Integrating Dynamometer, CFD 1D and CFD 3D for the Development of Low Cost Internal Combustion Engines

The permanent demand for timing and cost reduction on product development in the automotive industry lead to a gradual replacement of the traditional empirical development methods by faster tools which demand less use of bench and laboratory tests. The GT-Power™ is a simulation tool that incorporates Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and combustion analytical models, and offer to the user easier and more objective ways to create and simulate engine virtual models. This paper aims to present a fast and simple numerical simulation methodology, applied to the process of developing a low cost internal combustion engine, which integrates CFD 1D and CFD 3D simulations tools with bench and dynamometer tests. Components like cylinder-head ports, intake manifold and camshaft were simulated and had their constructive parameters optimized aiming the improvement of brake power, brake torque and brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) of the engine operating at wide open throttle (WOT). The results using the proposed methodology showed cases with improvements of 14% on brake torque and cases with improvements of 6% on maximum brake power, without the need to implement expensive and complex features like variable valve timing (VVT) or intake manifold with variable geometry.