Numerical investigation of spray collapse in GDI with OpenFOAM

Abstract

During certain operating conditions in spark-ignited direct injection engines (GDI), the injected fuel will be superheated and begin to rapidly vaporize. Fast vaporization can be beneficial for fuel-oxidizer mixing and subsequent combustion, but it poses the risk of spray collapse. In this work, spray collapse is numerically investigated for a single hole and the spray G eight-hole injector of an engine combustion network (ECN). Results from a new OpenFOAM solver are first compared against results of the commercial CONVERGE software for single-hole injectors and validated. The results corroborate the perception that the superheat ratio Rp, which is typically used for the classification of flashing regimes, cannot describe spray collapse behavior. Three cases using the eight-hole spray G injector geometry are compared with experimental data. The first case is the standard G2 test case, with iso-octane as an injected fluid, which is only slightly superheated, whereas the two other cases use propane and show spray collapse behavior in the experiment. The numerical results support the assumption that the interaction of shocks due to the underexpanded vapor jet causes spray collapse. Further, the spray structures match well with experimental data, and shock interactions that provide an explanation for the observed phenomenon are discussed.