Further Experiments on the Effect of Bulk In-Cylinder Temperature in the Pressurized Motoring Setup Using Argon Mixtures

Mechanical friction and heat transfer in internal combustion engines have long been studied through both experimental and numerical simulation. This publication presents a continuation study on a Pressurized Motoring setup, which was presented in SAE paper 2018-01-0121 and found to offer robust measurements at relatively low investment and running cost. Apart from the limitation that the peak in-cylinder pressure occurs around 1 DegCA BTDC, the pressurized motoring method is often criticized on the fact that the gas temperatures in motoring are much lower than that in fired engines, hence might reflect in a different FMEP measurement. In the work presented in SAE paper 2019-01-0930, Argon was used as the pressurization gas due to its high ratio of specific heats. This allowed to achieve higher peak in-cylinder temperatures which close further the gap between fired and motored mechanical friction tests. In 2019-24-0141, Argon was mixed in different proportions with Air to synthesize gases with different ratios of specific heats in the aim of observing any abrupt transitions in the FMEP with different peak in-cylinder temperatures. In this publication, a higher loading test matrix to that published in 2019-24-0141 is presented, with an engine speed ranging from 1400 rpm to 3000 rpm and ratios of specific heats varying from that of Air (Î = 1.4) to that of Argon (Î = 1.67). The peak in-cylinder pressure was kept at a constant 103 bar. Results obtained in this work strengthen further the observations made in 2019-24-0141; where the measured FMEP is found to be insensitive to the different peak in-cylinder temperatures. In this study, a fast-response thermocouple of the eroding type was also fitted in the combustion chamber and gas-wall interface temperature histories were recorded. The transient heat flux was also computed through a spectral analysis and reported in this publication.