Design of an efficient cooling system for new generation engines has become a critical task, which requires to be handled optimally at the design stage itself. This approach helps in minimizing the optimization trials, saving time and cost for finalization of patterns and castings. Study of water jacket core in the engine cylinder head and block is of complex nature. Shape, size and location of transfer holes play a vital role in judging the eddies formation and hot spots. It is required to eliminate the hot spots, thus improving cooling efficiency and durability of the component.
Use of CFD technique is found to be an effective design tool while dealing with such kind of complex flow problems. In this paper, effective utilization of FIRE CFD code is described for water jacket design of a modular two-cylinder diesel engine being developed from scratch. Optimization steps in finalizing the details of water transfer holes, jacket volume, inlet and outlet shapes etc., have been explained. Identification of hot spots and steps taken to eliminate them have been shown evidently. Another case study for a four-cylinder water-cooled engine is also described.
Water jacket cores were modeled in Pro-Engineer. An automatic mesher was used for meshing of jacket core. k-ε turbulence model was used for the present study. Study of flow velocity and temperature distribution was used to find flow stagnation region and hot spots.