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A lumped electro-thermal model for a battery module with 14 cells in series (14S1P), and with a cooling channel, is created by two-way coupling of an equivalent circuit model (ECM) and a linear time-invariant (LTI) method based thermal reduced order model (ROM). To create the ROM, a step response data in the form of temperature versus time curve is required. This data is obtained by running a transient full three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis for the full module. The thermal ROM accounts for the effect of the heat generated by the active cells, the joule heat generated in tabs and connectors, and the coolant inlet temperature. To create an ECM, data from hybrid pulse power characterization (HPPC) test is used. Such a lumped electro-thermal model for a battery module can run faster than a 3D CFD analysis and can be easily integrated in a system level model.

Fundamental understanding of the sources of fuel-derived Unburned Hydrocarbon (UHC) emissions in heavy duty diesel engines is a key piece of knowledge that impacts engine combustion system development. Current emissions regulations for hydrocarbons can be difficult to meet in-cylinder and thus after treatment technologies such as oxidation catalysts are typically used, which can be costly. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are combined with engine experiments in an effort to build an understanding of hydrocarbon sources. In the experiments, the combustion system design was varied through injector style, injector rate shape, combustion chamber geometry, and calibration, to study the impact on UHC emissions from mixing-controlled diesel combustion.

This paper reports on a comprehensive, crank-angle transient, three dimensional, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the complete lubrication system of a multi-cylinder engine using the CFD software Simerics-Sys / PumpLinx. This work represents an advance in system-level modeling of the engine lubrication system over the current state of the art of one-dimensional models. The model was applied to a 16 cylinder, reciprocating internal combustion engine lubrication system. The computational domain includes the positive displacement gear pump, the pressure regulation valve, bearings, piston pins, piston cooling jets, the oil cooler, the oil filter etc… The motion of the regulation valve was predicted by strongly coupling a rigorous force balance on the valve to the flow.

This work reports a CFD study on a 2-stroke (2-S) opposed piston high speed direct injection (HSDI) Diesel engine. The engine main features (bore, stroke, port timings, et cetera) are defined in a previous stage of the project, while the current analysis is focused on the assembly made up of scavenge ports, manifold and cylinder. The first step of the study consists in the construction of a parametric mesh on a simplified geometry. Two geometric parameters and three different operating conditions are considered. A CFD-3D simulation by using a customized version of the KIVA-4 code is performed on a set of 243 different cases, sweeping all the most interesting combinations of geometric parameters and operating conditions. The post-processing of this huge amount of data allow us to define the most effective geometric configuration, named baseline.

Progress on the development and validation of a CFD model for diesel engine combustion and flow is described. A modified version of the KIVA code is used for the computations, with improved submodels for liquid breakup, drop distortion and drag, spray/wall impingement with rebounding, sliding and breaking-up drops, wall heat transfer with unsteadiness and compressibility, multistep kinetics ignition and laminar-turbulent characteristic time combustion models, Zeldovich NOx formation, and soot formation with Nagle Strickland-Constable oxidation. The code also considers piston-cylinder-liner crevice flows and allows computations of the intake flow process in the realistic engine geometry with two moving intake valves. Significant progress has been made using a modified RNG k-ε turbulence model, and a multicomponent fuel vaporization model and a flamelet combustion model have been implemented.

After-treatment sensors are used in the ECU feedback control to calibrate the engine operating parameters. Due to their contact with exhaust gases, especially NOx sensors are prone to soot deposition with a consequent decay of their performance. Several phenomena occur at the same time leading to sensor contamination: thermophoresis, unburnt hydrocarbons condensation and eddy diffusion of submicron particles. Conversely, soot combustion and shear forces may act in reducing soot deposition. This study proposes a predictive 3D-CFD model for the analysis of the development of soot deposition layer on the sensor surfaces. Alongside with the implementation of deposit and removal mechanisms, the effects on both thermal properties and shape of the surfaces are taken in account. The latter leads to obtain a more accurate and complete modelling of the phenomenon influencing the sensor overall performance.

In this work we studied the effects of piston bowl design on combustion in a small-bore direct-injection diesel engine. Two bowl designs were compared: a conventional, omega-shaped bowl and a stepped-lip piston bowl. Experiments were carried out in the Sandia single-cylinder optical engine facility, with a medium-load, mild-boosted operating condition featuring a pilot+main injection strategy. CFD simulations were carried out with the FRESCO platform featuring full-geometric body-fitted mesh modeling of the engine and were validated against measured in-cylinder performance as well as soot natural luminosity images. Differences in combustion development were studied using the simulation results, and sensitivities to in-cylinder flow field (swirl ratio) and injection rate parameters were also analyzed.

Oxygen enriched air (EA) is a well known industrial mixture in which the content of oxygen is higher respect the atmospheric one, in the range 22-35%. Oxygen EA can be obtained by desorption from water, taking advantage of the higher oxygen solubility in water compared to the nitrogen one, since the Henry constants of this two gases are different. The production of EA by this new approach was already studied by experimental runs and theoretical considerations. New results using salt water are reported. EA promoted combustion is considered as one of the most interesting technologies to improve the performance in diesel engines and to simultaneously control and reduce pollution. This paper explores, by means of 3-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations, the effects of EA on the performance and exhaust emissions of a high-speed direct-injection diesel engine.

This paper investigates flow and combustion in a full-cycle simulation of a four-stroke, three-valve HCCI engine by visualizing the flow with pathlines. Pathlines trace massless particles in a transient flow field. In addition to visualization, pathlines are used here to trace the history, or evolution, of flow fields and species. In this study evolution is followed from the intake port through combustion. Pathline analysis follows packets of intake charge in time and space from induction through combustion. The local scalar fields traversed by the individual packets in terms of velocity magnitude, turbulence, species concentration and temperatures are extracted from the simulation results. The results show how the intake event establishes local chemical and thermal environments in-cylinder and how the species respond (chemically react) to the local field.

Appropriate spray modeling in multidimensional simulations of diesel engines is well known to affect the overall accuracy of the results. More and more accurate models are being developed to deal with drop dynamics, breakup, collisions, and vaporization/multiphase processes; the latter ones being the most computationally demanding. In fact, in parallel calculations, the droplets occupy a physical region of the in-cylinder domain, which is generally very different than the topology-driven finite-volume mesh decomposition. This makes the CPU decomposition of the spray cloud severely uneven when many CPUs are employed, yielding poor parallel performance of the spray computation. Furthermore, mesh-independent models such as collision calculations require checking of each possible droplet pair, which leads to a practically intractable O(np2/2) computational cost, np being the total number of droplets in the spray cloud, and additional overhead for parallel communications.

The paper investigates the lubrication flow within multi plate wet-clutches for hydro-mechanical variable transmissions in order to optimize the oil distribution and to reduce the thermo-mechanical stresses on the plates. Since experimental measurements are very difficult to carry out on a real system, CFD numerical tools are used for predicting the flow distribution in a real geometry under actual operating conditions. A modular approach is adopted for the domain subdivision in order to represent accurately the three dimensional geometrical features, while the volume of fluid approach is used to model the multi-phase flow that characterizes the component. Poor lubrication is predicted where high thermal stresses were observed during tests. Furthermore, the numerical modeling is validated against measurements carried out on an ad-hoc designed test rig, which adopts transparent PMMA and 3D-printed inserts for the flow investigation.

The design of a pressure compensated hydraulic valve is optimized using CFD analysis. The valve is used in a hydraulic system to control implement movement. High flow rates through the valve resulted in unacceptably high pressure drops, leading to an effort to optimize the valve design. Redesign of the valve had to be achieved under the constraint of minimal manufacturing cost. The flow path of hydraulic oil through the valve, the spool design, and various components of the valve that caused the high pressure drops were targeted in this analysis. A commercially available CFD package was used for the 3D analysis. The hydraulic oil flow was assumed to be turbulent, isothermal and incompressible. The steady-state results were validated by comparison with experimental data.

Neural networks are useful tools for optimization studies since they are very fast, so that while capturing the accuracy of multi-dimensional CFD calculations or experimental data, they can be run numerous times as required by many optimization techniques. This paper describes how a set of neural networks trained on a multi-dimensional CFD code to predict pressure, temperature, heat flux, torque and emissions, have been used by a genetic algorithm in combination with a hill-climbing type algorithm to optimize operating parameters of a diesel engine over the entire speed-torque map of the engine. The optimized parameters are mass of fuel injected per cycle, shape of the injection profile for dual split injection, start of injection, EGR level and boost pressure. These have been optimized for minimum emissions. Another set of neural networks have been trained to predict the optimized parameters, based on the speed-torque point of the engine.

Determining quality levels of analyses process is important in terms of being able to estimate the quality levels. This paper presents an approach based on 6 sigma methodology to estimate the quality levels of engineering analyses. The analyses types covered here are structural and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) types. Three examples covering the analyses types are presented here that show the way quality levels are reported. With the aim of continuous improvement of the analysis process, there is a need to build quality metrics specific to different product types. Future work is aimed to address this need for specific quality metrics.

Hydrogen-fueled Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) are considered one of the most promising technologies for a fully sustainable power generation in the transportation sector, thanks to the direct conversion of chemical-electrical energy, the absence of harmful emissions, the optimal power density, and the allowable long-distance driving range. A current technological issue preventing their large-scale industrialization is the thermal management of PEMFC stacks, due to the absence of the heat removal action operated by exhaust gases in internal combustion engines, the low-temperature generated heat and the limited exchange areas in mobile applications. A relevant role in heat dissipation is played by bipolar plates, being the components with the largest volume occupation and greatly contributing to the PEMFC weight and cost.

The increasing limitations in engine emissions and fuel consumption have led researchers to the need to accurately predict combustion and related events in gasoline engines. In particular, knock is one of the most limiting factors for modern SI units, severely hindering thermal efficiency improvements. Modern CFD simulations are becoming an affordable instrument to support experimental practice from the early design to the detailed calibration stage. To this aim, combustion and knock models in RANS formalism provide good time-to-solution trade-off allowing to simulate mean flame front propagation and flame brush geometry, as well as “ensemble average” knock tendency in end-gases. Still, the level of confidence in the use of CFD tools strongly relies on the possibility to validate models and methodologies against experimental measurements.

The lift-off length plays a significant role in spray combustion as it influences the air entrainment upstream of the lift-off location and hence the soot formation. Accurate prediction of lift-off length thus becomes a prerequisite for accurate soot prediction in lifted flames. In the present study, KIVA-3v coupled with CHEMKIN, as developed at the Engine Research Center (ERC), is used as the CFD model. Experimental data from the Sandia National Labs. is used for validating the model predictions of n-heptane lift-off lengths and soot formation details in a constant volume combustion chamber. It is seen that the model predictions, in terms of lift-off length and soot mass, agree well with the experimental results for low ambient density (14.8 kg/m3) cases with different EGR rates (21% O2 - 8% O2). However, for high density cases (30 kg/m3) with different EGR rates (15% O2 - 8% O2) disagreements were found.

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) are among the most promising technologies as energy conversion devices for the transportation sector due to their potential to eliminate, or greatly reduce, the production of greenhouse gases. One of the current issues with this type of technology is thermal management, which is a key aspect in the design and optimization of PEMFC, whose main aim is an effective and balanced heat removal, thus avoiding thermal gradients leading to a cell lifetime reduction as well as a decrease in the output performance. In addition, a uniform temperature distribution contributes to the achievement of a uniform current density, as it affects the rate of the electrochemical reaction. This is made even more challenging due to the low operating temperature (80°C), reducing the temperature difference for heat dissipation, and leaving a critical role to the design and optimization of the cooling circuit design.

This paper proposes the CFD simulation of the oil splashing within the discs’ chamber of a novel concept for axle dry braking system in off-highway vehicles. The system completely removes the lubricating oil from the discs’ chamber during the not-engaged configuration of the friction plates and it quickly restore it at the beginning of the braking stage when the discs’ cooling becomes crucial, thus ensuring a significant reduction of the power losses. The CFD analysis of the real component is performed to predict the efficiency of the system in terms of both the time needed to replenish the discs’ chamber when brake is actuated, and the hydraulic torque exerted by the splashing of the oil. The entire three-dimensional geometry of the domain is accurately discretized, and the multi-phase flow nature is addressed by means of the volume of fluid approach.

Variations in the in cylinder flow field which result from differences in the intake flow are known to have important effects on the performance and emissions behavior of diesel engines. The intake flow and combustion in a heavy duty DI diesel engine with a dual valve port have been simulated using the computational fluid dynamics code KIVA-3. Variation of the in-cylinder flow field has been achieved by varying the intake valve timing. Variations in the in-cylinder flow, including a range of length scales, degrees of inhomogeneity in a number of scalar and vector quantities, and the persistence of various flow structures, are compared, and their significance to combustion and emissions parameters are assessed. The interaction of fuel spray parameters, particularly spray-wall interaction with structures present in the flow field are evaluated.