M. Reeves et al., PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY MEASUREMENTS OF IN-CYLINDER FLOW IN A MULTI-VALVE INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINE, PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS PART D-JOURNALOF AUTOMOBILE ENGINEERING, 210(1), 1996, pp. 63-70
Particle image velocimetry (PIV) has been used here to characterize th
e formation and breakdown of barrel swirl or tumble in a production ge
ometry, four-stroke, four-valve motored optical internal combustion (I
C) engine. The engine was motored at 1000 r/min at wide open throttle.
Double exposed images were recorded from a plane parallel to the cyli
nder axis which passed through the centre-lines of an inlet and exhaus
t valve. Particle image velocimetry images from a range of crank angle
s between inlet valve closure and the ignition point were interrogated
by digital autocorrelation to give two-dimensional maps of instantane
ous velocity. The in-cylinder flow is characterized by the formation o
f an ordered barrel swirl or tumbling vortex, which is shown to persis
t throughout the majority of the compression stroke with maximum veloc
ities of the order of three times the mean piston speed and a high vel
ocity bulk flow at the time of ignition near the spark plug. With resp
ect to the PIV technique itself, image labelling and cross correlation
are considered essential to improve measurement dynamic range, valid
data rate and tolerance to velocity gradients in the turbulent flows e
ncountered near top dead centre (TDC).