Chapter 5

Fuel Injection
The emphasis in this chapter is on medium-speed engines which all have camshaftactuated individual jerk pumps for each cylinder. Higher speed engines are also
covered, including those which use cam shaft pumps (or block pumps); that is to
say, those in which all the jerk pump elements are grouped into one or more
complete units, each equipped with a common camshaft.
This section does not apply, (except in a general way) to the direct drive two-stroke
engines which favor the common rail system, or other systems described later under
individual makes.
INJECTION AND COMBUSTION
The essence of a diesel engine is the introduction of finely atomized fuel into the air
compressed in the cylinder during the pistons inward stroke. It is, of course, the
heat generated by this compression, which is normally nearly adiabatic, that is
crucial in achieving ignition. Although the pressure in the cylinder at this point is
likely to be any thing up to 6070 bar, the fuel pressure at the atomizer will be of
the order of 10 times as great.
There is a body of evidence to suggest that high injection pressure at full load
confers advantages in terms of fuel economy, and also in the ability to digest inferior
fuel. Most modern medium-speed engines, i.e. up to 1000 rev/mm, attain 8001000
bar in the injection high-pressure pipe. Some recent engine designs achieve as much
as 1200 bar when pumping heavy fuel. For reasons of available technology, the
earliest diesel engines had to use compressed air to achieve atomization of the fuel
as it entered the cylinder (air blast injection), and while airless, or solid, injection
conferred a significant reduction in parasitic loads, it also presented considerable
problems in the needs for high precision manufacture, and the containment of very
high and complex stresses.
The very high standard of reliability and life now attained by modern fuel injection
systems, notwithstanding their basic simplicity, belies a considerable achievement in
painstaking research by fuel injection equipment (FIE) manufacturers.
In the early days of airless injection, many ingenious varieties of combustion
chamber were used, sometimes mainly to reduce noise, some times mainly to reduce
smoke, sometimes to ease starting; but often in part to reduce, or to use modest,
injection and combustion pressures.
With some significant exceptions growing emphasis on economy and specific output
(which also encourages economy in order to reduce heat flux), coupled with material
and calculation advances which allowed greater loads to be carried safely, have
conspired to leave the direct injection principle almost unchallenged in modern
medium-speed and many high-speed engines.
Direct injection is what it says it is, the fuel is delivered directly into a single
combustion chamber formed in the cylinder space (Figure 5.1), atomization being
achieved as the fuel issues from small drillings in the nozzle tip.
For complete combustion of the fuel to take place, every droplet of fuel must be
exposed to the correct proportion of air to achieve complete oxidation, or to an
excess of air. In the direct injection engine the fuel! air mixing is achieved by the
energy in the fuel spray propelling the droplets into the hot, dense air. Additional
mixing may be achieved by the orderly movement of the air in the combustion
chamber, which is called air swirl. Naturally aspirated engines usually have a degree
of swirl and an injection pressure of around 800 bar. Highly turbocharged engines
with four valve heads have virtually no swirl, but generally have an injection pressure
of 1200 bar to provide the mixing energy. Where indirect injection is concerned some

high-speed engines retain a pre-chamber in the cylinder head into which fuel is
injected as a relatively coarse spray at low pressure, sometimes using a single hole.
Combustion is initiated in the pre-chamber, the burning gases issuing through the
throat of the chamber to act on the piston (Figure 5.2).

Fuel/air mixing is achieved by a very high air velocity in the chamber. The air
movement scours the walls of the chamber promoting good heat transfer. Thus the
wall can be very hot requiring heat resistant materials but it can also absorb
too much heat from the air in the initial compression strokes during starting, and
prevent ignition. It is these heat losses that lead to poor starting and inferior
economy. Further forms of assistance, such as glow plugs, are therefore sometimes
necessary in order to achieve starting when ambient pressures are low. The
throttling loss entailed by the restricting throat also imposes an additional fuel
consumption penalty.
One manufacturer (SEMT) has, however, achieved an ingenious combination of the
two systems by dividing the pre-chamber between cylinder head and piston crown.
At TDC a stud on the piston enters the pre-chamber to provide a restricted outlet. On
the expansion stroke the restriction is automatically removed and fuel economy
comparable with normal direct injection engines is attainable (Figure 5.3).

Direct injection too has variants, which reflect the fact that despite a vast
expenditure on research into its mechanism, the detail of how combustion develops
after ignition is achieved is still almost entirely empirical.
In the authors view, the essentials are:
1. That some at least of the fuel injected is atomized sufficiently finely to initiate
combustion. Ignition cannot take place until a droplet of fuel has reached the
temperature for spontaneous ignition. Since heat is taken up as a function of surface
area (proportional to the square of the diameter) and the quantity of heat needed to
achieve a temperature rise is a function of volume (varies as the cube of the
diameter) only a small number of fine droplets are needed to initiate combustion.
High-speed photography of combustion does indeed show that ignition takes place in
a random manner near the injector tip and usually outside the main core of the
spray.

2. That the fuel should mix with the air in order to burn. Since most of the air in a
roughly cylindrical space is, for geometrical reasons, near the periphery, most of the
fuel must penetrate there, and this is easier with large droplets. Hence also the use
of wide corse angles and multiple spray holes.
3.That under no circumstances must fuel reach the liner walls or it will contaminate
the lubricating oil. An advantage of combustion spaces formed in piston crowns is
that the walls of the chamber form a safe target at which spray may be directed.
This type of combustion chamber in the piston has the further advantage that during
the piston descent, air above the piston periphery is drawn into the combustion
process in a progressive manner.
4.The injection period should be reasonably short, and must end sharply. Dribble and
secondary injection are frequent causes of smoke, and also of lubricating oil
becoming diluted with fuel or loaded with insoluble residues.
Dribble is the condition where fuel continues to emerge from the nozzle at pressures
too low to atomize properly. It is caused by bad seating faces or slow closure.
Secondary injection is what happens when the pressure wave caused by the end of
the main injection is reflected back to the pump and then again to the injector,
reaching it with sufficient pressure to reopen the injector at a relatively late stage in
combustion. Any unburnt or partly burnt fuel may find its way on to the cylinder
walls and be drawn down by the piston rings to the sump.
INJECTOR
Working backwards from the desired result to the means to achieve it, the injector
has to snap open when the timed high-pressure wave from the pump travelling along
the high-pressure pipe has reached the injector needle valve. Needle lift is limited by
the gap between its upper shoulder and the main body of the holder. Needle lift is
opposed by a spring, set to keep the needle seated until the blow-off pressure or
release pressure of the injector is reached by the fuel as the pressure wave arrives
from the pump. This pressure is chosen by the engine builder to ensure that there is
no tendency for the needle to reopen as the closing pressure waves are reflected
back and forth along the high- pressure pipe from the pump. The setting also has
some effect on injection delay and the quality of injection. It is usually chosen to be
between 200300 bar.
The needle valve is invariably provided with an outer diameter on which the fuel
pressure acts to overcome the spring pressure, and cause the initial lift. This brings
into play the central diameter of the needle so that it snaps open to the lift
permitted.
The needle and seat cones are usually ground to a differential angle so that contact
is made...at the larger diameter. When the needle is only slightly open the greater
restriction to flow is at the outer rather than the inner diameter of the seat. This
ensures that as the needle lifts, there is a sudden change of pressurized area and the
needle force against the spring changes correspondingly, giving a very rapid lift to
fully open; and conversely when closing. (It is for this reason that it is bad practice
to lap the needle to its seat.)

Control of the temperature of the injector, particularly of the sensitive region round
the needle seat and the sac, is very important. This is especially so when heavy fuels
are used, both because the fuels them selves have to be heated, and because they
tend to burn, with a more luminous flame that increases the heat input to all the
metal surfaces. If the tip temperature rises too high, the fuel remaining in the sac
after injection boils and spits from the spray holes: it is not properly burnt and forms
a carbon deposit around each spray hole. Such carbon formation, which builds up
fairly rapidly around the boundary of the sprays, causes a rapid deterioration in the
quality of combustion.
With smaller engines up to about 300 mm bore, it is usually sufficient to rely on the
passage and recirculation of the pumped fuel itself to achieve the necessary cooling.
The injector clearances may, in fact, be eased slightly to promote such circulation.
This back leakage, normally about 1% of the pumped fuel, is led away to waste, or
via a monitoring tank to the fuel tank. For larger engines it is usually necessary to
pro vide separate circuits specifically for a coolant flow, either of treated water, or of
light fuel or of lubricating oil.
All of these considerations lead to a relatively bulky injector, and thus to tricky
compromises with the available space within the cylinder head on single piston
engines, where space is also needed to permit the largest possible valve areas,
cages and cooling. Nonetheless there are performance advantages in highly rated
engines in reducing the inertia of the components directly attached to the needle of
the injector, and this leads FIE manufacturers to try to find space for the injector
spring at the bottom rather than at the top of the injector, as in Figure 5.5.

FUEL LINE
Figure 5.6 shows a typical fuel line pressure diagram and also the needle lift diagram
for an engine having a camshaft speed of 300 rev! mm both at overload (Figure
5.6(a)); and at half load (Figure 5.6(b)). Figure 5.6(a) shows a very brief partial
reopening of the nozzle, or secondary injection, after the main opening period. In
Figure 5.6 the breaks in each trace are made to indicate intervals of 3 cam degrees.
The fuel line has to preserve as much as possible of the rate of pres sure rise, the
maximum pressure and the brevity of injection which the

fuel pump has been designed to achieve. To do this the fuel line must have the
lowest practical volume and the maximum possible stiffness against dilation. There is
also a limit to the minimum bore because of pressure loss considerations.
The only real degree of freedom left to the designer is to make the fuel line as short
as possible. Even so, a given molecule of fuel may experience two or three injection
pulses on its way from the pump chamber to the engine cylinder in a medium-speed
engine running at full load. This rises to 30 or more at idling.
If the fuel pump is mounted at a greater distance from the injector, the elastic
deformation of the longer pipe and compression of the larger volume of fuel will
dissipate more and more of the pressure developed at the fuel pump and prolong the
period of injector needle lift compared with the pump delivery. in all medium-speed
engines this compromise on injection characteristics, and its adverse effect on fuel
economy (and heat flux in combustion chamber components) is considered
unacceptable, and each. cylinder has an individual fuel pump with a high pressure
fuel line as short as possible.

The smaller the engine, the more manufacturers (in fact all manufacturers of
automotive sizes) opt for the production convenience of a cam shaft pump (i.e. the
pump elements serving all or several cylinders are mounted in one housing with their
own camshaft) and accept any com promise in performance. In such engines a given
molecule of fuel may endure 20 or. more injection pulses while migrating along the
high- pressure pipe at full load. In such cases the elastic characteristics of the HP
pipe (and of the trapped fuel) come to equal the pumping element as a major
influence on the qualities and duration of injection.
Naturally all injection pipes must have identical lengths to equalize cylinder behavior.
On a 150 kW auxiliary engine of approximately 150 mm bore running at 1200
rev/mm, the effect of a 600 mm difference in pipe length, due to running pipes each
of different length directly from pump to the cylinder it served, was 8 in effective
injection timing, and consequently about 25 bar difference in firing pressure.
Camshaft or block pumps are, of course much cheaper, and one maker (Deutz) has
adopted for his higher speed engine the ingenious solution of grouping up to three or
four pump elements in one housing, each such housing being mounted close to the
cylinders concerned.
The HP fuel lines are made of very high quality precision drawn seamless tube almost
totally free from internal or external blemishes. They must, moreover, be free of
installation stress, or they risk fracture at the end connections. They must be
adequately clipped, preferably with a damping sleeve, if there is any risk of vibration.
Fuel line failures due to pressure are not as frequent as they once were, because of
improvements in the production of seamless tube. Nevertheless current regulations
insist that in marine use fuel lines are sleeved or enclosed to ensure that in the event
of a fracture, escaping fuel is channeled to a tank where an alarm may be fitted. This
is to avoid the fire hazard of fuel finding a surface hot enough to ignite it, or of
accumulating somewhere where it could be otherwise accidentally ignited. Most
designers now also try to ensure that leaking fuel cannot reach the lubricating oil
circuit via the rocker gear return drainage or by other routes.
Several manufacturers shorten and segregate the HP line by leading it to the injector
through, rather than over, the cylinder head. One or two incorporate the pump and
the injector in a single component, avoiding the high-pressure pipe altogether.
PUMP
The final item for consideration is the fuel injection pump, which is the heart of the
fuel injection system. Essentially the pumping element is a robust sleeve or barrel
which envelops a close fitting plunger. Each is produced to a very fine surface finish
of 12 micro inches and to give a clearance of approximately 710 tm (microns)
depending on the plunger diameter.

In its simplest form (Figure 5.7) the barrel has a supply port at one side and a spill
port at the other. (In early times these were combined.) The plunger is actuated by
the fuel cam through a roller follower. Before, and as the plunger starts to rise
(Figure 5.7(a)), the chamber is free to fill with fuel, and to spill back into the gallery
in the pump housing outside, until the rising top edge of the plunger closes the
supply and spill ports (Figure 5.7(b)). Thereafter the fuel is pressurized and
displaced through the delivery valve towards the injectors. The initial travel ensures
that the plunger is rising fast when displacement commences, so that the pressure
rises sharply to the desired injection pressure.
When the plunger has risen far enough, a relieved area on it uncovers the spill port,
the pressure collapses, and injection ceases (Figure 5.7(c)). The relief on the plunger
has a helical top (control) edge so that rotation of the plunger by means of the
control rod varies the lift of the plunger during which the spill port is closed, and
therefore the fuel quantity injected and the load carried by the engine, as shown in
Figures 5.7 (c, d, e). At minimum setting the helical edge joins the top of the plunger
and if the plunger is rotated so that this point, or the groove beyond it, coincides
with the spill port, the latter is never closed. In that case no fuel is pumped and that
cylinder cuts out (Figure 5.7(f)). The area of the plunger between the top and the
control edge is termed the land.
There are, of course, many complications of this simple principle. The first is that a
delivery valve, which is essentially a non-return valve, is needed at the pump outlet
to keep the fuel line full, as shown in Figure 5.8. The delivery valve usually has an
unloading collar to allow for the elasticity of the pipe and fuel, and to help eliminate
the pressure pulsations which cause secondary injection. Some types of delivery
valve, however, sense and unload the line pressure directly.

The second cause of complication is that, when the spill port opens and a pressure of
anything up to 1200 bar is released, cavitations and/or erosion is likely to occur,
affecting both the housing directly opposite the port, and the plunger land which is
still exposed to the port at the instant of release. Modern designs seek to eliminate
these effects by using respectively a sacrificial (or in some cases a specially
hardened) plug in the housing wall, and by special shaping of the ports.
Another complication is the filling process. When the pump spills, further plunger lift
displaces fuel through the spill port. As it falls on the descending flank of the cam,
the opposite effect applies until the falling control edge closes the spill port. Further
fall, under the action of the plunger return spring, has to expand the fuel trapped
above the plunger until the top edge uncovers the supply port again. This it can only

do by expanding trapped air and fuel vapor, and by further vaporization, so that a
distinct vacuum exists, and this is exploited to refill the pump.
There is also the effect of dilation due to pressure, the need for lubrication,-and the
need to prevent fuel from migrating into spaces where it could mingle with crankcase
oils.
Early pumps could get by without undue complications: the fuel itself provided
adequate plunger lubrication, and fuel which had leaked away in order to do this was
simply rejected to a tank which was emptied by a junior engineer to waste.
Nowadays grooves are provided on the plunger or in the barrel wall. The first collects
leaking fuel. Where there are two grooves the second will spread lubrication, but
there is sometimes an additional groove between them to collect any further
migration either of fuel or lubricant. Figure 5.9 shows a section of a modern heavy
duty fuel pump incorporating most of the features described above.
The pump is actuated by a follower which derives its motion from the cam. Block
pumps incorporate all these components in a common housing for several cylinders,
while individual pumps used on some larger engines incorporate the roller. This not
only makes servicing more straightforward, it also ensures unified design and
manufacturing responsibility.
The roller is a very highly stressed component, as is the cam, and close attention to
the case hardening of the cam and to the roller trans verse profile is essential to
control Hertzian (contact) stresses. The roller is sometimes barreled very slightly,
and it must bear on the cam track parallel to the roller axis under all conditions. On
the flanks of the cam this is a function of slight freedom for the follower assembly to
rotate, while on the base circle and the top dwell of the cam it depends on precise
geometry in the assembly.
The roller pin requires positive lubrication, and the cam track must at least receive a
definite spray. Lubrication channels have to be pro vided from the engine system
through the pump housing to the roller surface, its bearings, and to the lower part of
the plunger.
Timing
The desired timing takes into account all the delays and dynamic effects between the
cam and the moment of ignition. The desired timing is that which ensures that the
combustion starts and continues while the cylinder pressure generated can press on
the piston and crank with the greatest mechanical advantage, and is complete before
the exhaust valve opens at 1 10130 ATDC. The engine builder always specifies
this from his development work, but it usually means that the only settable criterion,
the moment of spill port closure (SPC), is about 20-25 BTDC.

In earlier days this was done by barring (or manually turning over) the engine with
the delivery valve on the appropriate cylinder removed, and with the fuel circulating
pump on (or more accurately with a separate small gravity head), and the plunger
rotated to a working position. When fuel ceased to flow, the spill port had closed.
Sometimes this criterion was used to mark a line on a window in the pump housing
through which the plunger guide could be seen, to coincide with a reference line on
the guide.
The accuracy of this method is, however, disappointing. There are differences
between static and dynamic timing which vary from pump to pump and many
makers now rely on the accuracy of manufacture, and specify a jig setting based on

the geometry of the pump and the SPC point to set the cam rise, or follower rise at
the required flywheel (crank) position.
Some makers allow users to make further adjustments of the timing according to the
cylinder pressure readings, but this places a premium on the accuracy not only of the
calibration of instruments, but of the method itself which in the authors view is not
very reliable. It should be borne in mind that neither the instruments nor the method
are as accurate as the pump manufacture, by an order of magnitude.
If the cam is fixed, it is usually possible, within stated limits, to adjust the height of
the tappet in relation to the cam. Raising it has the effect that the plunger cuts off
the supply spill port (and starts injection) sooner for a given cam position, and vice
versa (Figure 5.10). The limit is set at one extreme by the need for there to be top
clearance at the top of the follower lift (i.e. of the plunger stroke) between the top of
the plunger and the underside of the delivery valve, in order to avoid damage. Too
small a clearance also means that injection is commencing too near the base of the
cam, and therefore at too low a velocity to give the required injection characteristics.
On the other hand, too large a clearance (to compensate for an over-advanced cam
by lowering the plunger) risks interfering with the proper spill function which
terminates injection.
The cam with its follower may be designed to give a constant velocity characteristic
throughout the injection stroke. Recent designs with a high initial velocity aim to give
a constant pressure characteristic, but many manufacturers find that the
performance advantage or stress advantage over the constant velocity design is too
small to warrant the greater production cost.

Uniformity
Bearing in mind the random way in which ignition occurs during each injection, and
perhaps also because the filling process of the pump chamber is largely dependent
on suction, it is not surprising that successive combustion cycles in the same cylinder
at the same steady load are not identical. A draw card taken slowly to show a
succession of cycles will show this visibly, and a maximum pressure indicator will
show by feel, or otherwise, that maximum pressures vary from cycle to cycle
perhaps by 5 bar or more. (Any governor corrections will have an effect too, but
progressively over several cycles.) These variations are a fact of life, and not worth
worrying about unless they are 20 bar or more. It does mean that if indicator cards

are being taken as a check on cylinder performance, several cycles per cylinder
should be taken to ensure that a properly representative diagram is obtained.
Differences will also occur between cylinders for reasons of component tolerance
(unless compensated adequately by the setting method), and because of the
dynamic behavior of the camshaft, which deflects in bending due to cam loading and
torsionally due to the interaction of the cam loadings of adjacent cylinders. These will
characteristically fall into a pattern for a given engine range and type.
Whilst engine builders should (and usually do) allow for variations in cylinder
behavior to occur, it is obviously good practice to minimize these to achieve
maximum economy with optimum stresses. However, it would be wise to bear in
mind that it is inherently very difficult to make pressure and temperature
measurements of even the average behavior of combustion gases in the cylinders.
To achieve, without laboratory instrumentation techniques, an accuracy which comes
within an order of magnitude of the standard of accuracy to which fuel injection
components are manufactured and set is impossible. This is particularly true of
exhaust temperature as a measure of injection quantity, notwithstanding that this
practice has been generally accepted by many years of use. Fuel injection settings on
engines should not therefore be adjusted without good reason, and then normally
only on a clear indication that a change (not indicative of a fault) has occurred.
Fuel quantity imbalance is far from being the only cause of a variation in the pattern
of exhaust temperatures, nor timing of firing pressure. Consider, for instance,
variations in compression ratio, charge air mass, scavenge ratio, not to mention
calibration errors and the accuracy of the instruments used.
Fuel injection pumps (and injectors) have their own idiosyncrasies. The relationship
between output and control rod position (the calibration) is not absolutely identical in
different examples of pumps made to the same detail design. The output of a family
of similar pumps can be made sensibly identical at only one output, namely at the
chosen balance point. At this output a stop, or cap, on the control rod is adjusted to
fit a setting gauge (or, in older designs, a pointer to a scale), so that it can be
reproduced when setting the pumps to the governor linkage on the engine.
Obviously the calibration tolerances will widen at outputs away from the balance
point, which is usually chosen to be near the full load fuel ling rate. As the tolerances
will be physically widest at idling, and will also constitute a relatively larger
proportion of the small idling quantity (perhaps 35%) the engine may well not fire
equally on all cylinders at idling, but this sort of difference is not sufficient to cause
any cylinder to cut out unless another fault is present.
When a pump is overhauled it is advisable that its calibration should be checked, and
the balance point reset. This ideally entails the use of a suitable heavy duty test rig,
but in the largest sizes of pump it is some times more practical to rely on
dimensional settings.
D.A.W.