Water-in-diesel emulsions potentially favor the occurrence of micro-explosions when exposed to elevated temperatures, thereby improving the mixing of fuels with the ambient gas. The distributions and sizes of both spray and dispersed water droplets have a significant effect on puffing and micro-explosion behavior. Although the injection pressure is likely to alter the properties of emulsions, this effect on the spray flow puffing and micro-explosion has not been reported. To investigate this, we injected a fuel spray using a microsyringe needle into a high-temperature environment to investigate the droplets’ behavior. Injection pressures were varied at 10% v/v water content, the samples were imaged using a digital microscope, and the dispersed droplet size distributions were extracted using a purpose-built image processing algorithm. A high-speed camera coupled with a long-distance microscope objective was then used to capture the emulsion spray droplets. Our measurements indicated that the secondary atomization was significantly affected by the injection pressure which reduced the dispersed droplet size and hence caused a delay in puffing. At high injection pressure (500, 1000, and 1500 bar), the water was evaporated during the spray and although there was not enough droplet residence time, puffing and micro-explosion were clearly observed. This study suggests that high injection pressures have a detrimental effect on the secondary atomization of water-in-diesel emulsions.

Conventionally, molds for metal injection molding (MIM) process are fabricated using metallic materials using conventional machining processes. Machined metal molds are resilient and therefore could be suitable for mass production of MIM parts. However, with the process of mass production leading to permanent hard tooling, the design is subjected to rigorous testing and iteration before finalization. During design analysis and the iteration process, the demand for MIM parts (part demand) is at low-volume. Therefore, machined metal molds could be costly and time consuming for low volume and customized end-use products. 3D printed molds could be a suitable choice for MIM production for such applications. The present study compares the performance of Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printing (3DP) process made polymer molds with an aluminum mold for potential use in MIM process. It was observed that 3DP molds could successfully be used for a limited number of MIM cycles.

Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is a coherent structure identification technique based on either measured or computed data sets. Recently, POD has been adopted for the analysis of the in-cylinder flows inside internal combustion engines. In this study, stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (Stereo-PIV) measurements were carried out at the central vertical tumble plane inside an engine cylinder to acquire the velocity vector fields for the in-cylinder flow under different experimental conditions. Afterwards, the POD analysis were performed firstly on synthetic velocity vector fields with known characteristics in order to extract some fundamental properties of the POD technique. These data were used to reveal how the physical properties of coherent structures were captured and distributed among the POD modes, in addition to illustrate the difference between subtracting and non-subtracting the ensemble average prior to conducting POD on datasets. Moreover, two case studies for the in-cylinder flow at different valve lifts and different pressure differences across the air intake valves were presented and discussed as the effect of both valve lifts and pressure difference have not been investigated before using phase-invariant POD analysis. The results demonstrated that for repeatable flow pattern, only the first mode was sufficient to reconstruct the physical properties of the flow. Furthermore, POD analysis confirmed the negligible effect of pressure difference and subsequently the effect of engine speed on flow structures.

A crank-rocker engine is a new invention used to convert oscillating motion from the curve-piston into the rotary motion of the crankshaft. The configuration of this new engine is different from the normal slider-crank engine, so the existing model used to calculate the combustion characteristic is not appropriate for this new engine. A fundamental thermodynamic model of a single curved-cylinder spark-ignition crank-rocker engine is presented. The model was simulated in MATLAB to predict the combustion characteristics at different operating conditions. The friction losses, residual gas fraction and combustion efficiency were introduced into the combustion model to improve the overall accuracy of the model. The developed model was used to analyze and evaluate the in-cylinder pressure, fuel burn rate, and heat release under various crank angle positions. To validate the predictions of the model, experimental tests were conducted on a single-cylinder crank-rocker engine at an engine speed of 2000 rpm, spark timing of 8.6⁰ CA BTDC, full load and wide-open throttle (WOT) condition. Finally, the results were plotted and compared with the simulation results. The findings obtained from the current study have shown the ability of the simulation model to predict the combustion characteristics under different operating conditions. The agreement between the results of the present model and experimental data was reasonably good. This research work proposes a new model which can predict the behavior of the crank-rocker engine. The information gained from this study will aid in the tuning process and future development of this engine.

This paper presents the investigation on the effects of throttle position variations on the performance characteristics of a single-piston curved-cylinder four-stroke SI Crank-Rocker (CR) engine fitted with a conventional engine cylinder head. The CR engine is a new alternative IC engine for which the performance characteristics are still being investigated. All of the experiments were conducted at an engine speed of 2000 rpm with the ignition timing set at 6.5° CA BTDC. The throttle position, or the load, was varied from 25% to 100%. The best engine performance was found to be at the 75% throttle position where the torque, power, and thermal efficiency were at the maximum values of 4.16 Nm, 0.87 kW, and 18%, respectively, whilst the brake specific fuel consumption was at the minimum amount of 423 g/kw-h. All of the result trends for emissions of CO, NO_X, and Unburned Hydrocarbon (HC) were found to be in-line with conventional engines up to 75% throttle position. For the loads higher than 75%, the CR engine behaved the opposite to the emission characteristics of the conventional engines. The reason behind the inverse behaviour of the CR engine after the 75% load was due to the ‘choke’ phenomena at the intake valve. The study revealed that larger inlet ports are required for further improvement of this engine’s performance. The results are advantageous in comparing the performance and designing the parameters of the CR engine with a conventional engine having the same capacity.