The In-Situ Measurement of the Thermal Diffusivity of Combustion Chamber Deposits in Spark Ignition Engines

Combustion chamber deposits in spark ignition engines act as thermal insulators and can lead to octane requirement increase. The thermal properties of deposits are not well documented, the reported thermal diffusivity values vary by two orders of magnitude. Two thermal property measurement techniques were compared, the flash and steady illumination laser methods. The steady laser method was more suitable for deposit property measurement. A comparison was made of the thermal properties of deposits grown with a base fuel with the thermal properties of deposits grown with the base fuel doped with reformer bottoms.

For the clean fuel the thermal diffusivity ranged from 3.5 to 3.9^-7 m²/s, at various locations around the combustion chamber. For the fuel doped with reformer bottoms the thermal diffusivity ranged from 1.1 to 1.9^-7 m²/s at different locations within the combustion chamber. Based on published density and specific heat values the current measurements lead to the conclusion that the thermal conductivity range of the deposits grown with the two fuels varies between 0.15 and 1.0 W/mK.