IN-CYLINDER FLOW CHARACTERIZATION USING VORTICITY BASED PARAMETERS

The paper deals with intake swirling flow characterization in the cylinder of IC engine. The commonly used method based on the swirl resp. tumble number from angular momentum flux evaluation does not need to give the appropriate values in some cases. Typically, in the case of two intake ports, a counter-rotating swirl vortex pair is presented. However their summary angular momentum flux is zero a thus corresponding swirl number is zero too. In order to correctly quantify these cases, it is proposed to evaluate so called vorticity numbers, i.e. dimensionless numbers based on vorticity evaluation. Concrete results are evaluated from data obtained using 3-D CFD simulation in AVL FIRE code. Comparison of variously defined vorticity numbers with each other and with the vortex numbers is performed. A practical way of calculating the vorticity numbers was also suggested with regard to possible adverse effects of the velocity gradients at the cylinder wall.