A new test bench has been set up and equipped in order to analyze the air mean motion and turbulence quantities in the combustion system of an automotive diesel engine with one helicoidal intake duct and a conical type in-piston bowl. A sophisticated HWA technique employing single- and dual-sensor probes was applied to the in-cylinder flow investigation under motored conditions. The anemometric probe was also operated as a thermometric sensor. An analytical-numerical procedure, based on the heat balance equations for both anemometric and thermometric wires, was refined and applied to compute the gas velocity from the anemometer output signal. The gas property influence, the thermometric sensor lag and the prong temperature effects were taken into account with this procedure.
The in-cylinder velocity data were reduced using both a cycle-resolved approach and the conventional ensemble-averaging procedure, in order to separate the mean flow from the fluctuating motion.
New results on the statistical properties of the non-stationary engine turbulence, with particular reference to its time-frequency spectral structure, were obtained at practical engine speeds, in the range of 600-3000 rpm, and at different locations along the injector axis, one of which was very close to the cylinder-head wall.