Title: Simulation of the oil droplet laden air flow in the crankcase of an Internal Combustion engine

Authors: Wilfried Edelbauer, Heinrich Kratochwill, Gunter Brenn, Reinhard Tatschl

Addresses: Advanced Simulation Technologies, AVL List GmbH, Hans-List-Platz 1, 8020 Graz, Austria. ' Advanced Simulation Technologies, AVL List GmbH, Hans-List-Platz 1, 8020 Graz, Austria. ' Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria. ' Advanced Simulation Technologies, AVL List GmbH, Hans-List-Platz 1, 8020 Graz, Austria

Abstract: For improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines, the optimisation of the oil and air flow in the crankcase is of particular interest. Due to the complexity of the crank drive motion CFD was rarely used for this application so far. The present work intends to provide a better understanding of the droplet formation and transport processes in the crankcase. Therefore, model correlations have been implemented into a CFD code capable to deal with moving unstructured computational meshes. The simulation shows the oil disintegration at the crank drive and illustrates the propagation of the oil droplets during one crankshaft revolution.

Keywords: crankcase; droplet size distribution; engine oil; lubrication; multi-phase numerical simulation; rotary atomisation; air flow; two-phase flow; oil droplets; internal combustion engines; oil disintegration; crank drive; CFD; computational fluid dynamics.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2009.022304

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2009 Vol.9 No.1, pp.1 - 15

Published online: 29 Dec 2008 *

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