COHERENT ANTI-STOKES-RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY TEMPERATURE-MEASUREMENTS IN AN INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINE

Part of a project to investigate the physics and chemistry of alternative fuels in internal combustion engines is reported. Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) is used to probe the fuel-air mixture in the cylinder of a Ricardo E6 variable compression ratio research engine. The laser system comprises a passively Q-switched single-longitudinal-mode frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser and a broadband dye laser, both with a pulse length of 15 ns. A crankshaft encoder and electronic delay are used to fire the lasers at specified times during the engine cycle, and CARS spectra are acquired using a 0.75m spectrometer and a 1024 optical multichannel analyzer. Because of the uncertainties associated with collisional narrowing in the theoretical modeling of high-pressure CARS spectra, temperatures are determined by comparing the engine spectra with a library of experimental CARS spectra from a calibrated high-pressure, high-temperature cell. This purely experimental technique is shown to be superior to two theoretical models under the considered conditions, giving temperatures during the compression stroke of the engine with standard deviations of typically 10 K and a possible systematic error of 15 K. Together with pressure records, this information is used as input data for chemical kinetic modeling of the combustion process.