Fuel wall film effects on premixed flame propagation, quenching and emission

The formation of fuel wall film is a primary cause for efficiency loss and emissions of unburnt hydrocarbons and particulate matters in direct injection engines, especially during cold start. When a premixed flame propagates toward a wall film of liquid fuel, flame structure and propagation could be fundamentally affected by the vaporization flux and the induced thermal and concentration stratifications. It is, therefore, of both fundamental and practical significance to investigate the consequent effect of a wall film on flame quenching. In this work, the interaction of a laminar premixed flame and a fuel wall film has been studied based on one-dimensional direct numerical simulation with detailed chemistry and transport. The mass and energy balance at the wall film interface have been implemented as boundary condition to resolve vaporization. Parametric studies are further conducted with various initial temperatures of 600–800 K, pressures of 7–15 atm, fuel film and wall temperatures of 300–400 K. By comparing the cases with an isothermal dry wall, it is found that the existence of a wall film always promotes flame quenching and causes more emissions. Although quenching distance can vary significantly among conditions, the local equivalence ratio at quenching is largely constant, suggesting the dominant effects of rich mixture and rich flammability limit. By further comparing constant volume and constant pressure conditions, it is observed that pressure and boiling point variation dominate the vaporization boundary layer development and flame quenching, which further suggests that increased pressure during compression stroke in engines can significantly suppress film vaporization. Emissions of unburnt hydrocarbon, soot precursor and low-temperature products before and after flame quenching are also investigated in detail. The results lead to useful insights on the interaction of flame propagation and wall film in well-controlled simplified configurations and shed light on the development of wall film models in three-dimensional in-cylinder combustion simulation.