Kinetic Modeling of Fuel Effects over a Wide Range of Chemistry, Properties, and Sources

Abstract

Kinetic modeling is an important tool for engine design and can also be used for engine tuning and to study response to fuel chemistry and properties before an engine configuration is physically built and tested. Methodologies needed for studying fuel effects include development of fuel kinetic mechanisms for pure compounds, tools for designing surrogate blends of pure compounds that mimic a desired market fuel, and tools for reducing kinetic mechanisms to a size that allows inclusion in complex CFD engine models. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of these tools to reproduce engine results for a series of research diesel fuels using surrogate fuels in an engine and then modeling results with a simple 2 component surrogate blend with physical properties adjusted to vary fuel volatility. Results indicate that we were reasonably successful in mimicking engine performance of real fuels with blends of pure compounds. We were also successful in spanning the range of the experimental data using CFD and kinetic modeling, but further tuning and matching will be needed to exactly match engine performance of the real and surrogate fuels.