Analysis of in-Cylinder Flow Fields Using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition-Based Quadruple Decomposition

Abstract

In order to meet increasingly stringent emission norms coupled with a heightened requirement of performance, there has been an unabated effort toward improvement in the combustion process of modern internal combustion engines. One of the major impediments of enhanced combustion in spark-ignited port fueled engines are combustion variations. These variations are especially dominant at low-load, low-speed operations. Cycle-to-cycle variation (CCV) in in-cylinder flow fields is one of the major contributors of such combustion variations. Therefore, in this work, CCV of in-cylinder flow fields of an optical port fuel injection engine was analyzed at part load (50% throttle opening) and low speed (1200 rpm) with the help of proper orthogonal decomposition. Flow fields were subsequently decomposed into four components, namely, mean, coherent, transition, and turbulent parts. CCV of flow fields was studied using several metrics based on kinetic energy and the relevance index. It was found that the share of mean energy is a better metric for CCV quantification based on kinetic energy. Interestingly, it was observed that the mean part, though consistent in its flow structure for various cycles, has a lot of variation in kinetic energy at early compression stroke. Also, a weak mean flow coupled with a strong coherent flow structure opposing the mean flow produces the largest deviation in a flow field from its corresponding ensemble-averaged field. Furthermore, even though the coherent and transition parts are comprised of comparable energy, it was the coherent part that showed large variations in kinetic energy. Hence, the mean and coherent parts are mainly responsible for CCV in flow fields.