Experimental and Numerical Analysis of DME Spray Characteristics in Common-rail Fuel System

Spray visualization and computer simulation of a DME injector have been conducted to investigate the enlarged injection hole diameter effect. To increase the reliability of the computational result, simulation results have been compared with the visualization test results, and the behaviors of a DME spray under various high-pressure and -temperature conditions have been computed. This study shows a discrepancy of 3.57% between the experimental and the computational results of penetration length for an injection pressure of 35 MPa and ambient pressure of 5 MPa. When simulating the engine conditions, the maximum penetration length of a fully developed DME spray is 42 mm when the temperature to pressure ratio is 300 K/MPa. The DME spray behavior is dominantly affected by the ambient pressure under the condition that the ratio is less than 300 K/MPa, and by the ambient temperature under the condition that the ratio is more than 300 K/MPa.