191356 - An Experimental Study of Piston Heat Flux in the Argon Power Cycle
Abstract:
The argon power cycle aims to significantly improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines by replacing air with argon. As a monoatomic gas, argon has a higher ratio of specific heats than nitrogen, resulting in higher potential efficiency. However, this same effect results in combustion temperatures far exceeding that of an air standard engine. This is particularly true in mixing controlled combustion, where impinging jets drive high local heat flux rates. With an argon atmosphere, the impinging jets temperature will be higher and can cause challenges with component cooling. This work aims to understand the significance of this challenge by replacing air with a mixture of argon and oxygen in a heavy duty diesel engine with a piston instrumented with several fast response surface thermocouples on the piston crown. These surface thermocouples provide crank resolved temperature traces that can be used to calculate the transient heat flux through the piston. The location of these thermocouples include near the stagnation point of the impinging jet, the periphery of the stagnation point, and the pip of the piston well away from the impinging jets. The results show that the instantaneous heat flux increases significantly with argon as the working fluid, meaning that thermal loading on the piston would be higher in an argon power cycle engine.
Presenting Author: Brian Gainey Clemson University
Presenting Author Biography: Brian is a researcher at Clemson University and Lund University
Authors:
Brian Gainey Clemson University
Ankur Bhatt Clemson University
Joshua Murray Clemson University
An Experimental Study of Piston Heat Flux in the Argon Power Cycle
