The compression ratio is an important engine design parameter. It determines to a large extend engine properties like the achievable efficiency, the heat losses from the combustion chamber and the exhaust losses. The same properties are affected by insulation of the combustion chamber. It is therefore especially important to know the compression ratio when doing experiments with thermal barrier coatings (TBC).
In case of porous TBCs, the standard methods to measure the compression ratio can give wrong results. When measuring the compression ratio by volume, using a liquid, it is uncertain if the liquid fills the total porous volume of the coating. And for a thermodynamic compression ratio estimation, a model for the heat losses is needed, which is not available when doing experiments with insulation.
The subject of this paper is the evaluation of an alternative method to assess the compression ratio. It is based on motored cylinder pressure data like other thermodynamic methods but does not need a model for the heat losses. The validation and application of the method is done with data from experiments involving two types of porous TBCs, performed on a light duty single cylinder diesel engine. The results indicate that the proposed method accurately predicts the compression ratio for porous thermal barrier coatings.