SAE TECHNICAL

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1999-01-0567

Evaporation of In-Cylinder Liquid Fuel Droplets

in an SI Engine: A Diagnostic-Based
Modeling Study
Robert Meyer and John B. Heywood
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Reprinted From: Combustion in SI Engines

(SP-1436)

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1999-01-0567

Evaporation of In-Cylinder Liquid Fuel Droplets in an

SI Engine: A Diagnostic-Based Modeling Study
Robert Meyer* and John B. Heywood
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copyright 1999 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

analyze the nature of liquid fuel transport into the cylinder.

ABSTRACT
Liquid fuel behavior in the cylinder impacts SI engine HC
emissions particularly during engine start-up. Inflow of
liquid fuel into the cylinder is largely determined by the
flow and temperature environment in the intake port.
Subsequent evaporation of fuel droplets in the cylinder
prior to impact on the piston and cylinder liner reduces
the amount of liquid fuel in the cylinder that is likely to
contribute to HC emission and is therefore important.

The authors conducted a study in an optical single cylinder engine [1] that revealed important details of the
mechanisms by which liquid fuel is transported into the
cylinder under firing engine conditions and how these
mechanisms depend on fuel injection timing and engine
warm-up. The study was based on Phase Doppler
(PDPA) measurements of fuel droplets in multiple locations around the circumference of the intake valve in the
cylinder of the firing engine.

In this study, measurements of liquid fuel droplet characteristics in the vicinity of the intake valve of a firing SI
engine were analyzed to estimate the amount and spatial
distribution of in-cylinder evaporation of liquid fuel prior to
droplet impact on the cylinder liner or piston. A onedimensional fuel droplet evaporation model was developed to predict the amount of fuel evaporation given
measured fuel droplet sizes and velocities, intake port
and valve temperatures during warm up, and cylinder
geometry.

The present study analyzes the in-cylinder evaporation of

liquid fuel droplets that enter through the intake valve with
the characteristics (size and velocity) measured in the
valve vicinity. The magnitude of fuel droplet evaporation
in the cylinder prior to impact on a surface (i.e. piston,
cylinder liner and head) is likely to have a significant
impact on engine-out HC emissions. The evaporated fuel
is more likely to burn completely during combustion. The
in-cylinder liquid fuel that does not vaporize prior to combustion may be stored in various locations in the cylinder
(e.g. crevices, lubricating oil film) where it can be a
source of HC emissions.

Measurements of the liquid fuel droplet distribution entering the cylinder were made around the circumference of
the intake valve with open and closed valve port injection
timing, during engine starting and warm up. Based on
these measurements the dependence of in-cylinder fuel
evaporation on changing temperatures and droplet size
distributions during engine warm-up has been assessed.
The fraction of the liquid fuel entering the cylinder that
vaporizes before wall impact was found increase from
about 20% at start-up to about 50% under warmed up
conditions. This fraction proved to be most sensitive to
the intake port and valve temperature.

The purpose of the study described in this paper was to

estimate the amount of fuel evaporation from liquid fuel
droplets that enter the cylinder prior to impact on surfaces in the cylinder, as well as the spatial distribution of
the impacting fuel in the cylinder. A one-dimensional fuel
droplet evaporation model was developed that uses measured characteristics of fuel droplets in the valve vicinity
as an input to determine the amount of evaporation from
these droplets. The sensitivity of fuel evaporation to injection timing and to changes in the thermal environment of
the engine during warm up was studied. The study is limited to in-cylinder evaporation of liquid fuel droplets only.
The behavior of any liquid fuel entering the cylinder as a
fuel film was not considered.

INTRODUCTION
Liquid fuel in the cylinder of automotive SI engines is a
likely cause of increased HC emissions particularly during the period of engine starting and warm up. This subject has drawn significant research efforts recently to
* Authors current affiliation: BMW AG

Table 1.

MEASURED FUEL DROPLET

CHARACTERISTICS

Engine operating conditions for fired tests

The experimental apparatus used to provide the initial incylinder fuel droplet characteristics is described in detail
in [2]. A Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) was
used in a transparent single-cylinder square-piston
engine to measure the characteristics (size and velocity)
of liquid fuel droplets in the vicinity of the intake valve
under firing conditions during starting and warm-up. The
engine has a flat cylinder head which provides good optical access to the intake valve. Fuel droplet characteristics
as functions of time after engine starting and crank angle
were taken in seven angular locations on five planes
below the cylinder head. The measurement positions
were located on half-circles 5 mm away from the perimeter of the intake valve. The locations of the measurement
positions in the intake valve vicinity are shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1. PDPA measurement locations in the intake

valve vicinity
To visualize the geometrical structure of the liquid fuel
spray entering the cylinder, a Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) technique was applied on the same
transparent engine. PLIF images were taken at various
engine cycle positions in a plane 10 mm from the center
line of the engine intake system. A sample image at maximum valve lift is shown in Fig. 2. The cone structure of
the fuel spray emerging from the intake valve as well as
its separation into two jets due to the large valve lift can
be observed. Also it can be seen from this figure, that the
5 planar PDPA measurement locations are sufficiently
spread out to cover the entire width of the curtain area
around the intake valve through which liquid fuel enters
the cylinder.

Figure 2. PLIF setup and sample image at maximum

valve lift
A procedure was developed and verified previously [1] to
approximate the volume of liquid fuel entering the cylinder based on the PDPA and PLIF measurements. The
procedure allowed to estimate the volume of liquid fuel
entering the cylinder as a function of time and its spatial
distribution in the intake valve vicinity. Figure 3 displays
for the open valve injection and the closed valve injection
case the volume flow of liquid fuel into the cylinder during
a time interval of warm-up (t = 4 sec.) normalized by the
volume of liquid fuel injected during this time interval.

The PDPA and PLIF measurements were made during

engine starting and subsequent warm up. The engine
was first motored at constant speed. Fuel injection was
then started to provide firing engine operation. To achieve
prompt firing, the first injection pulse was enriched to provide six times the amount of fuel of the subsequent injections. The engine was then run for 90 seconds of engine
warm up. The engine operating conditions are summarized in Table1.

(4)
The instantaneous change of droplet diameter follows as:
(5)
Balancing the aerodynamic and inertial forces exerted on
the droplet yields an expression for the instantaneous
change of droplet velocity under the influence of a surrounding airflow:
Figure 3. Volume inflow of liquid fuel during warm-up
(6)

DROPLET EVAPORATION MODEL

Based on considerations found in [3], a fuel droplet evaporation model was developed to predict the fate of in-cylinder liquid fuel droplets with their initial characteristics
obtained from the PDPA measurements. For simplicity
the droplets were assumed to be of spherical shape, and
uniform temperature initially. Influence of the surrounding
droplets in the spray on the evaporation behavior of each
single droplet was neglected.

with the drag coefficient cD given by:

(7)
where the Reynolds number Re is based on the droplet
diameter and the relative velocity between droplet and
surrounding gas.

Mass transfer of an evaporating droplet due to a species

concentration gradient (neglecting thermal diffusion)
yields

(1)
where DS is the droplet diameter and k g and cpg are the
thermal conductivity and the heat capacity of the surrounding gas phase respectively. BM is a mass transfer
number
(2)
with Ys being the fuel mass fraction at the droplet - air
interface. A heat transfer number BT is defined by :
(3)
where T and TS are the ambient air temperature and the
droplet surface temperature, respectively, and L is the
latent heat of fuel vaporization corresponding to the fuel
surface temperature TS. BT denotes the ratio of the available enthalpy in the surrounding air to the heat required
to evaporate the fuel droplet.

Figure 4. Simulated mean air velocity in the valve gap

and in-cylinder gas temperature throughout
the intake stroke
For adaptation of this model to the conditions in the test
engine in which the PDPA droplet measurements were
obtained, the surrounding air temperature in the cylinder,
and air velocity in the valve gap during intake, were calculated using a zero-dimensional engine cycle simulation

A balance of heat transfer to a droplet and heat removal

through evaporation yields an expression for the instantaneous change of droplet surface temperature:

code [4]. Both in-cylinder gas temperature and valve gap

velocity are plotted as a function of crank angle in Fig. 4.

model. These small droplets would be likely to stay suspended in air until start of combustion or complete evaporation.

Initial conditions for ambient temperature and relative

droplet velocity are the cylinder gas temperature, and the
difference between valve gap velocity of the intake airflow
and measured droplet velocity, respectively, at the cycle
position of droplet measurement. The initial droplet temperature at entry into the cylinder was assumed to be the
average of the valve and the port wall temperatures. Both
temperatures were measured as a function of time during
the engine starting and warm up experiments (see Fig.
5).

DROPLET EVAPORATION AT ENGINE

CONDITIONS
To better understand the sensitivity of droplet evaporation
to the surrounding conditions it is helpful to analyze the
details of the heat and mass transfer process to and from
a single droplet during heat up and vaporization. The
evaporation process of a droplet is displayed schematically in Fig. 6 as of a droplet diameter - time history. A
droplet suddenly exposed to a large enough temperature
difference to allow vaporization, undergoes two distinct
phases of evaporation [3]. As heat is first transferred to
the droplet, its temperature increases. Little mass transfer from the droplet occurs due to low fuel vapor concentration at the droplet surface. The droplet is heated up,
similar to any other cold body, with a non uniform temperature profile that decreases from the droplet periphery to
its center. This period of the evaporation process is called
the heat up process. The decrease in droplet diameter
during this phase is minimal (and the heat up phase of a
droplet is often approximated as a phase of constant
diameter). With increasing droplet temperature, heat
transfer to the droplet is increasingly balanced by mass
transfer away from the droplet surface. Droplet heat up
continues until the droplet surface reaches the wet bulb
temperature at the surrounding conditions is. From this
point, heat transfer to the droplet is completely balanced
by mass transfer of vapor away from it. The droplet diameter undergoes a quadratic decease with time which is
represented by the straight lines drawn in Fig. 6.

Figure 5. Measured intake valve and port temperatures

during engine warm-up
Using the equations above the model allows an approximate prediction of the diameter and position of a measured fuel droplet as a function of engine cycle position.
Using a given cylinder and valve geometry, the amount of
fuel evaporation from a droplet prior to its impact on the
cylinder liner or piston, or prior to commencement of
combustion, was determined.
To best represent the conditions in the transparent
engine used in this study, the piston position at each time
step was determined using the geometric dimensions
(crank radius and connecting rod length). The engine cylinder was modeled with a circular geometry, with the cylinder bore such that the round cylinder cross-section
equaled the square one. The distance from piston top to
cylinder head at TC was set at 14 mm as in the transparent engine. Droplet impact on either cylinder liner or piston top surface was determined by considering the fuel
droplet position at each time step of the calculation relative to cylinder liner and piston top location at that time
step. Thus the droplets were modeled to follow the initial
trajectory as observed from the PLIF visualization results.
Droplet redirection through interaction with the in-cylinder
flow field was not considered. Such influences would
become important especially near cylinder and piston
walls, where the impinging intake air jet forms recirculation regions that would tend to carry drops first parallel to
and then away from the wall surface. We can speculate
that small droplets of around 10 mm in diameter would
follow these flow features most easily and would hence
contribute less to wall impingement than predicted by the

Figure 6. Droplet warm-up and evaporation (from [3])

Under engine conditions during start up, therefore there
are two main parameters that have major influence on
the in-cylinder fuel droplet evaporation process. One is
the initial droplet temperature at entry into the cylinder, as
this determines the amount of heat transfer necessary
before substantial evaporation occurs at wet bulb temperature. The other is the in-cylinder gas temperature since
the magnitude of heat transfer to the droplet is
4

determined by the temperature difference between the

in-cylinder gases and the droplet. The initial droplet temperature will be determined by the port and valve temperature in the intake. It can be shown that at the engine
speed used in this study (1100 rev/min), almost complete
heat up of a fuel film of the thickness commonly occurring
in intake ports is reached in a time interval of about 6
degrees CA. Hence, the initial droplet temperature at cylinder entry was assumed to be the average of valve and
port temperatures (liquid fuel was seen to be atomized
from both the valve and the port surface). The in-cylinder
gas temperature will be a function of cycle position as a
sizable fraction of high temperature residual gas is
present in the cylinder at IVO. During intake, this residual
gas will be diluted by mixing with intake air, so that the
cylinder temperature decreases to close to the intake
temperature level. The mean cylinder temperature during
the intake stroke was determined by a zero-dimensional
cycle simulation code (see Fig. 4).
Model tests were run to quantify the impact of both variables on droplet evaporation. For droplets of various size,
the evaporation process was calculated for different initial
in-cylinder temperatures. For a 50 m droplet, droplet
size histories are shown on a time scale relevant for
engine circumstances in Fig. 7. The figure shows the
effect of a variation of both initial droplet temperature and
cylinder gas temperature, respectively, while holding the
other temperature constant. The maximum time of 0.01 s
displayed on the graphs corresponds to the travel time of
the slowest measured droplets (order of 10 m/s) to cover
the largest available distance in the cylinder (order of 10
cm). It can be seen that the initial droplet temperature
has a significant influence on the rate of droplet evaporation. The effect of the surrounding cylinder temperature is
negligible on the time scale considered.

Figure 7. Influence of cylinder gas temperature and

initial droplet temperature on droplet
evaporation

LIQUID FUEL EVAPORATION IN THE CYLINDER

Using the evaporation model, the fate of the in-cylinder
liquid fuel droplets measured with the PDPA during
engine warm up was determined. The intake valve was
assumed to be placed in a round cylinder (as opposed to
the square geometry of the transparent engine). For each
PDPA measurement location around the circumference
of the intake valve, the radial distance to the cylinder liner
was determined. This input was used to determine the
time and location of droplet impact on the cylinder liner or
piston.

Due to the small travel distance in the cylinder (order of

centimeters) the time scale of droplet travel before wall
impact does not extend substantially beyond the heat-up
period of the fuel droplets. During heat up, heat transfer
to the droplet causes only a small changes in diameter.
Thus increased heat transfer through increased cylinder
temperatures does not result in faster evaporation.
Increased initial temperature, however, determines that
less heat up is necessary for the droplet to reach wet
bulb temperature. Hence, constant heat transfer to the
droplet results in increased mass transfer away from the
droplet through evaporation.

Four different locations of the intake valve in the cylinder

head were considered: a generic case with the valve in
the center of the cylinder head, two different configurations representative of 2-valve engines, and a configuration representative of a 4-valve engine. The four
configurations are shown in Fig. 8.

Thus the amount of liquid fuel evaporated from the droplets subjected to heat transfer will be dependent on the
initial droplet temperature at entrance into the cylinder
(i.e. the temperature of the engine during warm up).
Changing cylinder gas temperature during the engine
cycle is of minor influence.

Figure 9 displays the volume of liquid fuel that vaporizes

in the cylinder after induction, normalized by the volume
of liquid fuel entering the cylinder as a function of time
after start up, for the idealized case with the intake valve

in the center of the cylinder head. In this case the available travel distance for each drop before impact on the
wall is equal at each measurement location. The fraction
of the liquid fuel volume entering in each position that
vaporizes, hence depends mainly on the size distributions of the droplets in each location. It can be seen that
the fraction of liquid fuel that vaporizes increases with
time with both open and closed valve injection. At
warmed-up engine conditions, after 90 seconds of operation, about 50 % of the liquid fuel entering the cylinder
vaporizes before droplet impact on the cylinder wall or
piston. The amount of vaporization scales with the initial
droplet temperature at entry into the cylinder, i.e. the
intake port and valve temperatures. This is due to the
sensitivity of in-cylinder fuel droplet evaporation to initial
droplet temperature identified above.

open valve injection. While fuel droplet transport into the

cylinder with open valve injection is primarily due to direct
communication between the injector and the cylinder
through the open valve, droplets are stripped off a fuel
film in the valve vicinity in the case of closed valve injection. As shown in [5] the size distribution of fuel droplets
due to this atomization process is strongly dependent on
the fuel film thickness in the valve vicinity. This film thickness diminishes with engine warm-up causing in-cylinder
fuel droplet size to decrease with engine warm up. With
open valve injection, the in-cylinder droplet size distribution remains essentially constant during warm-up due to
the different mode of liquid fuel transport into the cylinder
in this injection case. The reduction in droplet size distribution with closed valve injection with engine warm-up is
reflected in the fuel evaporation improvements displayed
in Fig. 9.

Additionally, evaporation increases more rapidly with

closed valve injection during engine warm up than with

Figure 8. Modeled valve configuration cases

Figure 11. Droplet size distribution at valve (closed valve

injection - averaged over 90 seconds engine
operation)

Figure 9. Center valve location - Fraction of liquid fuel

that vaporizes in the cylinder as a function of
engine running time (averaged over valve
circumference)
Figure 10 shows the fraction of the liquid fuel entering the
cylinder that vaporizes prior to droplet impact on the cylinder liner or piston as a function of the valve circumferential angle . The values displayed are averages over
90 seconds of engine warm up. With both open and
closed valve injection, the fraction of entering liquid fuel
that vaporizes has a minimum at the location of maximum
liquid fuel entry into the cylinder (where the maximum
SMD occurs). Since in this valve configuration case the
droplet travel distances between the valve and the cylinder wall are equal in all angular locations, differences in
the fraction of liquid fuel vaporizing can only be attributed
to different size distributions of the initial droplet inflow.

Figure 12. Fraction of initial size distribution that does not

fully vaporize before liner impact during
various stages of warm up
In Fig. 12, the droplet size distribution of the volume fraction impinging on the cylinder wall is displayed for both
positions during three time intervals of engine operation
after start up (0 - 30 seconds, 30 - 60 seconds, and 60 90 seconds). The increase of droplet evaporation with
engine warm up results in the increasing minimum diameter of droplets impacting on the wall at later stages of
engine operation. The observed increase of the fraction
of liquid fuel vaporized with engine warm up is thus a
result of increased initial droplet temperature, and the
decreasing droplet mean diameter caused by reducing
film thickness in the intake port with engine warm-up.
Due to the spray targeting in the intake port with closed

Figure 10. Center valve location - Fraction of liquid fuel

that vaporizes in the cylinder as function of
valve angle (averaged over 90 s of engine
operation)
Figure 11 displays the measured droplet size distributions for closed valve injection in the angular locations
= 45 and = 112.5. The size distribution at = 112.5
shows a greater number of larger droplets. Evaporation
of larger droplets proceeds slower due to the lower surface to volume ratio, so that a smaller fraction of liquid
fuel was observed to vaporize.

valve injection, the positions around = 112.5 show a

large percentage of large droplets that are less likely to
vaporize. With open valve injection, most injected fuel in
the intake port is carried forward by the intake flow which
results in large droplet sizes in the front of the intake port
(around the = 157.5 location). Consequently the fraction of in-cylinder liquid fuel vaporizing in this location has
a minimum in this injection timing case.
Figure 13 shows the fraction of vaporized in-cylinder liquid fuel as a function of valve angle for the basic twovalve configuration (see Fig. 8). In this case the droplet
travel distance before impact on the cylinder wall is
smaller in the rear and larger in the front of the intake port
compared to the center valve configuration case. Consequently liquid fuel droplet evaporation prior to impact on
the cylinder wall increases in the front of the intake port
and decreases in the back (relative to the center valve
location case).

Figure 14. Fraction of initial size distribution that does not

fully vaporize before liner impact for various
available travel distances (averaged over 90 s
of engine operation)

Figure 13. Basic 2 Valve configuration - Fraction of liquid

fuel that vaporizes in the cylinder as function
of valve angle (averaged over 90 s of engine
operation)
To analyze the influence of available droplet travel distance before wall impact, model calculations were carried
out with the measured droplet size distributions. Figure
14 shows the droplet size distribution of the volume fraction impinging on the cylinder wall resulting from the
droplet size distributions measured in the = 45 and
= 112.5 positions and assuming three different available
travel distances (5 mm, 25 mm, and 50 mm). With
increasing available travel distance, only larger diameter
droplets do not vaporize fully in the cylinder and impinge
on the liner. This is very similar to the effect of increasing
initial droplet temperature during engine warm up that as
discussed before. For droplets at wet bulb temperature,
the droplet diameter decreases with the second power of
time due to evaporation, so that evaporation benefits can
be expected to be more than proportional to increasing
travel distance.

Figure 15. Basic 2 Valve configuration - Fraction of liquid

fuel that vaporizes in the cylinder as function
of engine running time (averaged over valve
circumference)
Figure 15 displays the overall fraction of liquid fuel vaporizing in the cylinder as a function of time with both open
and closed valve injection for the basic two valve configuration. Compared to the center valve configuration case,
more liquid fuel vaporizes in the cylinder with open valve

injection and less with closed valve injection. This can be

understood by considering the spatial distribution of the
inflow of liquid fuel into the cylinder around the intake
valve. Due to targeting in the port, with closed valve injection most fuel enters the cylinder through the sides of the
intake port, whereas with open valve injection most fuel
enters the cylinder through the front of the intake valve
due to interaction of the injected fuel with the intake airflow (see [1]). The volume inflow distribution of liquid fuel
in the vicinity of the intake valve as measured in [1] is
shown in Fig. 16. Since most fuel enters the cylinder in
the front of the valve with open valve injection, the
increase of travel distance before impact on the wall for
droplets entering the cylinder in the front of the intake
valve leads to the observed improved evaporation of liquid fuel. In the case of closed valve injection, evaporation
decreases slightly due mainly to reduction of travel distance in the = 90 location.

intake valve. Moving one side of the valve away from the
cylinder wall reduces the droplet travel distance on the
other side of the valve, so that changes in the amount of
fuel that vaporizes are minimal. Figure 18 shows the
amount of liquid fuel vaporizing as a function of warm-up
time with open and closed valve injection in the two and
four valve configuration cases.

Figure 17 shows the fraction of liquid fuel vaporizing as a

function of valve circumferential angle on either side of
the intake valve in the valve configuration cases representative of a multi-cylinder two valve in-line engine and
a four valve engine (see Fig. 8). The effect of available
travel distance on the fraction of liquid fuel that vaporizes
in the cylinder is apparent in differences of fuel evaporation. Since with open valve injection most fuel enters the
cylinder in a relatively confined area in the front of the
intake valve, fuel evaporation is increased in valve orientations that provide the longest possible travel distance to
the cylinder wall. With closed valve injection, the reduction potential is limited due to the fact that most liquid fuel
enters the cylinder symmetrically through the sides of the

Figure 16. Spatial distribution of liquid fuel volume influx

in the intake valve vicinity with open and
closed valve injection (measured in [1])

Figure 17. Spatial distribution of in-cylinder liquid fuel evaporation (2 valve inline and 4 valve configurations)

With closed valve injection the volume of liquid fuel entering the cylinder at start-up is about 18 % of the injected
fuel. The fraction of this amount that vaporizes in the cylinder is about 18%, so that wall impingement of liquid fuel
during this phase can be expected to amount to about 15
% of the injected fuel. Under warmed-up conditions, the
amount of liquid fuel entering the cylinder equals about
2% of the injected fuel, and about 50% of that fraction
can be expected to vaporize. Hence about 1% of the
injected fuel can be expected to impinge on the cylinder
liner under warmed-up engine conditions. Maximum
inflow of liquid fuel with closed valve injection equals
about 38% of the injected fuel after about 15 seconds of
engine operation. At this stage of warm up, about 21% of
the in-cylinder liquid fuel can be expected to vaporize
according to model prediction, so that the amount of liquid fuel impinging on the cylinder liner would equal 30%
of the injected fuel.

FUEL IMPINGEMENT ON THE CYLINDER LINER

TOTAL AMOUNT OF LIQUID FUEL IMPINGEMENT
Using the results of the in-cylinder liquid fuel evaporation
model, a prediction of the amount of liquid fuel that
impinges on the cylinder wall during warm up can be
made. The amount of impinging liquid fuel is obtained by
multiplying the amount of liquid fuel entering the cylinder
by the fraction that does not vaporize according to model
prediction. The amount of liquid fuel that impinges on the
cylinder liner during a given time interval during the
engine warm-up process, normalized by the amount of
fuel injected into the port during that time interval, is
shown in Fig. 19 for both open and closed valve injection. The basic two valve configuration in Fig. 8 was used
for this calculation. With both open and closed valve
injection, the volume fraction of in-cylinder liquid fuel that
vaporizes at start up is about 20%. This volume
increases steadily with increasing engine temperature to
reach about 50% under warmed up conditions after 90
seconds of engine operation.

Figure 19. Liquid fuel impinging on the cylinder liner and

piston during warm-up according to model
prediction
SPATIAL
DISTRIBUTION
OF
LIQUID
FUEL
IMPINGEMENT For the basic two valve configuration
case, an assessment of the spatial distribution of the liquid fuel at impingement on the cylinder liner was made.
This valve configuration most closely resembles the
actual valve configuration in the transparent test engine.
For each PDPA measurement location in the circumference of the intake valve, the amount of liquid fuel measured passing through it, reduced by the fraction that
vaporizes in the cylinder according to the model prediction, was projected onto the location of impingement on
the cylinder liner. The location of fuel impingement was
determined from the location of the PDPA measurement
in the valve vicinity and the droplet flight trajectory. From
the PLIF images, a 45 degree orientation of the liquid fuel
cone to the valve axis and an 11 degree spreading angle
of the liquid fuel cone was observed.

Figure 18. Dependence of in-cylinder fuel evaporation on

valve orientation
With open valve injection, the volume of liquid fuel entering the cylinder at start up is about 25 % of the injected
fuel. About 22 % of this amount would vaporize in the cylinder prior to impact on the liner in liquid form, so that
about 20 % of the volume of injected fuel would impinge
on the wall. Under warmed up conditions about 15% of
the injected fuel enters the cylinder in liquid phase of
which about 55% would vaporize prior to impingement on
the cylinder liner (i.e. 7% of the injected fuel impinges on
the liner).

10

With both open and closed valve injection, it can be seen

that fuel impingement on the cylinder wall occurs further
away from the cylinder head surface in the front (higher
degrees cylinder angle - see Fig. 20) of the cylinder. Due
to the larger available droplet travel distance, liquid fuel
impinges about 40 mm below the cylinder head over an
area of about 20 mm width. With open valve injection,
about 65% of the non-evaporating in-cylinder liquid fuel
impinges in an area around 135 degrees cylinder angle,
due to the fact that, driven by interaction with the intake
airflow, with this injection timing most fuel passes through
the front of the intake valve. With closed valve injection,
impingement of liquid fuel on the cylinder liner is spread
out over a wider angular range. About 60% of the nonvaporizing in-cylinder liquid fuel impinges on an area
around 60 degrees cylinder angle (the side of the intake
port). The more spread out appearance of the impinging
liquid fuel on the cylinder wall with closed valve injection
is due to the fact that with this injection timing, the fuel
spray in the intake port is not redirected through interaction with the intake airflow, and hence liquid fuel entry
into the cylinder is distributed according to spray targeting in the port.

Figure 20. Definition of cylinder angle and head distance

Figures 21 and 22 display the spatial distribution of the
liquid fuel on the cylinder wall for both open and closed
valve injection. To display the distribution of liquid fuel
impinging on the cylinder wall, the liner surface is displayed in cylindrical coordinates with the cylinder angle
ranging from 0 degrees in the back of the intake port to
180 degrees in the front of the port, and the distance
from the cylinder head starting at 0 at the cylinder head
surface (see Fig. 20). The diagrams presented in Fig. 21
and 22 thus represent projections of half of the cylinder
wall on a flat plane where the fuel impingement was
assumed to be symmetrical with respect to the intake
port axis. For each impingement location on the cylinder
wall, the amount of impinging fuel was calculated. Least
squares fitting was then used to produce a contour plot to
represent the spatial distribution of the impinging fuel
amount. The relative quantity of impinging liquid fuel is
represented by gray gradients, where darker areas represent areas of increased fuel impingement. Since the spatial distribution of liquid fuel inflow in the vicinity of the
intake valve does not vary during warm up with either
open or closed valve injection, the relative distribution of
fuel impingement on the cylinder wall stays essentially
constant during warm up. For a given point in time during
warm up, the fuel distribution contour plot can be integrated to give the total amount of fuel impinging on the
cylinder liner as represented in Fig. 19. Hence, a combination of both figures can be used to estimate the
amount of liquid fuel present on various parts of the cylinder wall during warm up.

Figure 22. Spatial distribution of impinging liquid fuel on

cylinder liner (closed valve injection)

CONCLUSIONS
A one-dimensional droplet evaporation model has been
developed to estimate the fraction of in-cylinder liquid fuel
volume (carried by fuel droplets) that vaporizes before
impact on the cylinder liner or piston. Inputs to the model
are droplet characteristics measured in the valve vicinity
by a Phase Doppler (PDPA) technique as well as droplet
trajectories observed from PLIF imaging. Measured
intake port and valve temperatures as well as in-cylinder
gas temperature and the mean air velocity in the valve
gap as obtained from a zero-dimensional engine simulation code are used to account for the changing thermal
and flow environment in the cylinder during engine warmup and throughout the cycle.
Several important trends in in-cylinder droplet evaporation were inferred from the model application to engine
conditions. The fraction of in-cylinder liquid fuel that

Figure 21. Spatial distribution of impinging liquid fuel on

cylinder liner (open valve injection)
11

vaporizes, scales with the increasing port and valve temperature during warm-up, and not with the decreasing incylinder gas temperature during the intake stroke as
residuals increasingly mix with fresh charge. This is due
to the fact that mass transfer from a droplet is not significant until the droplet wet bulb temperature is reached.
Droplet travel distances in the cylinder are short, so that
increased heat transfer to a droplet mainly results in a
temperature increase of the droplet. In-cylinder liquid fuel
evaporation improves with reduced droplet mean diameters and increased travel distance before wall impact.
Hence, in-cylinder liquid fuel evaporation with open valve
injection is greater than with closed valve injection, initially, since the mean droplet sizes are smaller in this
case and most fuel enters the cylinder in the front of the
valve where the travel distances before liner impact are
longest. Evaporation increases more rapidly during
engine warm up with closed valve injection due to
decreasing droplet size distributions with increasing
engine temperature. With both open and closed valve
injection, the fraction of in-cylinder liquid fuel that vaporizes prior to wall impact, according to model prediction,
steadily increases from about 20% to about 50%. Note
that neither droplet interaction with spatial features of the
cylinder flow field nor the effect of droplet interactions in
the spray on heat transfer were taken into account. Especially, it is likely that small droplets (diameter 10 mm)
would closely follow the in-cylinder flow features and stay
airborne in the cylinder.

REFERENCES
1. Meyer R., Yilmaz E., and Heywood, J.B., Liquid Fuel Flow
in the Vicinity of the Intake Valve in a Port Injected SI
Engine, SAE Paper 982471, 1998
2. Meyer R., and Heywood, J.B., Liquid Fuel Transport into
the cylinder of a Firing Port-Injected SI Engine During Start
Up, SAE Paper 970865, 1997, SAE Transactions Vol.107,
1997
3. Lefebvre, A.H., Atomization and Sprays, Hemisphere
Publishing Corp., 1989, pp. 309 - 364
4. Poulos, S.G., and Heywood, J.B., "The Effect of Combustion Chamber Geometry on S.I. Engine Combustion", SAE
Paper 830334, SAE Transactions Vol.92, 1983
5. Meyer, R. and Heywood, J.B., Effect of Engine and Fuel
Variables on Liquid Fuel Transport into the Cylinder in PortInjected SI Engines, SAE Paper, to be presented 1999
6. Watson, K.M., Prediction of Critical Temperatures and
Heats of Vaporization, Ind. Eng. Chem., Vol. 23, No.4, pp.
315-364, 1931
7. Vargaftik, N.B., Tables on the Thermophysical Proberties
of Liquids and Gases, Halsted Press, New York, 1975
8. Touloukian, Y., Thermal-Physical Properties of Matter,
Plenum Press, New York, 1970

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been supported by the Engine and Fuels
Research Consortium in the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at MIT whose members are: Chrysler Corp., Ford
Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Mobil Corp., Peugeot
S.A., Renault S.A., Shell Oil Co., and Volvo Car Corp..
We would like to thank Brian Corkum and Peter Menard
for their help with the engine test cell setup

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APPENDIX : DROPLET EVAPORATION MODEL EQUATIONS

The evaporation model follows an argumentation set
forth in [3]. One evaporating droplet is treated as a single
object. The influence of the surrounding spray is
neglected. Mass transfer of evaporating fuel from a droplet is driven by a concentration gradient of fuel near the
droplet surface. A mass transfer number is defined as:
The heat capacities for air and fuel vapor (cpa and cpv)
were calculated as functions of ambient temperature and
pressure from linearizations of experimental data found
in [7]

where YFs is the fuel vapor concentration at the droplet

surface. It is calculated as

Using this set of equations the mass and heat transfer

numbers (BM and BT) are calculated for each time step
(t) of droplet evaporation. Mass transfer from the droplet
(assuming a spherical droplet shape with diameter D)
can be expressed as:

with MA and MF representing the molecular weights of air

and fuel respectively and p the ambient pressure. The
fuel vapor pressure pFs at the droplet surface of temperature Ts is calculated by a Clausius Clapeyron expression:

Values for a and b can be found in [3].

where the conductivity of the gas phase surrounding the

droplet (kg) is calculated as

Heat transfer to the droplet is driven by a temperature difference between the droplet surface and the surroundings. A heat transfer number is defined relating the
available enthalpy in the surrounding gas to the heat
required to evaporate the fuel.

where ka denotes the conductivity of air and kv the fuel

vapor conductivity which is calculated according to [3] as:

with

Where L denotes the latent heat of the fuel droplet at surface temperature, cpg the heat capacity of the gas surrounding the droplet (which consists of air and fuel
vapor), and T the temperature of the surrounding gas
sufficiently far away from the droplet surface. The latent
heat at droplet surface temperature is determined
according to a correlation given in [6]:

An expression for the instantaneous change of droplet

diameter then yields:

where LTbn, Tbn, and Tcr can be found in [3]. The heat
capacity of the surrounding gas is calculated by:

The instantaneous change of droplet surface temperature according to heat and mass transfer to and from the
fuel droplet is calculated by:

with the reference values for temperature, concentration

of fuel, and concentration of air as

13

Using the last two expressions, new values for droplet

diameter and surface temperature are calculated for the
next time step
A force balance of aerodynamic and inertial forces yields
an expression for the instantaneous change of droplet
velocity under the influence of a surrounding airflow:

with

where the Reynolds number (Re) is based on the droplet

diameter D and the relative velocity (udrop- uair). The
instantaneous change of droplet velocity is used to determine the droplet velocity for the next time step. The droplet position is determined using the magnitude of droplet
velocity and the droplet trajectory as observed in the
PLIF imaging results. The equations for droplet velocity
and those governing heat and mass transfer are coupled
via the droplet diameter.

14