Three-dimensional computer modeling of hydrogen injection and combustion

The hydrodynamics of hydrogen gas injection into a fixed-volume combustion chamber is analyzed and simulated using KIVA-3, a three-dimensional, reactive flow computer code. Comparisons of the simulation results are made to data obtained at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratory-California (SNL-CA). Simulation of the gas injection problem is found to be of comparable difficulty as the liquid fuel injection in diesel engines. The primary challenge is the large change of length scale from the flow of gas in the orifice to the penetration in the combustion chamber. In the current experiments, the change of length scale is about 4,000. A reduction of the full problem is developed that reduces the change in length scale in the simulation to about 400, with a comparable improvement in computational times. Comparisons of the simulation to the experimental data shows good agreement in the penetration history and pressure rise in the combustion chamber. At late times the comparison is sensitive to the method of determination of the penetration in the simulations. In a comparison of the combustion modeling of methane and hydrogen, hydrogen combustion is more difficult to model, and currently available kinetic models fail to predict the observed autoignition delay atmore » these conditions.« less