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Abstract
Cavitation plays an important role in the formation of sprays in fuel injection systems. With the increasing use of
gasolineethanol blends, there is a need to understand how changes in fluid properties due to the use of these fuels can
alter cavitation behavior. Gasolineethanol blends are azeotropic mixtures whose properties are difficult to model. We
have tabulated the thermodynamic properties of gasolineethanol blends using a method developed for flash-boiling
simulations. The properties of neat gasoline and ethanol were obtained from National Institute of Standards and
Technology REFPROP data, and blends from 0% to 85% ethanol by mass have been tabulated. We have undertaken highresolution three-dimensional numerical simulations of cavitating flow in a 500-mm-diameter submerged nozzle using the
in-house HRMFoam homogeneous relaxation model constructed from the OpenFOAM toolkit. The simulations are conducted at 1 MPa inlet pressure and atmospheric outlet pressure, corresponding to a cavitation number range of
1.0661.084 and a Reynolds number range of 15,00040,000. For the pure gasoline case, the numerical simulations are
compared with synchrotron X-ray radiography measurements. Despite significant variation in the fluid properties, the
distribution of cavitation vapor in the nozzle is relatively unaffected by the gasolineethanol ratio. The vapor remains
attached to the nozzle wall, resulting in an unstable annular two-phase jet in the outlet. Including turbulence at the conditions studied does not significantly change mixing behavior, because the thermal nonequilibrium at the vaporliquid interfaces acts to low-pass filter the turbulent fluctuations in both the nozzle boundary layer and jet mixing layer.
Keywords
OpenFOAM, HRMFoam, gasoline, ethanol, X-ray radiography
Introduction
Cavitating channel flow is a complex fluid mechanical
phenomenon which has many applications and has
been studied in detail for some time.1 In particular,
cavitation is a problem in fuel injection for internal
combustion engines, where the fuel travels through a
small nozzle under a large pressure gradient to produce
a spray. Cavitation leads to component wear and can
markedly change the structure of the resulting liquid
spray.2,3 These changes in spray structure can lead to
changes in engine performance, emissions, and efficiency.46
Gasolineethanol blends are becoming an important
factor in injector design as their use increases and the
ethanol ratios also increase. A significant number of
studies have been undertaken on the effects of ethanol
blends on emissions.710 Experimental analysis of the
effects of gasolineethanol blend ratio on the spray
structure from simplified two-dimensional (2D) model
Duke et al.
579
significant sensitivity to viscosity at megapascal pressures, but little sensitivity to density variation.22
Neroorkar and Schmidt23 have used the HRM to
model the cavitating and flash-boiling of fuel in a 3D
multihole fuel injector nozzle with a range of fluids,
including n-hexane, n-octane, and E60 and E85 ethanol
blends. The fluid properties were obtained from lookup
tables.24 They found that the E60 blend generated more
vapor and a wider spray cone angle. These calculations
assumed a laminar flow, so the question remains as to
how the inclusion of turbulence may affect the mixing
of vapor and liquid. Other questions which need investigation are how the flow may be affected by a wider
range of ethanol blends, and how well the simulation
results might compare with experimental data in a
canonical geometry.
Although previous studies have often neglected turbulence, it is known that it can have a significant effect
on a cavitating flow.25 Where turbulence modeling is
implemented, the most popular approach is k2e, which
performs well for free shear flows at modest pressure
gradients, is computationally efficient, and permits simple analysis of grid convergence.17,18,20,26 Som et al.27
investigated fluid properties by simulating the effects of
diesel and biodiesel fuels, where the effects of turbulence were included using realizable k2e in both a
channel flow and an axisymmetric injector geometry.
They found that the local strain rate due to turbulent
mixing was an important factor in cavitation inception.
The largest turbulent features in nozzle flow are therefore likely to strongly interact with cavitation features.
This behavior can be more accurately captured using
large eddy simulation (LES), which is not as frequently
implemented.
In this article, we have undertaken high-resolution,
3D LESs of cavitating flow in a canonical nozzle geometry at fixed pressure boundary conditions using the
single-fluid HRM.21 The fluid properties have been
modeled using precalculated lookup tables.24,28
Variations in cavitation behavior between a range of
gasolineethanol blends from E0 to E85 have been
investigated. For the pure gasoline case, the numerical
simulations are compared against synchrotron X-ray
radiography measurements of the local void fraction.
Method
The canonical nozzle geometry used in the following
simulations is a submerged nozzle with a throat diameter of D = 0.5 mm, and an expansioncontraction
ratio of 5. The nozzle length is 5D (2.5 mm), and the
contraction and expansion have hemispherical profiles.
The inlet boundary condition is a fixed pressure of
1.034 MPa and a temperature of 300 K, with zero velocity gradient. The outlet boundary condition is a fixed
pressure of 0.1 MPa, with zero velocity gradient. The
geometry and boundary conditions were chosen to
match those used in the X-ray experiments.
580
The application of appropriate wall boundary conditions in LES remains an open research question. In this
study, we have applied the standard set of wall boundary conditions used in the OpenFOAM solver. Velocity
is assumed zero at the wall, and density gradient is
assumed to be zero. The flow is assumed isenthalpic, so
no boundary conditions for the energy terms (such as
thermal diffusivity) are required. For the LES model
terms, the subgrid scale viscosity uses the Spalding wall
function for mSGS and k has zero gradient.
HRMFoam solver
In order to obtain the properties of gasoline, a fuel surrogate was employed consisting of four components:
15% isopentane, 20% hexane, 45% isooctane, and
20% decane by mass. This surrogate was used by
Styron et al.29 and was designed to match the distillation curve of a California Phase II gasoline. The fluid
property lookup tables required by the HRMFoam
flow solver were generated by creating mixtures of the
above-mentioned surrogate with ethanol using the
REFPROP fluid property program.28 The REFPROP
program uses equations of states to calculate the thermodynamic and transport properties of fluids and
mixtures.
To confirm that the modeling procedure is accurate,
experimental data from Takeshita et al.30 were used to
compare the distillation curves for the different ethanol
blends in Figure 1. To predict the distillation curves
using the REFPROP code, a subroutine was obtained
from EW Lemmon (April 2012, personal communication). This subroutine solves the vaporliquid equilibrium for the surrogate to calculate the number of
moles lost in the form of vapor during the distillation
process, and consequently the volume of liquid
obtained from the condensation of the vapor. The ratio
of volume condensed to the original liquid volume
gives the evaporated volume fraction.
The saturation pressure, density, viscosity, and
sound speed of the gasolineethanol blend models at
E10
E20
E40
E60
E10
E20
E40
E60
460
Temperature, K
440
420
400
380
u = u0 a0:54 c1:76
Psat P
Psat Pcrit
3
4
360
340
320
300
0
rl r
r l rv
The time scale u is calculated via an empirical relation proposed by Downar-Zapolski et al.35
c=
480
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
r
+r f=0
t
ru
+ r fu = rP + rt
t
5
6
581
Inlet conditions
Outlet conditions
1080
1040
1000
960
1120
Current Study
Kar et al
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
1x10
-3
8x10
-4
6x10
-4
0.2
780
Inlet conditions
Outlet conditions
4x10-4
2x10
Density, kg/m3
Duke et al.
-4
0.2
0.4
0.6
Ethanol fraction
0.8
Inlet conditions
Outlet conditions
760
740
720
700
680
660
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Ethanol fraction
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Ethanol fraction
Figure 2. Calculated properties of gasolineethanol blends at the boundary conditions (inlet pressure 1 MPa, outlet pressure 0.1
MPa). Vapor pressure reference data are from Kar et al.31
rh
P
+ r fh =
+ u rP
t
t
582
Figure 3. Mesh of cavitating nozzle: (a) centerline slice, cropped around the nozzle throat and (b) oblique view.
Figure 4. Convergence of time-averaged vapor volume fraction, velocity magnitude, turbulent energy, and pressure with increasing
grid resolution, plotted along a streamwise vector near the nozzle wall, at a radial position of r=R = 0:96.
Duke et al.
583
1.4
1.2
0.8
Density, kg/m3
|U|max / UB
1
E0
E10
E20
E40
E60
E85
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
-100
E0
E10
E20
E40
E60
E85
0.2
Time, ms
0.4
0.6
Time, ms
0.8
Figure 5. Evolution of density extremes and maximum velocity (normalized by the Bernoulli velocity) in transient solution.
584
60
50
40
E0
E10
E20
E40
E60
E85
30
20
10
0
-1
-0.5
where b =
ratio
0:2 is the nozzle diameter contraction
1
and m_ = rUdA. For a round nozzle,
Nurick
predicts
p
a discharge coefficient of CD = CC K, where the coefficient CC 0:61 for a sharp-edged nozzle with b ! 0.16
Figure 9(a) indicates that Nuricks relation tracks
0
r/R
0.5
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
E0
E10
E20
E40
E60
E85
-1
-0.5
(a)
0
r/R
0.5
(b)
Figure 8. Time-averaged and azimuthally averaged radial velocity profiles in the nozzle outlet plane, for (a) the streamwise
component of velocity and (b) the total spanwise component for the different blends considered.
0.7
3.5
Simulations
Nurick, CC =0.61
Nurick, CC =0.63
0.68
3
2.5
0.64
0.62
1.5
CD
0.66
0.6
Simulations
X-ray Experiment
1
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
Ethanol Fraction
(a)
0.8
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Ethanol Fraction
(b)
Figure 9. Time-averaged fluxes at the nozzle outlet plane, for (a) total mass flux as a discharge coefficient and (b) weighted vapor
mass flux versus blend ratio.
Duke et al.
585
(a)
PiN
Diode
Nozzle Wall
Vapor
Liquid
monochromatic
x-ray source
(b)
Figure 10. X-ray radiography experiment. (a) Monochromatic radiography microprobe setup at Sector 7-BM of the Advanced
Photon Source. The diagram is not to scale; the distance from the source to the experiment is 35.5 m. The beam is focused to a 5 3
6 mm spot where it passes through the nozzle. (b) Example cross-section of submerged nozzle, showing the typical interaction of
the X-ray beam with the flow.
described by the LambertBeer Law. The known density of the liquid phase is used to convert mass per unit
area measurements from radiography to a path length
dzv , which represents the projected depth of vapor in
the path of the beam
!
I1
1
I0
dzv =
loge I91
10
ml rl
I9
0
586
(a)
(b)
Figure 11. Projected vapor quantity dzv =R from X-ray measurements at two streamwise locations along the nozzle. The X-ray data
are compared against simulated projections from the numerical data, at 1 ms after start of injection: (a) x=L = 0:1 and (b) x=L = 0:7.
Duke et al.
587
Conclusion
A submerged nozzle of 500 mm diameter has been modeled using high-resolution LES and the HRMFoam
cavitation and flash-boiling solver of Neroorkar et
al.,21 using tabulated fluid properties. The purpose of
588
Science Foundation for their support of the development of HRMFoam. The X-ray experiments presented
in this research were performed at the 7-BM beamline
of the APS at Argonne National Laboratory. The
authors wish to thank Team Leader Gurpreet Singh
for his support on this work.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
Use of the APS is supported by the US Department of
Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC0206CH11357. The fuel spray research is sponsored by
the DOE Vehicle Technologies Program. D.J.D. was
supported by an ANSTO Fulbright Scholarship in
Nuclear Science & Technology during the research.
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