Thermal and Transport Properties of Diesel Fuel and their Effect on Injection Modelling

Knowledge on the physical-chemical properties of diesel fuel is highly important for the performance of the fuel injection and combustion systems of modern engines. As real diesel fuels are complex mixtures of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, it is generally difficult to obtain their properties in the required pressure and temperature range, either theoretically or by experiment. Nevertheless, modelling the basic diesel fuel as a component mixture with a defined composition may be a suitable approximation of the reality. In this work, the mixture of n-decane (90%) and 1-methylnaphthalene (10%) is chosen as representative for thermodynamic and transport properties of diesel fuels [1]. The influence of these properties on the performance of two injection systems is studied by numerical simulation.