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A three-dimensional computer code (KIVA) is being modified to include state-of-the-art submodels for diesel engine flow and combustion: spray atomization, drop breakup/coalescence, multi-component fuel vaporization, spray/wall interaction, ignition and combustion, wall heat transfer, unburned HC and NOx formation, soot and radiation and the intake flow process. Improved and/or new submodels which have been completed are: wall heat transfer with unsteadiness and compressibility, laminar-turbulent characteristic time combustion with unburned HC and Zeldo'vich NOx, and spray/wall impingement with rebounding and sliding drops.

Two-dimensional computations of premixed-charge engine combustion were made using the KIVA-II code. The purpose of the study was to assess the influence of heat transfer and turbulence model boundary conditions on engine combustion predictions. Combustion was modeled using a laminar- and turbulent-characteristic-time model. Flow through the piston-cylinder-ring crevice was accounted for using a phenomenological crevice-flow model. The predictions were compared to existing cylinder pressure and wall heat transfer experimental data under motoring and fired conditions, at two engine speeds. Two different wall heat transfer model formulations were considered. The first is the standard wall function method. The second is based on solutions to the one-dimensional unsteady energy equation, formulated such that the standard wall function method is recovered in the quasi-steady limit. Turbulence was modeled using the standard k-ε turbulence model equations.

A modification of the computational fluid dynamics code KIVA-II is presented that allows computations to be made in complex engine geometries. An example application is given in which three versions of KIVA-II are run simultaneously. Each version considers a separate block of the computational domain, and the blocks exchange boundary condition information with each other at their common interfaces. The use of separate blocks permits the connectedness of the overall computational domain to change with time. The scavenging flow in the cylinder, transfer pipes (ports), and exhaust pipe of a ported two-stroke engine with a moving piston was modeled in this way. Results are presented for three engine designs that differ only in the angle of their boost ports. The calculated flow fields and the resulting fuel distributions are shown to be markedly different with the different geometries.

The physical in-cylinder processes and ignition during cold starting have been studied using computational models, with particular attention to the influences of blowby, heat transfer during the compression stroke, spray development, vaporization and fuel/air mixture formation and ignition. Two different modeling approaches were used. A thermodynamic zero dimensional cycle analysis program in which the fuel injection effects were not modeled, was used to determine overall and gas exchange effects. The three-dimensional KIVA-II code was used to determine details of the closed cycle events, with modified atomization, blowby and spray/wall impingement models, and a simplified model for ignition. The calculations were used to obtain an understanding of the cold starting process and to identify practical methods for improving cold starting of direct injection diesel engines.

Multidimensional computations were made of spark-ignited premixed-charge combustion in a pancake-combustion-chamber engine with a centrally located spark plug and in two pent-roof-chamber engines, one with a central spark plug and the other with dual lateral spark plugs. A global combustion submodel was used that accounts for laminar kinetics and turbulent mixing effects. The predictions were compared with available measurements in the pancake-chamber engine over a range of loads, speeds, and equivalence ratios. In all cases the computed and measured cylinder pressures agreed well in trends and magnitudes (within 8%) for the entire duration of combustion. Fair agreements were also obtained between predicted and measured values of wall heat flux and emission index of nitric oxide. In the pent-roof-chamber engines the predicted maximum cylinder pressures also agreed well with measurements (within 12%) in cases with MBT (Minimum spark advance for Best Torque) or advanced spark timing.