International Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology

E-ISSN 0976-3945

Research Article

PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF AIR FILTER BY DESIGN OPTIMIZATION

M. R. Chopade1, A.P.Valavade 2, S. H. Barhatte3
1,3

Address for Correspondence

Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT College of Engineering, Pune, India 2 Dhole Patil College of Engineering, Pune, India

ABSTRACT Air intake system and filter play a major role in getting good quality air in automobile engines. It improves the combustion efficiency and also reduces air pollution. The work of an air filter is to filter the dirt particles from the intake air and supply cleaner air to the automobile engines. Optimum utilization of filter can significantly reduce the cost of filter replacements frequently and keep the filter in use for longer time. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is considered to be the most cost effective solution for flow analysis of intake system along with filter media. This paper focuses on optimizing the geometry of an intake system in automobile industry to reduce the pressure drop and enhance the filter utilization area. A 3-D viscous CFD analysis is carried for an existing model. Based on CFD results, geometrical changes like introduction of eccentricity of filter element in casing to improve the flow characteristics can be done. The CFD analysis of optimized model is again carried out and the results showed good improvement in flow behavior. KEYWORDS: CFD, eccentricity of filter element.

INTRODUCTION An air filter is generally a paper-like or fibrous material, folded accordion-style and arranged on a plastic or metal frame to fit your car's air filter holder. In an air filtration system, the air must pass through some sort of filter which traps impurities in the air. The design of the filter determines which impurities will be trapped. Most fuel injected vehicles use a pleated paper filter element in the form of a flat panel (Fig 1). This filter is usually placed inside a plastic box connected to the throttle body with an intake tube. Pleated paper filter elements are the nearly exclusive choice for automobile engine air cleaners, because they are efficient, easy to service, and costeffective. A paper for air filters needs to be very porous and have a weight of 100 - 200 g/m2. Normally long fibrous pulp is used to get these properties. The paper is normally impregnated to improve the resistance to moisture. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is considered to be the most cost effective solution for flow analysis of intake system along with filter media.

adding a body damping force proportional to the velocity in addition to viscous and pressure forces in Darcys equation

To remove the first limitation and make it applicable to higher flow rates, Darcy's law [7] was modified by incorporating a convective term as follows

Fig. 1 Pleated paper filter This study focuses on the optimization of the filter by CFD analysis results. GOVERNING EQUATIONS Although Darcy's law is well established for flow through fibrous filters, it has two major limitations: (1) the flow rate has to be low; (2) Darcy's law is a first order differential equation, in contrast to Stoke's equation which is a second order differential equation; it is difficult to match the solutions of the two equations at the boundary of the free fluid and the porous medium. To remove the second limitation, Brinkman [6] developed a semi empirical equation by IJAET/Vol.III/ Issue I/January-March, 2012/68-70

Where is porosity of the filter medium. ANALYTICAL MODEL The casing is a cylindrical element used to protect the filter and the housing and provides the annular space for the movement of air. The air enters tangentially through an inlet pipe which is attached to the casing. Casing dimensions: Diameter = 300mm; Height = 400mm Inlet pipe dimensions: Diameter = 127mm The housing prevents the direct impact of air on the filter element. Direct impact of air will reduce the life of the filter element considerably. Thus housing plays an important role in the filter assembly. Housing dimensions: Diameter = 255mm; Height = 180mm An air filter is generally a paper-like or fibrous material, folded accordion-style and arranged on a plastic or metal frame. Filter dimensions: Outer Diameter = 250mm Inner Diameter =200mm ; Height 460mm

Fig 2: Casing and housing of air filter

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology The casing and housing are concentric with the inlet pipe tangential to the casing. The filter element sits inside the housing, the top and cover are used to enclose the assembly

E-ISSN 0976-3945

Fig 3: Wire frame model of existing filter assembly The aim of our project is to reduce the pressure drop across the filter by making the housing eccentric to the casing.

Fig 5: Geometric model of air filter assembly BOUNDARY CONDITIONS The following conditions were used in fluent during the analysis: Inlet: Mass Flow Inlet (Mass Flow Rate = 0.304 kg/sec, T = 283k) Outlet: Pressure Outlet (Initial Gauge Pressure = 0 Pascal, T=283k) Filter: Porous-jump: (Face Permeability = 1e-10, Thickness = 0.621mm) Casing, Hosing, Top Cover, End Cover: Wall

Fig 4 : Wire frame model of proposed filter assembly GEOMETRIC MODEL Figure (3.5) shows solid model of the filter. The model is created in ICEM CFD because it incorporates advanced mesh diagnostics, interactive and automated mesh editing, output to a wide variety of CFD and FEA solvers, and multi-physics postprocessing tools. In order to save the CFD computational time and cost, trivial geometric details that are unimportant from fluid flow point of view, such as fillets, blends, stiffeners and steps have been ignored. Ignoring all the above-mentioned, so called a cleaned geometry was obtained from solid model. ICEM CFD Tetra takes full advantage of the object oriented unstructured meshing technology. No tedious up-front triangular surface meshing is needed to provide well-balanced start meshes. ICEM CFD Tetra works directly from the CAD surfaces and fills the volume with tetrahedral elements using the Octree approach. Prescribed curves and points can define positions of edges and vertices. A powerful smoothing algorithm provides the element quality. ICEM CFD Tetra generates the volume mesh and the surface mesh on the object surfaces. This automatic mesh generation tool is suitable to complex geometries and offers tools for local adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening.

Fig 6: Mesh model for concentric air filter assembly

Fig 7: Mesh model of eccentric air filter assembly POST PROCESSING Using the above boundary conditions, the CFD software yielded the following results.

Fig 8: Pressure contours for concentric position

IJAET/Vol.III/ Issue I/January-March, 2012/68-70

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology

E-ISSN 0976-3945

Fig 9: Velocity Vectors for concentric position

Fig 10b: Pressure contours for optimum position

CONCLUSION The filter element was made eccentric with the filter housing giving a 10% reduction in pressure drop across the air filter in simulation. The velocity at the entrance is found to be maximum and it goes on reducing gradually. The eccentricity is given to air filter element with a view to make the velocity of air in the annular portion constant. Changing the cross section available to the air, the velocity magnitude can be kept constant upto a certain extent. This constant magnitude of velocity results into reduced pressure drop. The aim of reducing pressure drop is with a view to reduce the utilization of power generated by the engine thereby increasing the efficiency. The percentage change in pressure drop is found to be maximum for an eccentricity of 15 mm away from the inlet. It is also found that increasing eccentric beyond this point reduces the pressure drop but the passage available for air around the filter element reduces drastically distorting the smooth change in velocity, further it is also difficulty from manufacturing point of view. REFERENCES
1. 2. Ravinder Yeram et.al, Optimization of Intake System and Filter of an Automobile using CFD Analysis R. D. Sabnis, Q. Cai, & F.W. Chambers, Flow Distribution Effects upon air Filter Performance Measurements Journal of Engines, SAE 1995, 940317, PP 386-396 Chang Ming Tsang, Analysis of Pleated Air Filters Graduate Dept of Mechanical & Industrial Engg, University of Toronto. S. V. Patankar, Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, 1980, PP 11-16. John Anderson, Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics, Third Edition, Tata McGraw Publication, 1995. P.M. Coelho, F.T. Pinho, A Generalized Brinkman Number for Non-Newtonian Duct Flows, Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, 156 (2009) 202 206 I.S. Shivakumara, C.E. Nanjundappa, Darcy BenardMarangoni Convection in Porous Media, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 52 (2009) 2815282.

3.

Fig 11: Velocity Vectors for optimum position RESULT TABLE

Position Eccentr icity (mm) 0 5 10 15 5 10 15 5 10 15 5 10 15 Inlet press (pascal) 1301.218 1247.256 1240.521 1154.740 1345.027 1170.816 1204.453 1271.420 1161.555 1258.779 1275.819 1164.066 1257.211 Inlet Press (mm of H20) 122.97 117.873 117.23 109.116 127.108 110.64 113.82 120.064 109.77 118.95 120.569 110.01 118.805 Outlet press (pascal) 5.969 1.125 0.249 -0.326 -0.779 0.172 0.224 5.297 -2.816 0.528 5.526 -1.153 -0.374 Outlet Press (mm of H2O) 0.564 0.106 0.026 -0.0308 -0.073 0.016 0.021 0.500 -0.266 0.049 0.522 -0.106 -0.035

4. 5.

Concentric XZ plane 0 deg (-ve Z)

6.

XZ plane 30 deg

7.

XZ plane 45 deg

XZ plane 60 deg

Graph: Pressure drop IJAET/Vol.III/ Issue I/January-March, 2012/68-70