Effects of fuel composition on charge preparation, combustion and knock tendency in a high performance GDI engine. Part I: RANS analysis

The paper analyses the effects of fuel composition modelling in a turbocharged GDI engine for sport car applications. Particularly, a traditional single-component gasoline-surrogate fuel is compared to a seven-component fuel model available in the open literature. The multi-component fuel is represented using the Discrete-Continuous-Multi-Component modelling approach, and it is specifically designed in order to match the volatility of an actual RON95 European gasoline. The comparison is carried out following a detailed calibration with available experimental measurements for a full load maximum power engine speed operation of the engine, and differences are analyzed and critically discussed for each of the spray evolution, mixture stratification and combustion. In the present paper (Part I), a RANS approach is used to preliminarily investigate the behaviour of the fuel model on the average engine cycle. In the subsequent Part II of the same paper, the numerical framework is evolved into a more refined LES approach, in order to take into account cycle-to-cycle variations in mixture formation and knock tendency.