Influence of injection valve opening manner and injection timing on mixing effect of direct injection compressed natural gas–fueled engine

In order to improve the control precision of in-cylinder mixing and combustion process, and to avoid the engine power drop because of the port fuel injection mode, it becomes a tendency to inject gas fuel into cylinder directly, with the help of the high-pressure gas-fueled injection device. However, considering that the mixing speed of gas fuel with air is usually slower than that of gasoline or diesel, the gas fuel direct injection mode tends to cause poor mixing performance and insufficient combustion in engine. Based on this situation, in-cylinder mixing process of direct injection gas–fueled engine is taken as the research object in this article. The three-dimensional transient computational fluid dynamics model of the injection and mixing process in gas-fueled direct injection engine is established to analyze the effects of the poppet valve opening manner and injection timing on the in-cylinder mixing homogeneity. The results indicate that delaying the injection timing can improve the wall impact strength and help to form a tumble flow in the cylinder. The stronger wall impact and tumble flow can reverse the natural diffusion law and greatly improve the in-cylinder mixing effect. Under the same injection timing conditions, although the pull-open valve has a larger injection penetration distance, the in-cylinder mixing effect is still worse than the push-open one. This is because, for the push-open valve, the fuel jet will be around the slope of the valve, which is beneficial to improve the mixing effect.