• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.12
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• pp.1043-1050
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• 2010

Fuel stratification and thermal stratification occur in the HCCI combustion chamber on a microscopic scale. They affect the ignition and combustion processes. In this study, the effect of the inhomogeneity in the mixture gas on the HCCI combustion process was investigated. Two-dimensional chemiluminescence images were captured using a framing camera to evaluate the flame structure. DME was used as the test fuel. First, the effect of inhomogeneity in the fuel distribution in the premixture was investigated for the four-stroke optically accessible engine. Then, by comparing the combustion of the homogeneous mixture in the rapid compression machine, which does not contain any residual gas, with the combustion in the four-stroke engine, the effect of inhomogeneity in temperature due to the residual gas was analyzed. The results showed that a time lag appears spatially in combustion under inhomogeneous conditions in the four-stroke engine. The spatial variation in the combustion without the residual gas in the rapid compression machine is less than that in the combustion in the four-stroke engine.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.179-182
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• 2014

A comparative DNS study of the ignition characteristics of dual-fueled reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) and stratification charge compression ignition (SCCI) is investigated using a 116-species reduced primary reference fuel (PRF) mechanism. In the RCCI combustion, two PRF fuels (n-heptane and iso-octane) with opposite autoignition characteristics are separatedly supplied and in-cylinder blended such that spatial variations in fuel reactivity, fuel concentration and temperature are achieved. In the SCCI combustion, however, just a single fuel (PRF50) is used such that only fuel concentration and temperature inhomoginieties are obtained. Because three factors, rather than only two as in SCCI combustion, govern the overall RCCI combustion, combustion timing and combustion duration or heat release rate of RCCI combustion are flexibly and effectively controlled. It is found that the overall RCCI combustion occurs much earlier and its combustion duration is longer compared to SCC combustionI. Moreover, the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) has a positive effect on enhancing RCCI combustion by inducing a shorter combustion timing and a longer combustion duration as a result of the occurrence of a predominant low-speed deflagration-combustion mode.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.29 no.2 s.233
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• pp.180-188
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• 2005

It is well known that a lean burn engine caused by stratified mixture formation has many kinds of advantages to combustion characteristics, such as higher thermal efficiency and lower CO, NOx levels than conventional homogeneous mixture combustion. Although this combustion can achieve low fuel consumption technology, it produces much unburned hydrocarbon and soot because of heterogeneous equivalence ratio in the combustion chamber. Therefore, the stratified mixture formation technology is very important to obtain the stable lean combustion. In this paper, fundamental studies for stratified combustion were carried out using a constant volume combustion chamber. The local effect of mixture formation according to control air-fuel distribution in the chamber was examined experimentally. In addition, the effect of turbulence on stratified charge combustion process was observed by schlieren photography. From this study, we found that the flame propagation speed increase with swirl flow and the swirl promotes the formation of fuel and air mixture.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.455-462
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• 2006

Natural gas is a promising alternative fuel to meet strict engine emission regulations in many countries. Natural gas engines can operate at lean burn and stoichiometric burn conditions with different combustion and emission characteristics. In this paper, the fuel economy, emissions, misfire, knock and cycle-to-cycle variations in indicated mean effective pressure of lean burn natural gas engines are highlighted. Stoichiometric burn natural gas engines are briefly reviewed. To keep the output power and torque of natural gas engines comparable to that of gasoline engines, high boosting pressure should be used. High activity catalyst for methane oxidation and lean deNOx system or three way catalyst with precisely control strategies should be developed to meet stringent emission standards.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.145-153
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• 2004

Potential fuel economy improvements and environmental legislation have renewed interest in Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) engines. Computational models of fuel injection and mixing processes pre-ignition are being developed for engine optimisation. These highly transient thermofluid models require verification against temporally and spatially resolved data-sets. The authors have previously established the capability of PDA to provide suitable temporally and spatially resolved spray characteristics such as mean droplet size, velocity components and qualitative mass distribution. This paper utilises this data-set to assess the predictive capability of a numerical model for GDI spray prediction. After a brief description of the two-phase model and discretisation sensitivity, the influence of initial spray conditions is discussed. A minimum of 5 initial global spray characteristics are required to model the downstream spray characteristics adequately under isothermal, atmospheric conditions. Verification of predicted transient spray characteristics such as the hollow-cone, cone collapse, head vortex, stratification and penetration are discussed, and further improvements to modelling GDI sprays proposed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.2511-2521
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• 2020

The Fukushima accident is characterized by the fact that three reactors at the same site experienced reactor vessel failure and the accident resulted in significant radiological release to the environment, which was about 1/10 of the Chernobyl releases. The safe removal of fuel debris in the reactor vessel and Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) and treatment of huge amount of contaminated water are the major issues for the decommissioning in coming decades. Discussions on the new researches efforts being carried out in the area of investigation of the end state of fuel debris and Boling Water reactor (BWR) specific core melt progression, development of technologies for the mitigation of radiological releases to comply with the strengthened safety requirement set after the Fukushima accident are discussed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.121-130
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• 2014

This paper is the second investigation on the effects of intake flow control methods on the part load performance in a spark ignition engine. In the previous work, two control methods, port throttling and masking, were compared with respect to lean misfire limit, fuel consumption and emissions. In this work, the effects of these two methods on EGR characteristics were studied and simultaneously the differences between EGR and lean combustion as a dilution method were investigated. The results show that EGR limit is expanded up to 23% and 3 ~ 5% improvement in the fuel consumption are achieved around 8 ~ 13% rates by the flow controls comparing with 10% limit and 1.5% reduction around 3% rate of non-control case. The masking method is more effective on the limit expansion than throttling as like as lean misfire limit; however there is no substantial difference in fuel consumptions improvement regardless the control methods except high load condition. Also it is observed that there exist critical EGR rates around which the combustion performance and NOx formation change remarkably and these rates generally coincide with optimum rates for the fuel consumption. In addition, dilution with fresh air is much more advantageous than that of the exhaust gas from the view point of dilution limit and fuel consumption, while utilization of the exhaust gas is more effective on NOx reduction in spite of considerably small dilution compared with the use of fresh air. Finally, the improvement of fuel consumption by massive EGR is highly dependent on the EGR limit at which the engine runs stably, therefore the stratified combustion technique might be a best solution for this purpose.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.881-892
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• 2016

Following the Fukushima accident and its extended station blackout, attention was brought to the importance of the spent fuel pools' (SFPs) behavior in case of a prolonged loss of the cooling system. Since then, many analytical works have been performed to estimate the timing of hypothetical fuel uncovery for various SFP types. Experimentally, however, little was done to investigate issues related to the formation of a flammable gas mixture, distribution, and stratification in the SFP building itself and to some extent assess the capability for the code to correctly predict it. This paper presents the main outcomes of the Experiments on Spent Fuel Pool (ESFP) project carried out under the auspices of Swissnuclear (Framework 2012-2013) in the PANDA facility at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland. It consists of an experimental investigation focused on hydrogen concentration build-up into a SFP building during a predefined scaled scenario for different venting positions. Tests follow a two-phase scenario. Initially steam is released to mimic the boiling of the pool followed by a helium/steam mixture release to simulate the deterioration of the oxidizing spent fuel. Results shows that while the SFP building would mainly be inerted by the presence of a high concentration of steam, the volume located below the level of the pool in adjacent rooms would maintain a high air content. The interface of the two-gas mixture presents the highest risk of flammability. Additionally, it was observed that the gas mixture could become stagnant leading locally to high hydrogen concentration while steam condenses. Overall, the experiments provide relevant information for the potentially hazardous gas distribution formed in the SFP building and hints on accident management and on eventual retrofitting measures to be implemented in the SFP building.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.7-14
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• 2010

This study investigated the effect on reducing the pressure rise rate(PRR) in HCCI Engine by the variation of mixing ratio in the pre-mixture of DME and n-Butane that has different auto-ignition characteristics. In addition to measure of gas pressure in the engine cylinder, chemiluminescence image using the optical accessible engine and numerical analysis with multi-zones model were used to assess the combustion at each local area in the combustion chamber. The maximum PRR changes depending on mixing condition of DME and n-Butane. When DME is stratified and n-Butane is distributed uniformly, maximum PRR becomes lowest which is about 0.25MPa/ms and it corresponds to 5deg. retarding of CA50.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.39-45
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• 2012

Today gasoline engines for vehicular application are not only faced with stringent emission regulation but also with increasing requirements to better fuel economy, while guaranteeing power density. The spray-guided type gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine has an advantage of improved thermal efficiency and lower harmful emissions. Centrally mounted high pressure injector and adjacent spark plug allow stable lean combustion due to the flexible mixture stratification. In the present study, the performance and emissions characteristics of developed spray-guided type GDI combustion system were evaluated at various excess air ratio conditions. The specific fuel consumption and nitrogen oxides ($NO_x$) emissions were reduced due to the achievement of stable lean combustion under flammability limit. Multiple injection strategy was not helpful to improve fuel consumption while further reduction of $NO_x$ emissions was possible.