FLOW FIELD ANALYSIS OF A MULTI CYLINDER S.I. ENGINE AIR INTAKE SYSTEM USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

The objective of present study is to predict and analyze the flow through the Air Intake System (AIS) of a multicylinder S.I. engine by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The predicted results are validated by experimental data. Three-dimensional model of air intake system was created by using the commercially available software and the mesh was generated using the Tet-hybrid scheme. The pressure boundary conditions are used to define the fluid pressure at the inlet and outlet of the flow domain. Three different throttle conditions namely idling, 50% throttle opening and wide open throttling (WOT) are considered. Flow through the domain is analyzed for all the three cylinders. The CFD plots give informative pictures of the flow field, which will help the designer to understand the effect of various components of air intake system. The predicted airflow rate shows good agreement with the experimental results. The result obtained from the present study indicate that the method employed in the prediction can be used as a tool to understand the effect of various parts of Air Intake System for optimization and to reduce the number of experimental investigations to arrive at a final design.