Natural gas has shown promise as an alternative fuel for diesel engines. Research has shown that natural gas requires assistance to ignite in a diesel engine chamber. This results in a single site of ignition from which the flame must propagate to other jets in the injection pattern. The goal of this work was to determine what factors affect how the flame propagates from this initial ignition site to the remaining unburned mixture.; The combustion of natural gas jets under diesel engine conditions was studied over a range of temperatures, pressures, equivalence ratios, and glow plug shield designs using a rapid compression device. Ignition was provided by a shielded glow plug. The results show that of all the factors considered the geometry of the injection pattern, chamber, and glow plug shield are most dominant in controlling combustion rates and efficiency.
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