The technologies of improving the process of air-fuel mixture combustion in spark ignition engines

The paper considers the turbulence intensity and the fuel chemical composition impact on the flame propagation velocity at the initial and main combustion phases when changing the air-fuel mixture composition. The relevance of the study is caused by the fact that currently, the improvement of conventional engine operation characteristics is mainly achieved through the improvement of the fuel mixture combustion process. However, there are no data on the influence of chemical and gas-dynamic factors on the peculiarities of flame propagation at the initial and main combustion phases. The gas reciprocating internal combustion engine was the object of the research, and the subject of the study was the fuel combustion process. Fuel chemical composition changed due to the promoting addition of hydrogen to the natural gas and variations of the excess-air coefficient. The experiments carried out on the UIT-85 power plant (i.e. under the simulated internal combustion engine conditions) show that the promoting addition of hydrogen stronger influences the flame velocity in the initial combustion phase compared to the second combustion phase, as a combustion source in the first phase is a laminar flame bent front and depends only on chemical and thermo-physical properties of the fuel-air mixture. The analysis of experimental data showed the dual impact of turbulence intensity on the flame propagation velocity. In particular, at the beginning of the combustion process, the fluctuating velocity scarcely influences the flame propagation velocity, as opposed to the main combustion phase, where the flame propagation velocity increases at the increase of turbulence intensity.