Study on fuel injection stability improvement in marine low-speed dual-fuel engines

•Pressure waves’ impact on fuel injection stability was quantified using RSD.•RSD generally decreased as injection quantity increased at a fixed rail pressure.•Higher RSDs with small injections result from insufficient adjustment time.•Structural parameter optimization had limited impact on pressure wave influence.•Innovative improvements to the injector significantly reduced RSD across the range. Pressure waves within the fuel injection system exert a significant influence on the fuel injection process. This study investigated the impact of pressure waves on injection quantity stability. To quantify the influence of pressure waves on injection quantity stability, the relative standard deviation (RSD) was introduced as a metric. Through computational analysis under various operating conditions, the following results were obtained: when the target rail pressure is constant, the RSD tends to diminish as the injection quantity increases. The elevated RSDs observed during small injection quantities are predominantly attributed to the short power-on period of the solenoid valve. Subsequently, parameter optimization and structural improvements were carried out on the injector to address this problem. The results indicate that optimizing structural parameters alone has a limited effect on reducing RSD. However, by adding a block in the control chamber above the needle to improve the structural layout of the injector, the maximum RSD has been reduced from 21.08% to 4.58% under the action of pressure waves caused by fuel injection, and from 29.24% to 6.67% under the action of given random high-frequency pressure waves. The proposed improvement idea for existing injectors enhances injection stability across the entire operating condition range, thereby improving fuel utilization efficiency.