On Discharge Capability and Swirl Generation Capability of Swirler
Fuel-air mixing process is one crucial key to determine the performance of a diesel engine, and it is crucially determined by swirl within cylinder. For generating strong swirl within the cylinder, a new device named swirler has been propounded. In the present paper, four swirlers have been employed to experimentally study the performance on both the discharge capability and swirl generation capability. The steady flow test bench was employed to study the both capabilities in macro-level. Then, a water-flow model was employed to observe the flow motion within the cylinder via the tested swirlers. The results indicate that adopting swirler with a suitable configuration could generate strong swirl without remarkable discharge capability loss.
Effect of swirl on combustion in a short cylindrical chamber
Abstract Combustion of a swirling, stoichiometric, and homogeneous mixture of natural gas and air in a short cylindrical chamber has been studied experimentally and simulated numerically. Each mixture was given a steady-state swirling motion by a rotating roughened disc before being ignited at the center of the chamber. By using discs of differing roughness and by varying the disc speed, the intensities of swirl and turbulence could be varied independently so that the effects on combustion of mixture turbulence and swirl-induced buoyancy could be separately examined. Combustion rate and overall chamber heat transfer were inferred from chamber pressure-time records. High-speed schlieren photography showed the effect of swirl on the early flame kernel. With given swirling angular momentum, increased turbulence level always reduced burning duration and increased total heat transfer rate. With given turbulence level, increasing the swirl intensity from zero first decreased, then strongly increased, the burning duration. The swirling Reynolds number (based on chamber radius and peak tangential velocity) at which combustion duration was minimized was in the range 30,000–40,000. At high Reynolds number buoyancy forces appear to have a strongly inhibiting effect on flame propagation.
Effects of reservoir volume on performance of pulse tube cooler.
A pulse tube cooler has the advantages of long-life and low-vibration over conventional cryocoolers such as G-M and Stirling coolers because of the absence of moving parts at low temperature. On the other hand, the combination of a reservoir and orifice is indispensable to optimize the performance of pulse tube coolers. In order to make the pulse tube cooler compact for practical applications, the volume of reservoir should be minimized. This paper analyzes the effects of the reservoir volume on the thermodynamic performance of various components in a simple orifice and a double-inlet pulse tube cooler by combining a linearized model with a thermodynamic analysis. Expressions of entropy production for those components are presented. The results show that the reservoir volume has a significant influence on the entropy production in the various components when the reservoir to pulse tube volume ratio is smaller than about 5. The ratio is important to determine the minimum reservoir volume for a pulse tube cooler. Optimum settings for a double-inlet pulse tube cooler are also discussed.