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Investigation of Flow Field Pattern in a GDI

Engine at Different Speeds using Numerical
Techniques

2013-01-2791
Published
11/27/2013

Ramesh P and James Gunasekaran E

Annamalai University
Copyright 2013 SAE International
doi:10.4271/2013-01-2791

ABSTRACT
Numerical simulations were performed in a four stroke pentroof SI engine under cold flow conditions at three different
speeds (1000 rpm, 2000 rpm and 3000 rpm) to investigate the
flow characteristics like swirl, tumble, turbulence, mass
inducted and the formation of liquid film during cold start
condition. The suction and compression strokes were
simulated at the three speeds mentioned. Results show that
swirl and tumble are increased from 1000 rpm to 2000 rpm
whereas the increase is very low between the speeds 2000
rpm and 3000 rpm. The computational model was validated
against the experimental data available in the literature. There
is a slight increase in the mass of air inducted as the speed
goes up. Further investigation with liquid film modelling
reveal, presence of liquid film mass on the cylinder and
intake region. Around 34% of fuel quantity converted to film
mass in the port wall region of intake while using port fuel
injection (PFI) at the entry of Siamese port. The piston region
has around 8% of fuel as liquid film at compression TDC.
Later this may lead to soot and Hydrocarbon emission. From
these results CFD code can be confidently used to further
investigation like port orientation, manifold, spray, film and
mixture formation and combustion.

KEYWORDS
Swirl, Tumble, GDI, Turbulence, Mass Inducted, Liquid Film

INTRODUCTION
As the new Euro 6 regulations are to be introduced in the
market, the pressure is ever more increasing on the engine
manufacturers to produce cleaner engines with enhanced

performance. As the modern PFI engines are already refined

a further fuel consumption reduction is possible by new
engine design like combination of good features of Diesel
engine with SI engine resulting in GDI engine. The concept
of GDI though very old has not been popular due to the
difficulty in controlling the injection of fuel for varying loads.
Due to the recent advances in electronics and control system
the attention has been focused again on GDI engines. The
intake generated air motion is important in the SI engine. It is
especially of paramount importance in the case of GDI
engines, where different flow field generation mechanisms
are utilized in the engine[1,2]. The cyclic variation of swirl
motion is one of the factors affecting the combustion quality
in GDI engines[2]. This cyclic variation persists even though
the velocity fluctuations become homogeneous during the
late stages of combustion[3]. The tumble motion especially
plays a greater role in GDI engines. They help in mixture
preparation and transportation. However too much tumble at
the time of combustion can destroy mixture distribution and
the burning rate will be decreased[9]. The cone angle of the
fuel injector also affects the spray penetration inside the
engine. If the spray angle is reduced the rate of evaporation is
reduced[5]. It is due to the denser travel of fuel particles and
lesser chance of fuel coming in contact with air. In order to
improve upon this phenomenon as the cone angle of any
injector is more or less fixed, multiple injection strategies
were tried. The in-cylinder gas density also affects the spray
penetration, spray structure and hence evaporation.[4,6]. It is
also reported in literatures that the timing of fuel injection
timing and spark timing strongly influences the particulate
emission from GDI engines[7, 8]. There are different mixture

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preparation strategies for the direct injection engines, like

spray guided, air guided and spray guided[9, 10, 11, 12, 13].
High pressure multiple injections were also investigated for
the GDI engines and they help in smoother combustion and
lesser particulate emission compared to single pulse
injection[14, 15]. The formation mechanism of liquid film
were studied by various authors and they reported that the
film formation on the wall is due to stick and spread[16, 17].
An attempt has been made in this study to investigate the
flow field pattern of a commercially available SI engine for
its potential for GDI engine.

GEOMETRICAL DETAILS AND

DESIGN
For the computational analysis and physical validation the
dimensions of a commercial SI engine whose geometrical
details are available in the literature [Kim et al, 16] is taken
and a model is created in a commercial geometrical modeler
CATIA. The created model is exported to STARCD for the
creation of mesh and application of physical parameters and
boundary conditions. Table 1 shows the geometrical details
of the engine and details of fuel injection.

Fig.1. Draft of the Engine Model

Table 1. Engine Details and fuel injection

(a). Isometric View of the Engine depicting the intake

and exhaust Valves

The details and features of the modeled engine are shown in

Fig.1. Fig. 2 shows the discretized domain of the engine. In
order to understand the flow characteristics inside the engine
at different speeds simulations were conducted 1000 rpm,
2000 rpm and 3000 rpm. The Siamese intake port is at the left
and the exhaust port is at the right. The flow towards the
exhaust port is assumed to be positive and towards the intake
port is assumed to be negative.

(b). View through the sectional plane passing through

intake and exhaust Valves
Fig. 2. (a) and (b) - Discretized domain of the Engine

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VALIDATION
The model is validated by comparing the calculated CFD
results with the experimental results of Kim et.al. The
measurement points as done in the experiments (Kim et. al.)
are shown in Figure.1. Measurements were done using a
single component LDV along the axial direction (V- line) and
on a line which is parallel to both the intake ports and passing
through a point which is 13 mm below TDC which is denoted
as H-line. The spacing between the measurement points is
5mm. These locations are clearly illustrated in Fig-1.

Mean Velocity Along the V-Line

As the intake ports are at the left of the cylinder axis the flow
of air towards the exhaust side is assigned a positive value (u)
and the one which is flowing towards the intake port is
assigned a negative (u) value. The x axis is parallel to the
ports and measurements were done at 60, 120, 180, 240,
300, and 360 crank angle (CA) aTDC. Fig. 3 shows the
comparison of CFD results with that of the experimental
(Kim et. al.) results. The comparison pertains to the
measurement along the cylinder axis as shown in Fig.1. The
Validation is between the experimental and CFD
measurement at 1000 rpm. The chart also shows the velocity
measurement along the same measurement points at higher
speeds 2000 rpm and 3000 rpm. The CFD results are
reasonably in good agreement with the experimental data. At
60 CA the tumble centre is approximately at 5mm below
TDC. This crank angle the rotating vortices have not
developed vigorously yet. This can be understood by noticing
the low values of the velocity (towards the intake) near the
piston crown. At higher speeds at the same crank angle the
tumbling vortices have strongly evolved at the same crank
angle with the negative velocity reaching a value as high as
18 m/s near the piston crown. At 120 CA the predicted
values along the axis closely matches the experimental value.
At 240 and 300 CA also the predicted value closely follows
the trend measured in experiment.

(b). 120 Degree CA

(c). 180 Degree CA

(d). 240 Degree CA

Fig.3. (cont.) (a) to (f) - Comparison of Experimental
(Kim et al) and CFD Results at a speed of 1000 rpm and
the Predicted Values at higher Speeds 2000 rpm and
3000 rpm along the V - Line

(a). 60 degree CA
Fig.3.

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(a). 60 Degree CA
(e). 300 Degree CA

(b). 120 Degree CA

(f). 360 Degree CA

Fig.3. (cont.) (a) to (f) - Comparison of Experimental
(Kim et al) and CFD Results at a speed of 1000 rpm and
the Predicted Values at higher Speeds 2000 rpm and
3000 rpm along the V - Line

Mean Velocity Along the H-Line

Fig.4.shows the comparison of mean velocity along the Hline and experimental value. Here also the flow away from
the intake port and towards exhaust port is treated as positive
and the one flowing from the exhaust port towards the intake
is treated as negative. Except for 60CA the other timing
shows a reasonable good agreement with the experimental
value. This may be due to insufficient data available for the
valve lift profile and port orientation. At 60 CA along the Hline the velocity shows a negative direction at a distance of 5
mm in both directions. At this crank angle the piston is near
the H-line and descending downwards. This is in clear
conformity with the earlier result along the vertical line (Vline). This point to the fact that the incoming air is organized
along a clockwise rotating tumbling vortex. At 180CA it can
be observed that the vortex has almost stabilized and the CFD
results follow the experimental trend.

(c). 180 Degree CA

(d). 240 Degree CA

Fig.4. (a) to (d) - Comparison of Experimental (Kim et
al) and CFD Results at a speed of 1000 rpm and the
Predicted Values at higher Speeds 2000 rpm and 3000
rpm along the H-Line

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Fluctuating Velocity Along the V-Line

Fig. 4 shows the comparison between the experimental
fluctuating velocity and the simulated result along the V- line.
The simulated results are in good agreement with the
experimental data at 1000 rpm. At higher speeds the
fluctuating velocity is showing a higher value. The
fluctuation is maximum during the valve opening period and
continuously decreases well in to the middle of the
compression stroke. After this the fluctuating velocity slightly
increases indicating that the destruction of tumbling vortices.
The destruction of tumbling vortices increases turbulence
resulting in a higher velocity as evidenced by Fig. 5. Hence
the higher tumble motion helps in the generation of
turbulence.

generation phase occurs usually during the intake which

proceeds up to 200 CA. The stabilization and spin up phase
occur due to the upward moving piston. Because of the
moving piston the spin up phase enhances the tumble motion
again up to 300 degree. The tumble destruction phase results
in increased turbulence. This can be confirmed with reference
to Fig 6 where there is a slight increase in the turbulence level
starting from 250CA and lasts up to 310CA. The Cross
tumble denoted by Trx is almost near zero level in this
particular geometry considered. The Swirl about the cylinder
axis denoted by Srz increases up to 30CA and begins to fade
out and eventually becomes zero at a crank angle of 70CA.
From this crank angle it begins to change direction and
rotates in opposite direction and reaches a maximum value of
0.93 around 120CA aTDC. Regarding the effect of speed the
tumble is increased as high as two folds between the speeds
1000 and 2000 rpm, whereas the increment in tumble
between 2000 and 3000 rpm is only marginal. This may be
attributed to the poor strength of the intake generated
tumbling and swirling vortices which are not sustained during
the stabilization and spin up phase.

Fig. 5. Comparison of Temporal Variation of

Fluctuating Velocity along the V- Line with
Experimental Data (Kim etal)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The main advantage of present port inducted engine is the
precise control of fuel quantity on cycle basis. But they have
cold start emission startup. The formations of the film are the
main reason for this and are influenced by flow dynamics.
The following section discusses the flow characteristics and
film formation.

Effect of Speed on Swirl and Tumble

The GDI engines are normally designed to be tumble
oriented. The pent roof combustion chamber and the
orientation of the intake port geometry helps in the generation
of tumbling motion inside the engine cylinder. Fig. 6 shows
the temporal variation of swirl and tumble for the three
speeds mentioned earlier.
The rotation of vortices about the axis Y (Try) is called as
normal tumble about y coordinate and the tumbling vortices
about the axis X is denoted as cross tumble (Trx) and the
rotating motion about the cylinder axis Z is called as swirl.
Tumble motion inside the engine cylinder can be divided into
three phases as generation, stabilization and destruction. The

Fig. 6. Temporal variation of Swirl and Tumble inside

the Engine Cylinder for Three Speeds

Effect of Speed on the Quantity of Air

Inducted
The speed of any GDI engine is controlled by quality rather
than by quantity, that means the throttle controlled speed
adjustment can be altogether eliminated with quality
governing. Fig. 7 compares the effect of speed on the quantity
of air inducted. It is evident that the accumulated mass
steadily increases until 180CA and the mass decreases
slightly until the valve closure period around 45CA after
BDC. The accumulated mass is more at higher speed. This is
due to the inducted air mass comes at higher velocity in to the
cylinder and this inertia of the incoming air is more than the
inertia of the air mass moving upwards near the piston crown.

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(b). 120 Degree CA

Fig. 7. Effect of Speed on the Temporal Variation of Air
Inducted into the Engine Cylinder
In Fig 8(a) at 60CA smaller clockwise rotating vortices
begin to form. At this stage the incoming air through the
intake valves on the exhaust side and near the cylinder liner
side interact. By the time of 120CA more air is flowing
along the cylinder liner towards the piston. At 180CA the
vortices are well organized and there is a central region where
a low velocity region is prevailing and so is the case at
240CA where the tumble motion can be clearly seen. At
300CA the tumble motion can still be observed but at a
reduced strength. From this point the vortices are being
destroyed and by the time the piston reaches TDC it is
completely destroyed. The effect of this is increased
turbulence. This is important in SI engines as this turbulence
enhances flame propagation. It is also important where this
turbulence is prevailing inside the combustion chamber.

(a). 60 Degree CA
Fig.9.

(c). 180 Degree CA

(d). 240 Degree CA

Fig.9. (cont.) (a) to (f) - Comparison of Flow Field along
a Sectional Plane Passing through Intake and Exhaust
Valves at Different Crank Angles

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(e). 300 Degree CA

(b). Piston

(f). 360 Degree CA

Fig.9. (cont.) (a) to (f) - Comparison of Flow Field along
a Sectional Plane Passing through Intake and Exhaust
Valves at Different Crank Angles

(c). Cylinder liner

Liquid Film Mass

Also in this investigation, the accumulation of liquid film
mass to the different regions of cylinder (dome, liner and
piston) mand intake system (valve face, valve stem and port
wall) with PFI as shown in fig. 1 for motorized cold start
condition at three speeds. Fig. 10 shows the characteristics of
liquid mass formed at different parts of the engine.

(d). Intake valve face

Fig. 10. (cont.) (a) to (f) - Characteristics of Liquid Film
Mass over the region of cylinder and intake system.

(a). Dome
Fig. 10.

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intake port walls and the interaction lead to the formation of

liquid film in this region.

CONCLUSION

(e). Intake port wall

Computational Fluid dynamic analysis on a SI engine was

conducted at motoring conditions at different speeds. It is
validated against the experimental data. Swirl and normal
tumble plays are dominant role whereas the cross tumble is
very low. These organized vortices enhance the turbulence
inside the combustion chamber during the late stages of
compression stroke. The turbulence is more at higher speeds.
The port injection at cold start condition results in
accumulation of nearly 35 percentage of injected fuel mass
(45.873 mg) in the intake port region itself. This fuel film
persists until the compression TDC.
Due to the accumulation of film mass in the port region, the
engine is starved of fuel vapour in the first cycle leading to
misfire. In the subsequent cycles the film mass acts as a
source point for further accumulation of the injected fuel.
Due to this cold start emissions will be more during the first
few cycles. Hence suitable measures like heated port during
initial stages may reduce the possibility of emission for the
port injection.

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