Influence of Yttria-Stabilized Zirconium Oxide Thermal Swing Coating on the Flame-Wall Interaction in Spark Ignition Engines

Future vehicle powertrain systems with internal combustion engines must achieve higher efficiencies and further reduced pollutant emissions. This will require the application of new advanced technologies. Against this background, this paper presents a holistic approach to reduce temporally the wall heat losses, and hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions with thermal coatings on the combustion chamber walls. For this purpose, an yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) coating is applied and evaluated by different methods. The thin layer in combination with the low thermal effusivity of the material allows the wall temperature to follow the gas temperature and perform a so-called thermal swing. The interaction between an uncoated and a YSZ-coated wall with the flame front as well as partially burned gas was investigated. First, in terms of the coating’s potential to reduce the flame quenching distance using an optical method in a constant volume combustion chamber. Second, regarding its influence on the near-wall gas composition, which was analyzed with in-situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy measurements and a fast gas sampling technique on a single-cylinder engine. From this, it could be derived that the quenching distance can be reduced by 10% at ambient conditions and by 5% at an elevated temperature of 200 °C by using the coating. These findings also support the results that have been obtained by the near-wall gas composition measurements, where a reduced total hydrocarbon emission was found with the applied coating.