Fuel-injection schedules that use two injection events per cycle (“dual-injection” approaches) have the potential to simultaneously attenuate engine-out soot and NOx emissions. The extent to which these benefits are due to enhanced mixing, low-temperature combustion modes, altered combustion phasing, or other factors is not fully understood. A traditional single-injection, an early-injection-only, and two dual-injection cases are studied using a suite of imaging diagnostics including spray visualization, natural luminosity imaging, and planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging of nitric oxide (NO). These data, coupled with heat-release and efficiency analyses, are used to enhance understanding of the in-cylinder processes that lead to the observed emissions reductions.
Results show that combustion of the early-injected fuel occurs in two phases: a cool-flame phase characterized by very weak chemiluminescence, followed by a premixed-burn phase characterized by localized regions of bright soot incandescence. Combustion of the early-injected fuel liberates only a fraction of its chemical energy. Spray visualization images show that this low combustion efficiency could be due at least in part to liquid fuel penetrating to and wetting in-cylinder surfaces, but NO PLIF images of the early-injection-only case also show strong interferences from unburned fuel vapor and/or condensed fuel droplets, suggesting that incomplete bulk-gas combustion and quenching in crevices also may play roles. The traditional single-injection case produced the highest NO PLIF signal levels. Both dual-injection cases reduced NO PLIF signal levels, with the reduction being most dramatic for the retarded-main-injection case.