A Lagrangian Approach Simulation for Predicting Direct Injection Ethanol Spray Geometry Characteristics

In the actual context, Researchers are making efforts for becoming mobility more sustainable. Whithin it context, the strategy of direct injection of renewable ethanol fuel in spark ignition engines is an interesting alternative for substitution of fossil fuels. In Brazil, the majory part of ethanol fuel production is provenient of sugar cane that has the potential to absorb great quantity of carbon dioxide through the photosynthesis process. The focus of this study was to create a very low computational cost methodology for evaluating the shape of sprays produced by an inwardly opening pressure-swirl injector. The referred injector is to be used in four stroke spark ignition engines for delivering fuel directly inside the combustion chamber. The spray geometry was then predicted by numerical calculations of single droplets trajectories in a purely lagrangian approach. The working fluid injected considered was EXXSOL D60. The choice of this working fluid is due to experimental data from previous work. The EXXSOL D60 have some close properties to the ethanol fuel but has lower flammability and was used in previous work in spite of ethanol for security reasons. The droplet trajectories were compared to experimental spray boundaries position data and showed a very good agreement. The numerical spray overall diameters were slightly bigger than experimental spray diameter with differences staying at a range of 1 to 4%.