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The flow inside a combustion engine is highly complex and varies significantly with small changes in the engine configuration. For a long time IC-engine researchers have tried to predict the major mean flow patterns inside close-to-production engine setups. During the last decades computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has significantly contributed to the engine development process. Hence, significant research has focussed on the comparison of modeled and measured flows in IC engines. However, according to the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first fully three-dimensional (3-D), modeling and measurement effort that has evaluated the vast majority of the displacement volume by using an identical engine geometry. With improved, non-intrusive, 3-D velocity measurement technology, the vast majority of the cylinder displacement was explored and compared with Star-CD modeling results at the same locations.

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) prediction of the transient flow in the intake system of a spark ignition engine is compared to experimental data. The calculation was performed for a single cylinder version of a pre-1995 Ford two-valve production engine, while experiments were carried out on a single cylinder Ricardo Mark 3 research engine with similar overall geometric parameters. While the two engines have somewhat different geometries, this was not considered to be a significant problem for our study of flow features. Both set-ups employed gaseous fuel. The calculation was performed using the commercially available Star-CD code incorporating the complete intake manifold runner and cylinder into the mesh. Cylinder pressures were in good agreement with experiment indicating that wave dynamics were well captured. Comparison was also made to the measured instantaneous gas temperatures along the intake system.