Date of Award


Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics (PhD)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

Advisor 1


Committee Member 1

Jeffrey D. Naber

Committee Member 2

Raymond Shaw

Committee Member 3

Chang-Kyoung Choi


An efficient spray injection results in better vaporization and air-fuel mixing, leading to combustion stability and reduction of emissions in the internal combustion (IC) engines. The impingement of liquid fuels on chamber wall or piston surface in IC engines is a common phenomenon and fuel film formed in the spray-piston or cylinder wall impingement plays a critical role in engine performance and emissions. Therefore, the study of the spray impingement on the chamber wall or position surface is necessary.

To understand the spray-wall interaction, a single droplet impingement on a solid surface with different conditions was first examined. The droplet-wall interaction outcomes, in particular focusing on the splashing criteria, were inspected and post-impingement characterizations including spreading factor, height ratio, contact line velocity, and dynamic contact angle was further analyzed based on the experimental data. The non-evaporation volume of fluid (VOF) model based on Eulerian approach was used to characterize single droplet impinging on the wall and provide a better understanding of the dynamic impact process. In addition, the study of droplet-to-droplet collision and multi-droplet impingement on a solid surface are performed, which is essential to aid in the spray-wall impingement investigation. As well, due to the evaporation drawing more attention during the engine combustion process, an evaporation VOF sub-model was developed and applied to multi-droplet impingement on a hot surface to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the vaporizing process as droplets impacting onto the hot surface.

After that, the non-vaporizing and vaporizing spray characteristics of spray-wall impingement at various operating conditions relevant to diesel engines were undertaken, with spray characterized using schlieren and Mie scattering diagnostics, as well as Refractive Index Matching (RIM) technique. Free and impinged spray structures and deposited wall-film formation and evaporation were qualitatively analyzed, spray properties and wall-film properties were quantified, and surface temperature and heat flux were measured. An Eulerian-Lagrangian modeling approach was employed to characterize the spray-wall interactions by means of a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) formulation. The local spray characteristics in the vicinity of the wall and the local spray morphology near the impingement location were studied. Furthermore, multiple spray-to-spray collision derived from droplet-to-droplet collision, considering as one of the advanced injection strategies to enhance the engine performance, was studied at various gasoline engine conditions to explore the effect of colliding spray on spray related phenomena like atomization, vaporization, and mixing. Spray characteristics were obtained by the schlieren diagnostics and the experimental validated Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulations were based on Eulerian-Lagrangian approach to understand the mechanism behind the collisions of sprays and characterize the different types of multiple spray-to-spray collision.

In summary, on the strength of the study of droplet-wall impingement and droplet-to-droplet collision at non-evaporation and evaporation states, the main objective of this dissertation is to enhance the understanding of spray-wall impingement and multiple spray-to-spray collision under diesel or gasoline engine conditions from both experiments and CFD simulations, therefore providing feedbacks to the ultimate task in future development and application of a more reliable and effective fuel injection system.