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Premixed combustion modes in compression ignition engines are studied as a promising solution to meet fuel economy and increasingly stringent emissions regulations. Nevertheless, PCCI combustion systems are not yet consolidated enough for practical applications. The high complexity of such combustion systems in terms of both air-fuel charge preparation and combustion process control requires the employment of robust and reliable numerical tools to provide adequate comprehension of the phenomena. Object of this work is the development and validation of suitable models to evaluate the effects of charge premixing levels in diesel combustion. This activity was performed using the Lib-ICE code, which is a set of applications and libraries for IC engine simulations developed using the OpenFOAM® technology.

The present work is focused on multidimensional simulations of combustion in Diesel engines, using detailed kinetics reaction schemes. The selected reaction mechanism is the scheme developed by Liu et al. [1].The simulations are performed through the open source CFD Toolbox OpenFOAM (Open Field Operation and Manipulation). OpenFoam uses finite volume methods to solve systems of partial differential equations ascribed on any 3D unstructured mesh of polyhedral cells. A preliminary analysis relevant for diesel combustion studies is performed in constant volume homogeneous conditions. Here the treatment of the stiff ordinary differential equations arising from the usage of detailed kinetics reaction mechanisms and the performance of different solvers are investigated. The CVODE package has been integrated in OpenFOAM, as an alternative solver to the one provided by the original version of the code.