Numerical Analysis of Flow at Water Jacket of an Internal Combustion Engine 2007-01-2711

Withdrawal of heat from internal combustion engines is a major concern in today's automotive industry, mainly due to material constraints and components durability. In this sense, a numerical study was conducted to analyze the water flow inside MWM INTERNATIONAL's high-speed diesel engine, in order to determine possible cavitation regions, which can reduce the heat transfer efficiency. The analysis is carried out with the help of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) commercial software FLUENT, from ANSYS Inc. The model was built as steady-state, turbulent, single phase flow. Heat transfer from the solid water jacket to the fluid zone was also considered. For this reason, the cavitation regions were identified through vapor pressure.