A Multi-Wavelength Extinction Imaging Diagnostic for Quantifying Diesel Spray Mixing at Engine-Relevant Conditions

The mixing of fuel and air in the combustion chamber of an IC engine is crucial to emissions formation. Therefore, developing effective diagnostic techniques for measuring mixing is critical for progressing IC engines. Existing methodologies for the optical measurement of air-fuel mixing, including Rayleigh scattering and Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF), have demonstrated various diagnostic-implementation challenges, high uncertainties under engine-relevant environments, and strong interferences from the liquid spray which prevents their use in near-spray measurements. This work presents the use of an alternative approach based on a laser-absorption/scattering technique called Ultraviolet-Visible Diffuse Back-Illumination (UV-Vis DBI) to quantify local equivalence ratio in a vaporizing diesel spray. Ultraviolet and visible light are generated using a ND:YAG pumped frequency-doubled tunable dye laser operating at 9.9 kHz. The simultaneous UV-Visible illumination is used to back-illuminate a vaporizing diesel spray, and the resulting extinction of each signal is recorded by a pair of high-speed cameras. Using an aromatic tracer (naphthalene, BP = 218 °C) in a base fuel of dodecane (BP = 215–217 °C), the UV illumination (280 nm) is absorbed along the illumination path through the spray, yielding a projected image of line-of-sight optical depth that is proportional to the path-average fuel vapor concentration in the vapor region of the spray. The visible illumination is chosen at a non-absorbing wavelength (560 nm), such that the light extinction is only due to liquid scattering, yielding a projected image of the liquid spray. A key advantage of the method is that the absorption coefficient of the selected tracer is relatively independent of temperature and pressure for 280-nm illumination, reducing measurement uncertainties at engine-relevant conditions. Measurements are also achievable in near-spray vapor regions since there is no mie-scattering interference from the liquid spray. The diagnostic is applied to measure the fuel-air mixing field of a diesel spray produced by a Bosch CRI3-20 ks1.5 single-orifice injector (90 μm diameter) similar to ECN Spray A. Measurements are conducted in a non-reacting high-pressure and temperature nitrogen environment using a constant-flow, optically-accessible spray chamber operating at 60 bar and 900 K. The results are evaluated against existing ECN mixing measurements based on Rayleigh scattering. The diagnostic yields centerline and radial mixture fraction measurements that match the ECN Rayleigh measurements within uncertainty bounds.