Comparative study on the adaptability of diesel/aviation kerosene in rotary engines

It is of great significance to compare the spray characteristics and combustion characteristics of aviation kerosene and diesel in rotary engine condition when looking for the alternative of diesel in rotary engines. In this paper, several combustion characteristics of diesel and aviation kerosene were obtained by spray experiment, including ignition characteristics, ignition delay period, flame floating length, and other combustion characteristics under rotary engine conditions. After that, a three-dimensional dynamic model of the rotary engine is established and verified by the experimental data. On this basis, the combustion process of diesel engine and aviation kerosene engine under different injection strategies is simulated. Normal ignition of diesel requires environmental conditions to reach 750 K/2.5 MPa, while aviation kerosene needs to reach 800 K/2.0 MPa to achieve stable combustion, which indicates that aviation kerosene has higher requirements for the environment. However, under the rotary engine condition, the atomization quality of aviation kerosene is better than that of diesel, and it has higher combustion, heat release and work capacity and faster flame propagation speed. Therefore, aviation kerosene can be used as the fuel of rotary engine instead of diesel. Especially in Case A3, the peak pressure in the combustion chamber of the aviation kerosene rotary engine reaches 38.89 bar, showing obvious advantages over the diesel rotary engine. In addition, the soot emissions of aviation kerosene engines are significantly lower than those of diesel rotary engines.