Assessing the Impact of Thermal Barrier Coatings on Charge Temperature Stratification Within a Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition Engine

Abstract

The application of a Thermal Barrier Coating (TBC) to combustion chamber surfaces within a Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) engine alters conditions at the gas-wall boundary and affects the temperature field of the interior charge. Thin, low-conductivity, TBCs (∼150μm) exhibit elevated surface temperatures during late compression and expansion processes. This temperature ‘swing’ reduces gas-to-wall heat transfer during combustion and expansion, alters reaction rates in the wall affected zones, and improves thermal efficiency. In this paper, Thermal Stratification Analysis (TSA) is employed to quantify the impact of Thermal Barrier Coatings on the charge temperature distribution within a gasoline-fueled Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine. Using an empirically derived ignition delay correlation for HCCI-relevant air-to-fuel ratios, an autoignition integral is tracked across multiple temperature ‘zones’. Charge mass is assigned to each zone by referencing the Mass Fraction Burn (MFB) profile from the corresponding heat release analysis. Closed-cycle temperature distributions are generated for baseline (i.e., ‘metal’) and TBC-treated engine configurations. In general, the TBC-treated engine configurations are shown to maintain a higher percentage of charge mass at temperatures approximating the isentropic limit.