Flow through S.I. engine air intake system using CFD at part throttle and full throttle

The objective of present study is to predict and analyze the flow through the SI engine air intake system using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and to validate the prediction by experimental data. Three-dimensional model of air intake system was analyzed by using the commercially available FLUENT software. The mesh was generated using the Tethybrid scheme which includes primarily of tetrahedral mesh elements but may include hexahedral, pyramidal and wedge elements. The pressure boundary conditions were used to define the fluid pressure at the inlet and outlet of Air Intake System. In the present study, the CFD code was validated by the experimental work. Experimental data was generated at one bar outlet pressure for the part throttle and full throttle conditions. 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 results indicate that the CFD model can be used as a tool to understand the effect of various parts of air intake system for optimization. This in effect will reduce the number of experiments to be carried out for arriving at final optimized system.