A Study on Combustion Process of Biodiesel Fuel using Swirl Groove Piston

The performance of a direct-injection type diesel engine often depends on the strength of swirl or squish, shape of combustion chamber, the number of nozzle holes, etc. This is of course because the combustion in the cylinder was affected by the mixture formation process. In this paper, combustion process of biodiesel fuel was studied by employing the piston which has several grooves with inclined plane on the piston crown to generate swirl during the compression stroke in the cylinder in order to improve the atomization of high viscosity fuel such as biodiesel fuel and toroidal type piston generally used in high speed diesel engine. To take a photograph of flame, single cylinder, four stroke diesel engine was remodeled into two stroke visible engine and high speed video camera was used. The results obtained are summarized as follows; (1) In the case of toroidal piston, when biodiesel fuel was supplied to plunger type injection system which has very low injection pressure as compared with common-rail injection system, the flame propagation speed was slowed and the maximum combustion pressure became lower. These phenomena became further aggravated as the fuel viscosity gets higher. (2) In the case of swirl groove piston, early stage of combustion such as rapid ignition timing and flame propagation was activated by intensifying the air flow in the cylinder. (3) Combustion process of biodiesel fuel was improved by the reason mentioned in paragraph (2) above. Consequently, the swirl grooves would also function to improve the combustion of high viscosity fuel.

Swirl Groove Piston에 의한 바이오 디젤연료의 연소과정에 관한 연구