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Proper flow distribution on the windshield and side windows is critical for adequate visibility while driving. Fog or ice which forms on the windshield is the main reason of invisibility and leads to major safety issue. It has been shown that proper clear visibility for the windshield could be obtained with a better flow pattern and uniform flow distribution in the defrost mode of the automobile heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system. In this study, a three dimensional numerical model of a car cabin with full HVAC system was developed using Star-CCM+, a commercial CFD package. The Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS) approach with the realizable two-layer k-ε turbulence model was employed for simulating the airflow field on the windshield for the defrost mode. The HVAC unit, ducts and defroster grille were included in the analysis in detail and the air distribution on the windshield was studied.

The performance of an automobile engine depends on the adequate heat rejection through the radiator assembly. Despite of the existence of well-known theoretical models for various heat transfer applications, design of heat exchanger devices demands tremendous experimental work and effort. This study concerns the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to analyze the heat transfer and fluid flow in finned tube heat exchangers which are widely used in automotive industries. Here, two different types of the finned tube heat exchangers were studied using the Star-CCM+ commercial CFD package. Because of the symmetric nature of the geometry, only a single fin was considered in simulations. Two different designs of finned tube heat exchanger were considered in the analysis and major attention was given to the fin configurations, louvers number and louvers angle.

In recent years, gasoline direct injection (GDi) engines have been popular due to their inherent potential for reduction of exhaust emissions and fuel consumption to meet stringent EPA standards. These engines require high-pressure fuel injection in order to improve the atomization process and accelerate mixture preparation. The high-pressure fuel pump is an essential component in the GDi system. Therefore, understanding the flow characteristics of this device and its associated behavior is critical for improving the performance of this category of engines. In this paper, the fluid flow characteristics in a high-pressure single-piston pump for use in GDi engines are analyzed using 1-D LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim system and 3-D Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. The flow rate of the fuel pump under various cam speeds has been examined along with characteristics of the pump's control valve.

This paper describes a correlation study on fuel spray pattern recognition of multi-hole injectors for gasoline direct injection (GDi) engines. Spray pattern is characterized by patternation length, which represents the distance of maximum droplet concentration from the axis of the injector. Five fuel injectors with different numbers and sizes of nozzle holes were considered in this study. Experimental data and CFD modeling results were used separately to develop regression models for spray patternation. These regressions predicted the influence of a number of injector operating and design parameters, including injection system operating pressure, valve lift, injector hole length-to-diameter ratio (L/d) and the orientation of the injector hole. The regression correlations provided a good fit with both experimental and CFD spray simulation results. Thus CFD offers a good complement to experimental validation during development efforts to meet a desired injector spray pattern.