Characterisation of cyclic variability in an optically accessible IC Engine by means of phase-independent POD

Abstract

Investigation of cyclic variability in engine operation has recently received new impulse with the widespread application of advanced numerical and experimental techniques. The present work attempts to shed some light on the existence and nature of correlations between coherent structures dynamics and cyclic variability in IC engines by means of phase-independent Proper Orthogonal Decomposition applied to highly-resolved PIV measurements obtained in an optically accessible, motored engine. Analysis of the conditional means and variances of the reconstruction coefficients reveal interesting patterns in the break-up of coherent structures which are also confirmed by experimental observation and leave room for speculation on the true nature of the flow field at different crank angles. A first attempt has also been carried out to reconstruct missing information from available measurements, with encouraging results: the development of such interpolation/reconstruction technique could obviously have a great impact on the reduction of the cost normally involved in experimental and computational campaigns.