Validation and Enhancement of a Supermesh Strategy for the CFD Simulation of Four-Stroke Internal Combustion Engines

Horacio J Aguerre,Norberto M Nigro,Pedro J Orbaiz,Patricio H Pedreira

doi:10.3390/fluids7030104

Abstract

The present paper describes and validates an efficient CFD implementation to replicate the working fluid-dynamics of a real four-stroke internal combustion engine. To do this, experimental data obtained on a single-cylinder engine are used to validate the proposed computational approach. The engine domain is divided into regions according to each moving zone, and these are coupled using a pseudo-supermesh interface presented in a previous work by the authors. In this work, the original pseudo-supermesh strategy is enhanced by introducing the dual-boundary concept to model the valve opening/closing events to increase the accuracy and simplicity of the simulation procedure. The results produced by the proposed software tool show a good correlation to the experimental measurements of the complete engine cycle. Macroscopic quantities of the in-cylinder flow are accurately replicated as well as the instantaneous evolution of the in-cylinder and intake manifold pressure. Furthermore, the present work shows that the computational efficiency and scalability of the enhanced pseudo-supermesh approach are preserved even when applied to more complex real problems. In this sense, this work contributes to a new engineering tool promoting the enhanced pseudo-supermeshes as an effective tool for the design, development, and optimization of internal combustion engines.

Highlights

As the effects of human-induced climate change become ever more evident, the need to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) has pushed developed and developing nations to apply more stringent vehicle fuel economy targets [1,2]
This, added to the air quality problems faced by many large cities across the world, generated in part by the toxic emissions produced by the transport sector and the scarcity of fossil fuels, is driving the need to develop more efficient and cleaner internal combustion engines (ICEs) [3–6]
A single representative cycle is selected based on the following least squares error (LSE) criterion

Summary

Introduction

As the effects of human-induced climate change become ever more evident, the need to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) has pushed developed and developing nations to apply more stringent vehicle fuel economy targets [1,2]. This, added to the air quality problems faced by many large cities across the world, generated in part by the toxic emissions produced by the transport sector and the scarcity of fossil fuels, is driving the need to develop more efficient and cleaner internal combustion engines (ICEs) [3–6]. KIVA employs a block-structured mesh to define the system domain The latter is updated every time step using dynamic addition and subtraction of cell layers in combination with mesh deformation methods. This allows the modeling of the engine flow over the different engine stages without interrupting the simulation. This method requires high-quality structured meshes, which makes the meshing procedure complex and computationally demanding

Methods

Results

Conclusion