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Though CFD methods have become very popular and widespread tools in the early as well as more advanced automotive design stages, they are still not so common in the motorcycle industry branch. The present work aims at the development of a comprehensive simulation environment, based on the open-source finite volume toolbox OpenFOAM®, for the aerodynamic and thermal fluxes optimization of a full motorcycle-and-rider geometry. The paper is divided in two parts: in the first one, the OpenFOAM® code is evaluated for a cold flow aerodynamic analysis, using a slightly simplified version of the Aprilia RSV4 motorbike geometry; in the second one, a mixed reduced scale-full scale methodology is proposed for the simultaneous assessment of aerodynamic forces and heat transfer performances of the engine cooling system. Results have been compared against other well established commercial CFD packages and, where available, with experimental measurements.

The internal mixture formation by gasoline direct injection offers a remarkable potential to improve the engine performances and to reduce the pollutant emission, due to the large possibilities of process control. On the other hand, the control mechanisms their selves are more complex and sensitive at speed or load variations than the ones used for external mixture formation. The spray characteristics, as well as the shape of injection rate have to be accurately adapted to every condition of load, speed and surrounding. This paper presents a method for the effective optimization of GDI techniques for SI engines, which is exemplified by a system with direct injection by high pressure modulation. The method is based on the interactive optimization of the processes within the injection system respectively during the spray evolution, by a feed-back strategy between separate numerical simulations of both processes.