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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mech. Eng.

Sec. Engine and Automotive Engineering

Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmech.2025.1582708

This article is part of the Research Topic Waste energy recovery in aerospace, automotive and industry View all articles

Effect of low carbon paraffinic fuels on spray evolution under like aircraft operating conditions in a piston engine

Provisionally accepted
Lis Corral-Gomez Lis Corral-Gomez 1Octavio Armas Octavio Armas 1*Francisco Moya-Fernández Francisco Moya-Fernández 1JOSE ANTONIO SORIANO JOSE ANTONIO SORIANO 1Francisco J. Martos Francisco J. Martos 2
  • 1 Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial y Aeroespacial, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Instituto de investigación aplicada a la Industria Aeronáutica., Toledo, Spain
  • 2 University of Malaga, Málaga, Andalusia, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The evolution of the main macroscopic parameters that characterize spray formation for three different fuels is studied by means of the Schlieren visualization technique. The annalized fuels comprise a fossil diesel fuel, used as reference, and two neat low carbon liquid 100% paraffinic fuels: a gas-to-liquid (GtL) and a hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). Additionally, the paper exposes the behavior of fuels autoignition for different injection pressures and start of energizing (SoE), for prescribed thermodynamic variables inside the engine cylinder. The experimental results obtained at the beginning of the injection process are compared with results from known models of penetration and cone angle of the fuel spray under non-evaporative conditions. These conditions are chosen to match those of the diesel engines used in surveillance light aircraft such as small helicopters. This work presents two important novelties: (i) the application of an automatic image analysis procedure (previously published) to the fuel injection process and (ii) the comparison of different fuels, regarding their effect on the injection process and the start of combustion. This is done under complete replacement of fossil fuel by two 100% paraffinic fuels. The most important results are the following: i) Compared to GtL and Diesel fuels, the HVO fuel has shorter ignition delay. This result could be attributed to its higher cetane number. ii) However, in most of the tested cases, in addition to a slightly longer spray penetration of the HVO fuel, its cone angle is also slightly wider than that of the other two fuels. This result would be collaborating in the development of a wider spray surface during the evolution of the spray lift off and beyond. This leads to a better air entrainment, and, in consequence, to produce an additional shortening of the ignition delay compared to the other two fuels. These findings would facilitate the fine tuning of modern engine technology for a progressive introduction of mentioned low carbon fuels in light aircraft such as unmanned helicopters for surveillance.

    Keywords: Paraffinic fuels, Piston engines, Schlieren visualization, Spray characterization, small helicopter Paraffinic fuel spray evolution in piston engines

    Received: 24 Feb 2025; Accepted: 01 Apr 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Corral-Gomez, Armas, Moya-Fernández, ANTONIO SORIANO and Martos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Octavio Armas, Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial y Aeroespacial, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Instituto de investigación aplicada a la Industria Aeronáutica., Toledo, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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