Supercomputing Applications in Internal Combustion Engine Design and Analysis

Woo Tae Kim and Kang Y. Huh Mechanical Engineering Department Pohang University of Science and Technology San 3 1 Hoyjadong, Pohang, Kyungbuk, Korea kwt @ ace.postech.ac.kr huh@vision.postech.ac.kr

Abstract
Supercomputing applications in intemal combustion engine design and analysis ure introduced in this papel: The grid generation procedure, flow field modeling, fuel spray and combustion models are briefly reviewed. Results for three example cases, motoring flow in a pent-roof engine, charge distribution in a DISC engine, and Coherent Flamelet combustion model are given to illustrate the current status and future prospects of supercomputing in the automotive industry. It is expected that further development and cost reduction in supercomputing will allow accurate simulation with an increased number of grid points and more realistic physical models.

1. Introduction
In-cylinder dynamics of internal combustion engines involves a number of complex, closely coupled physical and chemical processes. They include transient turbulent flows interacting with fuel sprays, heat transfer and chemical reactions involving ignition, combustion, knocking and pollutant production. Due to recent developments in internal combustion engine modeling, computational fluid dynamics, and supercomputing, it has become possible to perform a more realistic simulation of the in-cylinder phenomena. Applicable areas of numerical simulation are expanding to prediction of major engine parameters and optimization of the existing and new engine designs. The numerical analysis procedure of internal combustion engines may be divided into three steps. The first step involves grid generation and problem definition. A grid is a system of points where the physical variables are defined and calculated. Grid generation is usually the most time-consuming part for the analyses with complex geome-

tries. Sometimes it may be necessary to compromise the geometry to a certain extent to avoid an unacceptable grid. Problem definition consists of determination of the primary variables and assumptions with specification of initial and boundary conditions. The second is the code execution step which generates results through tuning of various parameters such as the time step or arbitrary model constants. If the calculation involves a new physical process, it is necessary to modify the existing models or to develop a new model, which must be followed by validation of the new implemented model. The last step is the post-processing which extracts useful information from the calculation results. Since post-processing has a great influence on the quality of final conclusions, selection and development of a proper post-processing method is very important. There are several engine analysis codes in current use e.g. the KIVA code series[ 1,2] by Los Alamos National Laboratory, EPISO and SPEED code[3,4] by Imperial College of Sci. & Tech. and the commercial softwares such as STAR-CD and FIRE. In this paper, we introduced the major physical models and numerical procedure for in-cylinder processes in a modified version of KIVA-11, which are applied to the three application calculations in the following sections.

2. Grid generation
Since an internal combustion engine usually involves a complex three-dimensional domain, the commercial packages with enhanced geometry modeling capabilities are commonly used. In this study, the commercial software ICEM-CFD/CAE[S] is used for grid generation according to the following steps. (1) Transform the IGES format CAD data into the ICEM DDN data format. ( 2 ) Design the block structure which efficiently divides

0-8186-7901-8/97 $10.00 0 1997 IEEE

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the computational domain (3) Define the subfaces which comprise the domain surfaces. (4) Define the domains which make the whole geometry. ( 5 ) Specify the node number in the associated main edges. (6) Generate the node points. (7) Inspect the quality of the generated grid. (8) Modify the grid if necessary. (9) Generate a grid input file for the analysis code. Step (2) is the most important step because the block structure determines the overall grid quality. An improperly designed block structure results in severe distortion and stretching of meshes which may restrict the time step to a very small value. Examples of three-dimensional CAD data and generated grids are shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Figure 2. Computational grids

\
\

where p, is the density of the mth species, p is the total gas density, D is the Ficks law diffusion coefficient, and U is the flow velocity. By summing up the species continuity equations, the following mass conservation equation is obtained.

-+v
dt

(p.) = 0

The momentum equation is as follows.

\.
\
\ \ / /

/.

\
\ /

/
\

. / ,

where p is the fluid pressure, a is a dimensionless quantity associated with the Pressure Gradient Scaling(PGS) method[6], and 9 is the specific body force. The viscous stress tensor is Newtonian in the form:

Figure 1. Engine CAD data

where p and X are the first and second coefficients of viscosity. The internal energy equation is

3. Flow field modeling

Governing equations for flow field modeling consist of the mass, momentum, energy, and IC-& turbulence equations. A turbulence model is required because it is impossible to resolve the wide range of spatial and temporal scales of turbulent eddies. Auxiliary constitutive equations and experimental correlations are also needed for closure of the given equations. Relevant source terms may be added to the flow equations for the spray and combustion phenomena. The continuity equation for the mth species is
--

v.ifPE

(5)

where I is the specific internal energy. The heat flux vector J is the sum of contributions due to heat conduction and enthalpy diffusion:
J=7Tl

aP,

at

+ v . (p,Z)

= v [pDO(P)]
P

(1)

where T is the fluid temperature and h, is the specific enthalpy of the mth species.

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The turbulence equations are

-

to make reliable prediction of the in-cylinder phenomena related with fuel sprays.

dPk

at + v

'

(pu'k) =
g :

2 --pkV. d+ 3

P Vu'+ Q . [(---)Vk] - PE
p r k

5. Combustion modeling
(7)
Vigorous researches are going on in combustion modeling, although it is still in its initial stage in practical applications. Available turbulent combustion models are the eddy breakup(EBU) model[7], assumed probability density function(PDF) model[8] and coherent flamelet model(CFM)[9], etc. The CFM views the turbulent flame as a collection of laminar flamelet elements embedded in turbulent flow. It is applicable to both premixed and nonpremixed flame on the basis of the laminar flamelet concept. Its important advantage is decoupled treatment of the chemical reaction and turbulent flow. The current form of CFM is introduced in the following. The mass burning rate per unit volume is given as

2 -(p - c,,)peV.

U'+ V ' [(-)Vel

P PrE

where k is the turbulent kinetic energy and E is its dissipation rate. The quantities e,,, eE2, c,,, P T k , and PrE are constants whose values are determined from experiments and theoretical considerations.

4. Spray modeling
Fuel sprays have been a major research topic because the fuel spray behavior determines the combustion characteristics of diesel engines. They also play an important role in port-injection spark-ignition engines and direct-injection stratified charge(D1SC) engines. A fuel spray is numerically represented by the droplets of 3000 - 5000 parcels which share the same condtions in each parcel - mass, temperature, and mean velocity, etc. - and tracing them by a stochastic Lagrangian method. The word 'stochastic' means that sampling procedure is performed randomly from the assumed probability density distributions which govern the droplet properties at injection timing and subsequent droplet behaviors. The fuel injection process is modeled by creating new spray parcels with the prescribed initial conditions. Interaction with the turbulent flow field, droplet evaporation, breakup, collisonkoalescence, and spray-wall impingement, etc. may be easily taken into account for each Lagrangian parcel. In the following calculations, the breakup and collisionkoalescence models are excluded with the initial droplet radius determined by a probability density function about the measured sauter mean radius. It is to remove the large uncertainties associated with these models. In the modified version of KIVA-11, a new spray atomization model is implemented to consider the effect of turbulent fluctuations in the nozzle exit flow as well as wave growth instability by gas inertia force. Also a spray-wall impingement model based on single droplet experiments is implemented to provide more accurate information on charge distribution. In some engine types, spray-wall or spray-piston collision is induced intentionally to achieve a desirable mixing pattern of fuel and ambient air. Further validation against extensive spray experiments are needed

where pv is the fresh gas density, UL is the laminar flame speed, and C is the flame density which is the flame area per unit volume. The product IOULrepresents the strained laminar flame speed, where IO in the mean stretch factor. Chemistry and molecular effects are represented by UL while turbulence effects are represented by C. The conservation equation for the flame density C is
-

ax + -(UiC) a at axi
d vt dC -(--)

=
U' + a--C

-p

axa

axi

lt,

Y (ZIP - E)

uL

P(10)

where cy, p are constants( cy=2.0, p=O.l), U' is turbulence intensity, l t , is a constant length scale( ltC=0.126cm). is is the mean fuel mass fraction, YO the fuel mass fraction in the fresh mixture. The second term on the right hand side is production of flame area by turbulent strain and the third term is flame annihilation by mutual collision of flame surfaces.

6. Applications
6.1. Intake and compression flows in a motoring pent-roof engine
Complicated three dimensional geometry with moving boundaries such as valves has been the major difficulty among CFD practitioners. It is no trivial task to generate a suitable structured or unstructured grid for the domain including the port/valve/cylinder/piston applicable to the entire four stroke cycle. In this study a simple technique is

180

developed to handle the valves in an Eulerian domain. It does not require generation of a body-fitted grid and takes a comparable CPU time as the case with no obstacle in the same grid.

-0 1

Table 1. Engine specifications of a motoring pent-roof engine

Bore Stroke Compression ratio Displacement volume Engine speed Intake pressure IVO IVC Valve lift 86.0 mm 86.0 mm 9.2 1998 cc 1000 1.O atm 10 deg. BTDC 55 deg. ABDC 9.0 mm

Figure 3. Tumble ratio about x-axis

7E5

The engine has a four valve pentroof head with central spark plug and siamesed intake ports. The engine specifications are summarized in Table 1. A half portion of the engine is modeled due to symmetry and only the intake valve and port are modeled excluding the exhaust side. Calculations are carried out through the intake and compression stroke, starting shortly after intake valve opening and ending at the top dead center(TDC) at 360 deg. CA. Initially the whole domain is assumed to be quiescent at the atmospheric pressure and the piston moves at 1000 rpm. Because the in-cylinder fluid motion is very complex and three dimensional, it is difficult to describe the complete flow structure. Figure 9 shows the velocity fields at the valve center plane. At 60 deg. CA a downward motion prevails in the cylinder and valve tip vortices are formed around the valve periphery. The flow in the port is very strong with the maximum velocity of about 30 - 40 m/s. The strong intake flow is still dominant at 120 deg. CA. The reciculating motion on the exhaust valve side is stronger than that on the intake valve side. On the overall a tumbling motion is formed in the cylinder but restricted due to the downward motion of intake air along the intake side wall. At 240 deg. CA deformation of the organized tumble motion occurs. The upward motion of piston governs the flow and continues to 300 deg. CA. In the later stage of the compression stroke, squish flow occurs into the head volume. Figure 3 and 4 show variation of the tumble ratio and the mass averaged turbulent kinetic energy. The tumble ratio is a dimensionless measure of the angular momentum of the in-cylinder fluid about the axis which is perpendicular to the valve center plane. The tumble ratio increases by the strong intake flow and reaches the maximum at about 120 deg. CA. Then it decreases due to weak intake flow and the downward motion of the piston until intake valve clos-

Crank AngIe(deg.)

Figure 4. Mass averaged TKE variation

ing(1VC). It increases again due to angular momentum conservation mechanism and then decreases as the compression causes the whole structure to break down. The mass averaged turbulent kinetic energy(TKE) maintains its level after ZVC. The TKE carried into the cylinder through the intake valve decays fast and does not contribute to the TKE during the compression stroke.

6.2. Charge distribution in a lean burn DISC engine

Extensive research works have been performed to establish stable combustion of a DISC engine by optimizing the fuel/air mixture formation process[ 10,11,12]. The combustion characteristics of a gasoline DISC engine may be divided into two different regimes by the injection timing. In a full load condition, fuel is injected during the intake stroke and forms a homogeneous mixture with air in the combustion chamber. In this case the combustion characteristics is similar to that of a port injection engine. In a part load condition, on the other hand, fuel injection occurs in the later stage of the compression stroke, to form a stratified charge around the spark plug at ignition timing. It is to realize leaner combustion with improvements in the thermal efficiency and NOx emissions. The test engine is a 4-valve 4-stroke gasoline DI engine with a pent-roof type combustion chamber. The engine specifications and operating conditions are given in Table 2.

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Bore Stroke Engine speed IVO IVC EVO EVC Injection duration Total amount of fuel Spray anglelwidth Nozzle radius

83.0 mm 90.5 mm 1500 6 deg. BTDC 46 deg. ABDC 130 deg. ATDC 10 deg. ATDC 9 deg. 10.6642 mglcycle 60 deg. 16.058 deg. 0.8 mm

Table 3. Notations of a DISC engine computation

type1 center inj. Figure 5 type2ltype2p corner in;. Figure 5 piston geometry (tYPe2P with bowl)

Figure 5. Injection position

For a full load condition; fuel injection starts early during the intake stroke, from around TDC to 150 deg. after top dead center(ATDC); initial spray dispersion is much higher than that of the late injection case at a part load condition. It is obvious that there can be more causes that may lead to bad operation with the late injection case such as misfire or incomplete combustion due to mal-distribution of the mixture. Thus, we focused on analysis of the late injection case at a part load condition. The ranges of the parametric study and some notations are given in Table 3 and Figure 5. Two different injection positions are considered here, center and corner injection, with a tilted injector in both cases(Figure 5). As shown in Figure 10, center injection is preferable in some repect for it assures existence of a rich mixture near the spark plug. But possible impingement of the liquid spray on the spark plug may require a high energy ignition system or other ignition technologies. The corner injection case results in a poor charge distribution around the spark plug with a flat piston, although a high pressure swirl injector is employed to enhance mixing. To improve mixture distribution in the corner injection case, a curved piston top geometry is suggested. It consists of a piston bowl on the injection side to make the impinging fuel directed toward the spark plug. The equivalence ratio and other results at 40 deg. CA after the end of injection in case3 are shown in Figure 1O(c), which are easily compared with the results of Figure 10(b). Spray-wall impingment is retarded as the spray is shifted upward due to the mean flow induced by the piston bowl. A stable vortex formed in the vertical direction drives the spray toward the center of the combustion chamber and enhances fuel-air mixing.

6.3. Spark-ignited turbulent premixed flame in a closed vessel

In this study the CFM introduced in Section 5 is applied to ignition and flame propagation in an enclosed cubic chamber. A modeling strategy for the ignition, laminar and turbulent propagation phase is proposed and applied with an appropriate switching criterion. The same form of the transport equation is applied with the total rate of strain given as the sum of the laminar and turbulent rate of strain. This strategy is to guarantee a calculation procedure with smooth transition between phases. This strategy can be directly applied to a real internal combustion engine simulation which includes the ignition, flame propagation, and flame quenching at the wall. The shape of the flame when the flame quenches at the wall is shown in Figure 6. Figure 7 shows distribution of the burned mass fraction and flame density as the flame touches the wall. Figure 8 is the dimensionless turbulent burning velocity vs. the turbulent intensity. The calculated turbulent burning velocity agrees qualitatively with the correlation.

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May 1989. [3] A. D. Gosman, K. Y. Huh, B. S. Tabrizi, and Q. Zhang, The

Y

EPISO-SPRAY Computer Code f o r Prediction of Fuel Spray arid Air Motion in Motored Internal Combustion Engines, Manual for

Flame density
142892 107169 0714458

EPISO-SPRAY Code, Dec. 1987. [4] SPEED Manual, Version 2.200, 1994. [SI ICEM CFDKAE Users Manual, October, 1993. [6] J. D. Ramshaw, P. J. ORourke and L. R. Stein, Pressure Gradient Scaling Method f o r Fluid Flow with Nearly Uniform Pressure, J. Comput. Phys. 58, p.361, 1985

0 357229

Figure 6. Flame quenching at the wall

7. Summary
Recent progress in supercomputing capabilities has allowed more realistic simulation of the in-cylinder phenomena of internal combustion engines such as complex threedimensional geometry, turbulent flow field, fuel spray, combustion and heat transfer. Three examples of application calculations performed on CRAY-YMP C90 are presented in this paper to show the current status and future prospects for supercomputing in internal combustion engine design and analysis. Use of supercomputing in computational fluid dynamic analysis is rapidly spreading in various engineering disciplines, one of which is the automotive industry. It is expected that further development and cost reduction in supercomputing will allow an increase in the total number of grid points and implementation of more complicated physical models to obtain more accurate simulation results.

171 D. B. Spalding, Thirteenth Symposium (International) on Combustion, The Combustion Institute, p.649, 1971. [8] R. Borghi, Prog. Energy Combust. Sci. 14:245, 1988. [9] E. Maistret, N. Darabiha, T. Poinsot, D. Veynante, E Lucas, S. Candel, and E. Esposito, in Numerical Combustion (A. Dervieux and B. Larrouturou Eds.), Springer-Verlag,Berlin, p.98, 1989. [IO] Seiko Kono, Development of the Siraiijied Charge and Stable Combustion Method in DI Gasoline Engines, SAE 950688, 1995. [ l l ] T. Kume, Y. Iwamoto, K. Iida, M. Murakami, K. Akishino, and H. Ando, Combustion Coriirol Technologies f o r Direci lnjection SI Engine, SAE paper, 1996. [I21 K. Kuwahara et al., Opiimization of In-cylinder Flow arid
Mixing f o r a Center-spark Four-valve Engine Employing the Corzcept of Barrel-stratification, SAE 940986.

(More figures in the following pages)

Acknowledgement
The financial support for this work from Systems Engineering Research Institute (SERI) and Advanced Fluid Engineering Research Center (AFERC) funded by Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) is appreciated.

References
[ I ] A. A. Amsden, J. D. Ramshaw, P. J. ORourke, and J. K. Dukowicz, KIVA: A Computer Program fot Two- and ThreeDimensional Fluid Flows with Chemical Reaciions and Fuel Sprays, Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA- 10245-MS, Feb. 1985. [2] A. A. Amsden, P. J. ORourke, and T. D. Butler, KIVAII: A Computer Program f o r Chemically Reactive Flows with Sprays, Los Alamos National Laboratory report LA-1 1560-MS,

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BMF
A 9 8 7
6

0.9081 3 0.817317 0.726504 0.635691 0.544878 0.454065 0.363252 0.272439 0.1 81626 0.09081 3

5 4 3 2 1

c
4 9 0 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 37.6841 33.91 57 30.1 473 26.3789 22.6105 18.8421 15.0736 11.3052 7.53682 3.76841

(a) 120 deg. CA

Figure 7. Distributions of the burned mass fraction and flame density

(b) 60 deg. CA

( c ) 120 deg. CA

,-.

(d) 240 deg. CA

(e) 300 deg. CA

UIU,

Figure 9. Velocity fields at the valve center and streamlines

Figure 8. Dimensionlessturbulent burning velocity vs. the turbulence intensity

184

~~

- . .

equivalence ratio (injection point-fixed y) typet case3 CA 310deg _

equivalence ratio (injection point-fixed y) .-. - .t y p e 2 s a s e 3 C A 3 t O d ~

__

___

equivalence ratio (injection point-fixed y) typezp case3 CA 3todegj

Level equvrat

1 0223486

2 0670339

3 1 11719

4 156404

Level eqwrat

1 03

09

15 equivalence ratio (injection point fixed y) type2pcase3 CA 320deg

equivalence ratio (injection point fixed y) type1 case3 CA 320d89

~~~~

equivalence ratio (injection point fixed y) type2 case3 CA 320deg

equivalence ratio (iniectionpoint4md y) type1 case3 CA 330deg

equivalenceratio (inpction pomt-fixed y) .. . .. . type2 case3 CA 330deg

~~~~~

equivalence ratio (injection point fixed y) type2p case3 CA 330degl

velocllylteldal CA310deg typet case3 (40deg alter in! end) - - ~~~~

velocity field at CA 3tCdeg type2 case3 (40deg aner in1 end)

-

velocity field at CA 3tCdeg typezp case3 (40deg after in1 end)

Level

tke.

1 269396

2 645301

102121

139711

Level tke.

1
253459

2 609536

3 96561.3

4 132169 I
~

Level

tke

1 265707

65tt7.5

tot744

142331

tke (injectionpoint-fixed y) typet case3 CA 3lCd-q

tke (mjection point-fixed y)

- type2 case3 CA 310d.g ~_

~ ~~~

Figure 10. Equivalence ratios, velocity field, and TKE distribution

185