Numerical Analysis of Flow at Water Jacket of an Internal Combustion Engine

Withdrawal of heat from internal combustion engines is a major concern in today's automotive industry, mainly due to material constraints and components durability. A well-designed cooling system may increase engine's reliability. In the light of this, a numerical study has been conducted to analyze the water flow inside MWM INTERNATIONAL's high-speed diesel engine. The study has been done in order to determine possible cavitation and boiling regions, which can reduce the heat transfer efficiency. The analysis was carried out with the help of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) commercial software ANSYS FLUENT^®. The flow was considered to be steady-state, turbulent, with heat transfer and the fluid was treated as a single phase. For this reason, the possible cavitation and boiling regions are identified through vapor pressure and boiling temperature, respectively. Based on those results, modifications have been made on the geometry in order to evaluate whether cavitation and boiling regions could be reduced.