A Numerical Study on Spray Characteristics at Start of Injection for Gasoline Direct Injection

This paper presents a CFD study of Engine Combustion Network (ECN) Spray G, focusing on the transient characteristics of spray at start of injection. The Large Eddy Simulation (LES) coupled with Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is used to model the turbulent two-phase flow. A moving needle boundary condition is applied to capture the internal flow condition accurately. The injector geometry was measured with micron-level resolution using full spectrum x-ray tomographic imaging at Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Labora-tory, providing detailed machining error from manufacturer and realistic rough surface. For comparison, a nominal geometry is also used for the simulation. Spray characteristics such as Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD), droplet volume and surface area are extracted by post-processing the CFD outputs. It is seen that compared to the nominal geometry, the use of the high resolution real geometry predicts about 11% lower SMD. The rough surface along with manufacturing defects generate more unstable structures along the jet surface and accelerates the liquid de-formation and breakup processes, starting inside of the counter-bore. This result shows that the machining details of injector, which is usually ignored in the two-phase flow simulations, has considerable impact on the spray development process.