Purpose

The development of a theoretical model for predicting the combustion, performance and emission characteristics of a cylinder head porous medium engine becomes necessary due to imposed requirements from the viewpoint of power, efficiency and toxic gases in the exhaust. The cylinder head porous medium engine was found to have superior combustion, performance and emission characteristics when compared to a conventional diesel engine. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Due to heterogeneous and transient operation of diesel engine under conventional and porous medium mode, the combustion process becomes complex, and achieving a pure analytical solution to the problem was difficult. Although, closer accuracy of correlation between the computer models and the experimental results is improbable, the computer model will give an opportunity to quantify the combustion and heat transfer processes and thus the performance and emission characteristics of an engine.

Findings

In this research work, a theoretical model was developed to predict the combustion, performance and emission characteristics of a cylinder head porous medium engine through two-zone combustion modeling technique, and the results were validated through experimentation.

Originality/value

The two-zone model developed by using programming language C for the purpose of predicting combustion, performance and emission characteristics of a porous medium engine is the first of its kind.