Reciprocating engines are still frequently used in aviation especially in applications such as recreation planes, taxi-planes, fire extinguishing aircraft and generally applications that do not require a high power density. For such applications they have a significant advantage against turbine engines as far as purchase and maintenance cost is concerned. The proper and efficient operation of these engines in aviation applications is critical and therefore techniques that are used to determine engine condition and to detect potential faults are extremely important. The performance of these engines depends strongly on the condition of the ignition system and the quality of the supplied mixture. For this reason in the present work it is examined the effect of mixture AFR on the combustion mechanism and engine performance using an existing diagnostic methodology for spark ignited engines developed by the present research group. The investigation is conducted on a radial, spark-ignited reciprocating engine used on the CL-215 fire extinguishing aircraft. The diagnostic technique is used to investigate the effect of AFR on the main combustion and performance characteristics of the engine and specifically brake power output, rate of heat release, cumulative heat release, peak firing pressure, ignition and injection timing and duration of combustion. Furthermore the diagnostic technique is used to derive information for spark advance, spark duration, compression condition etc. The diagnostic technique is based on a thermodynamic two-zone combustion model for spark ignited engines. To examine the effect of AFR on the combustion mechanism a detailed experimental investigation was conducted on an engine (radial, supercharged, air-cooled, eighteen-cylinders) mounted on a test bench. The measurement procedure involved measurements at various operating conditions (load and speed) and various AFR values. During the experimental investigation beyond the conventional test bench measurements, measurements were taken using a fast data acquisition system of cylinder pressure and the electric signal of both spark plugs. Engine diagnosis is established by processing of these measured data. From the results of the diagnosis procedure it is revealed that the diagnosis method provides detailed information for the operating condition of the engine and the values of parameters that cannot be measured on the field. The diagnosis results reveal that the proposed technique can determine the effect of AFR ratio on the combustion mechanism adequately and thus it can be used during engine testing to determine the optimum AFR ratio in combination with the remaining engine settings and mainly spark advance. The results obtained are positive and reveal that the proposed diagnostic technique can be easily applied on any type of spark-ignited engine and especially on aircraft piston engines (i.e. aviation applications), where the accurate estimation of the engine condition and settings is extremely important.
The diesel engine is widely used for marine vessel propulsion due to its relatively high efficiency compared to existing alternative propulsion systems. The majority of these engines are slow speed two stroke ones. Despite the improvement of their efficiency there now exists a demand for drastic reduction of daily fuel oil consumption as a result of the global financial situation and continuously increasing fuel prices.
Towards this effort, slow steaming is a promising solution for the drastic reduction of daily and specific fuel consumption when expressed in tn/mile. This requires engine operation in the low load (low speed) range where these engines are not designed to operate for long term. The main problem related to slow-steaming, is the lack of air which has a negative impact on the engine and its subsystems. A promising solution to the problem is turbocharger (T/C) cut-out at low load when more than one T/C exists.
In the present work a combined computational and experimental investigation is conducted to evaluate the operation potential of a large two stroke marine diesel engine equipped with two T/Cs using T/C cut-out, for which the specific technology presents various challenges. This is achieved using an in-house engine simulation model and measurements with and without T/C cut-out. From the results it is revealed that using this technique the scavenging air and peak firing pressure increase while the specific fuel consumption decreases. In this way, some major problems related with the long term operation of the engine under low load conditions, i.e. accumulation of carbon deposits on the exhaust gas side and continuous operation of the auxiliary air blowers, are surpassed. Moreover, a theoretical investigation is conducted considering fuel injection retard to minimize the peak firing pressure penalty while taking care to limit the corresponding negative impact on specific fuel consumption. For NOx emissions the effect of T/C cut-out is also considered using tail pipe emission data measured during the official shop tests.
From the analysis conducted it has been revealed that the technique of turbocharger cut–out (one of two) is technically feasible and could offer certain advantages when slow-steaming is implemented. Moreover, comparing the calculated with the measured results, it has been revealed that the simulation model successfully estimates engine operation with and without T/C cut-out, being a valuable tool for the engineers to investigate combustion and pollutant formation mechanisms under various engine configurations.
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