PhD defense: Deepak KUMAR - ED SPI

February 13, 2017 at 10am in Lecture Theatre A, Centrale Nantes

Supervisor: David CHALET


Laboratory: LHEEA

Abstract:

The exhaust emissions from automobiles are one of the major sources of air pollution in today’s world. Thence, research and development is the key feature of the modern automotive industries to meet strict emission legislation. One of the key aspects to meet these requirements is to improve the gas exchange process within internal combustion engines. It is possible by the design optimization of the air intake manifolds for internal combustion engines. One of such advancement in air intake manifolds is variable tumble systems (VTS). In VTS system, tumble flaps are installed at the exit of the manifold runner in order to improve tumble ratio and hence air-fuel mixing. Another feature of the flow inside the intake manifolds is pressure pulsation effect. Therefore, the aim of the Ph.D. work is to simulate the pulsating air flow inside the air intake manifolds and to identify the effect of the pressure pulsations on the active components like tumble flaps. The simulation work in the present thesis has been carried out on open source CFD code OpenFOAM.

In a first step, the effect of pressure pulsations is simulated inside a steel tube and a simulation methodology is developed. The results of the simulation are validated on a specific experimental device, the dynamic flow bench. Then, simulations have been carried out on the main intake manifold with tumble flaps. Firstly, the simulations are performed with five different opening positions of the tumble flap in a steady state configuration. The forces and moments acting on the flap in steady state are obtained and analyzed. Then, unsteady simulations with pressure pulsation effects are performed. The results of obtained from unsteady simulation are compared with the experimental results in terms of relative pressure fluctuations. The effect of the pressure pulsation on the aerodynamic forces and moments acting on the tumble flaps are analyzed and explained.