Assessment of Turbulent Combustion Models for Simulating Prechamber Ignition in a Natural Gas Engine

Journal Article · Thu Apr 29 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4050482· OSTI ID:1840039

Kim, Joohan ^[1]; Scarcelli, Riccardo ^[1]; Som, Sibendu ^[1]; Shah, Ashish ^[1]; Biruduganti, Munidhar S. ^[1]; Longman, Douglas E. ^[1]

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1. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

Lean combustion is a promising strategy to increase thermal efficiency in an internal combustion engine, by exploiting a favorable specific heat ratio of the fresh mixture while simultaneously suppressing the heat losses to the cylinder wall. However, unstable ignition and slow flame propagation at fuel-lean conditions lead to large cycle-to-cycle variability and limit the high-efficiency engine operating range. Prechamber ignition is considered an effective concept to extend the lean operating limit, by providing spatially distributed ignition with multiple turbulent flame-jets and enabling a faster combustion rate compared to the conventional spark ignition approach. From a numerical modeling standpoint to date science base and available simulation tools are inadequate to properly understand and predict the combustion processes in prechamber ignited engines. In this paper, conceptually different Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) combustion models widely adopted in the engine modeling community are used to simulate the ignition and combustion processes in a medium-duty natural gas engine with a prechamber spark-ignition system. Here, a flamelet-based turbulent combustion model, i.e., G-equation, and a multizone well-stirred reactor model are employed for this modeling study. Simulation results are compared with experimental data in terms of in-cylinder pressure and heat release rate. Finally, the analysis of the performance of the two models is carried out to highlight the strengths and limitations of the two evaluated approaches.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Transportation Office. Vehicle Technologies Office
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1840039
• Journal Information: Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power, Journal Name: Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 143; ISSN 0742-4795
• Publisher: ASME
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
combustion model evaluation
natural gas engines
prechamber ignition
turbulent flame jet
turbulent jet ignition