Combustion and emission modelling of a direct-injection spark-ignition engine by combining flamelet models for premixed and diffusion flames

The combustion and emission production processes of a DISI (direct-injection spark-ignition) engine were modelled by combining flamelet models for premixed and diffusion flames. A new surrogate fuel was proposed to approximate the complicated composition of real gasoline. In contrast to simpler conventional models, the fuel was modelled as a ternary mixture of three hydrocarbons: iso-octane, n-heptane and toluene. Turbulent flame propagation in a partially premixed field was modelled by a premixed flamelet model. The mass fractions of the detailed composition of species in burnt gas were predicted by a diffusion flamelet model. For the pollutant formation modelling, a two-step oxidation of CO and H2 was used to simulate the secondary diffusion flame. The extended Zeldovich mechanism was used to model NOx formation, while a phenomenological model was used to model soot formation. This model was initially applied to a simple geometry to investigate the fundamentals of the model's behaviour, after which three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations were performed in a realistic engine geometry.