing
Borderline knock spk adv

WOT

Fig. 15-17

Fig. 15-3

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Obtaining combustion information from engine

cylinder pressure data
1. Cylinder pressure affected by:
a) Cylinder volume change
b) Fuel chemical energy release by combustion
c) Heat transfer to chamber walls
d) Crevice effects
e) Gas leakage
2. Obtaining accurate combustion rate information requires
a) Accurate pressure data (and crank angle indexing)
b) Models for phenomena a,c,d,e, above
c) Model for thermodynamic properties of cylinder contents
3. Available methods
a) Empirical methods (e.g. Rassweiler and Withrow SAE
800131)
b) Single-zone heat release or burn-rate model
c) Two-zone (burned/unburned) combustion model

8
 Typical
piezoelectric
pressure
transducer spec.

6.2mm

Kistler 6125

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Sensitivity of NIMEP to crank angle phase error

SI engine;1500 rpm, 0.38 bar intake pressure

Percent error in NIMEP

15

10

0
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
-5
Crank angle phase error (deg)
-10

-15

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 Cylinder pressure

Fig. 9-10 (a) Pressure-volume diagram; (b) log p-log(V/Vmax) plot; 1500 rpm, MBT
timing, IMEP = 5.1 bar,  = 0.8, rc = 8.7, propane fuel.
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• Advantage: simple
Burned mass analysis – Need only p(), p0, pf and n
Rassweiler and Winthrow xb always between 0 and 1
(SAE 800131) During combustion V = Vu  Vb
Unburned gas volume, back tracked
to spark (0)
Vu,0  Vu (p / p )1/n
0

pf
End of combustion Burned gas volume, forward tracked
p
|slope|=n to end of combustion (f)
p0
Vb,f  Vb (p / p f )1/n
Ignition Mass fraction bunred
Pressure, kPa

V V
xb  1  u,0  b,f
V0 Vf
Hence, after some algebra
p1/n V  p01/n V0
xb 
Fraction of maximum volume pf 1/n Vf  p01/n V0
20
(There are two procedures described in the paper; this is one of them)

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10
 Heat release analysis

Fig. 9-11 Open system

1 zone model boundary for heat-
release analysis

Energy balance:

Fuel chemical dQch/dt = dUs/dt Sensible energy change Net heat

energy release released
+ pdV/dt Work transfer
+ dQht/dt Heat loss to walls
+ h’ dmcr/dt Flow into crevice
- hinj dmf/dt Injected enthalpy

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Results of heat-release analysis

Pintake

Fig. 9-12 Results of heat-release analysis showing the combustion inefficiency

and the corrections due to heat transfer and crevice effect.
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11
 Flow and Combustion Process
in
Spark-Ignition Engine

A Color Schieren Movie

taken in a Special Visualization Engine

• Square piston engine

• Visualization by color-schlieren method
– Captures density gradients
• Note:
− Flame propagation process
− Outgasing from crevices

23

Square piston flow visualization engine

Bore 82.6 mm
Stroke 114.3 mm
Compression ratio 5.8

Operating condition
Speed 1400 rpm
 0.9
Fuel propane
Intake pressure 0.5 bar
Spark timing MBT

24

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 Flame Propagation (Fig 9-14)

1400 rpm
0.5 bar inlet pressure

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MIT OpenCourseWare
https://ocw.mit.edu

2.61 Internal Combustion Engines

Spring 2017

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