Numerical Analysis of Cooling Process of an Torch Ignition System

The internal combustion engines require an efficient cooling system, the high temperatures generates at the time of combustion, reaching 2500 K peak burned gas. The materials used in the construction of the cylinder must operate within a maximum value, as well as the fluid film of lubricant oil. A bad dimensioned cooling system can lead to serious consequences such as loss of engine performance and/or efficiency, pre-ignition and increased exhaust emissions and may even lead to the destruction of the engine. In the torch ignition system overheating of the pre-chamber is even more critical and may lead to significant losses. Thus the torch ignition system requires an efficient cooling to prevent deterioration of the pre-chamber and consequently the engine caused by overheating. The solution proposed to resolve this inconvenience is the use of the cooling gallery in the cylinder head, for cooling the pre-chamber that is selected. For this cooling system using gallery of water around the pre-chamber, a computational model is proposed using the energy balance and three-dimensional heat conduction in steady state and transient. For the numerical modeling of the pre-chamber system is used the commercial ANSYS FLUENT software. The numerical results were analyzed and used for the improvement of the proposed cooling system. From the results of the numerical model, the prototype was designed and assembled in a commercial engine which was tested on dynamometer bench, generating satisfactory results