Abstract
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is regarded as an alternative fuel for spark ignition engine due to similar or even higher octane number. In addition, LPG has better fuel characteristics including high vaporization characteristic and low carbon/hydrogen ratio leading to a reduction in carbon dioxide emission. Recently, development of LPG direct injection system started to improve performance of vehicles fuelled with LPG. However, spray characteristics of LPG were not well understood, which is should be known to develop injector for LPG direct injection engines. In this study, effects of operation condition including ambient pressure, temperature, and injection pressure on spray properties of n-butane were evaluated and compared to gasoline in a multi-hole injector. As general characteristics of both fuels, spray penetration becomes smaller with an increase of ambient pressure as well as a reduction in the injection pressure. However, it is found that evaporation of n-butane was faster compared to gasoline under all experimental condition. As a result, spray penetration of n-butane was shorter than that of gasoline. This result was due to higher vapor pressure and lower boiling point of n-butane. On the other hand, spray angle of both fuels do not vary much except under high ambient temperature conditions. Furthermore, spray shape of n-butane spray becomes completely different from that of gasoline at high ambient temperature conditions due to flash boiling of n-butane.
