F2000A092

Seoul 2000 FISITA World Automotive Congress

June 12-15, 2000, Seoul, Korea

The Computational Investigations of the Intake Port Inclined Angle

Variations on the In-cylinder Flow Patterns and the Tumble Ratio in SI
Engine
Young-Nam Kim1) *,Hee-seok Ahn1) , Kyoung-Min Cho1), Woo-Tae Kim1),Jae-Kwon Choi1)
1)

Hyundai-Motor Company, Republic of Korea

The in-cylinder three-dimensional unsteady analysis on the fluid patterns were scrutinized using computational fluid
dynamics code. The 3D CAD data were created using the 3D CAD modeling software and the computational meshes were
generated considering the movements of intake valves and piston. The calculated results of in-cylinder flow patterns for the
pent-roof type combustion chamber were in good agreements with the unsteady water rig experimental results. To
investigate the influences of the intake port inclined angle variations on the in-cylinder flow patterns and the resulting incylinder tumble ratio, each type of intake port were simulated with the intake port inclined angle variations. The results
show that as the intake port inclined angles become smaller, the in-cylinder tumble ratio were strengthened. If the intake
port inclined angle was larger than 30 degree, the in-cylinder tumble ratio was saturated. For the global in-cylinder
turbulent kinetic energy level, the values were decreased as the intake port inclined angles were increased.
Keywords: Intake Port Inclined Angle, Tumble Ratio, Turbulent Kinetic Energy
concentrated on the diesel configuration which is simple in
geometric configuration. Steady flow computations in inlet
ports have drawn more interest and have been reported be
several investigators. The resulting velocity distributions
in the valve passage have been compared with
experimental. [9-10]
In this study, we have modified the intake port inclined
angle to investigate the influences of the intake port
inclined angle variations on the in-cylinder flow patterns
and the resulting in-cylinder tumble ratio. Each type of
intake port were simulated with the intake port inclined
angle variations.

INTRODUCTION
The phenomena in the internal combustion engine are
intrinsically three-dimensional and affected by many
factors such as geometric shape of engine, turbulent
intensities of the inlet flow and the mean velocity level at
the spark plug region etc. and it is well known that the
intake process and its resulting flow patterns in the
combustion chamber have significant influences on the
combustion process and eventually on the pollutant
components.[1]
Over the last decades, many efforts in conjunction with
the experimental and computational tools have been
carried out to understand the fundamental characteristics
of intake system. These studies provided valuable insight
into the three-dimensional flow structure in the intake
system and the substantial influences of the intake system
configuration on the in-cylinder flow structure. [2-4]
Recently with the development of the computational
capability of the computer, the possibilities and the
limitations of a multi-dimensional computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) as an industrial design tool have been
improved significantly. To use the CFD as an engineering
tool for design and optimization of the system, the
validation of its predictive accuracy and the limitation of
its application should be defined clearly. Because of the
complex shape of engine and valve configuration, there are
few studies which have been taken into account the actual
configuration of the engine. Menne et al [5] and Errera [6]
simulated the simultaneous flow computation in inlet ports
and combustion chambers. Taghavi et al [7] computed the
combustion process of an intake system considering the
moving valves and piston. Kang et al [8] simulated full
cycles of the combustion process with some assumptions.
Due to the limitation of computational capability and the
mesh generation methodolgy above studies have been

MODELING
The geometry used for the three-dimensional steady flow
simulation consists of the intake port, the intake valves and
the cylinder liner of a single DOHC engine. The shape of
the combustion chamber is a pentroof type configuration
which make it difficult to generate the computational
mesh. The engine geometry is shown in fig 1.
The commercial CFD code FIRE was used for the
calculations. FIRE is a three-dimensional elliptic
hyperbolic flow simulation code for steady/unsteady
laminar and high/low Reynolds number turbulent flow in
complex geometry with stationary/moving boundaries or
interface within the solution domain. The grid generation
for industrial application is a tedious job and generating
the mesh suitable to the industrial design tool is very
difficult due to the complex configuration of geometry. So
most of the commercial computational fluid dynamics
codes adopt preprocessors for the generation of
computational grid and allow the functions to get the
externally generated mesh for the compensation of code
flexibility. We used the commercial preprocessor ICEM
CFD/CAE specialized for the mesh generation of
computational fluid dynamics problem. The computational
1

base case is 23 degree and to investigate the influences of

the intake port inclined angle, we change the intake port
inclined angle to 15 degree, 30 degree and 40 degree.
Fig. 2 shows the intake pressure boundary variations
with respect to crank angle.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fig. 3 shows the vector plot at the bore center crosssection for the flow pattern comparison between FIRE
calculation and the water rig test results at the BDC piston
position. Due to the experimental viewing limitation in the
water rig test, the flow examination is limited to the region
from just below the combustion chamber bottom plane to
the piston top plane. With the inlet jet flow at the intake
port, the well-developed tumble flow is generated at the
intake port side. As shown in the figure, the calculation
resembles the test flow distributions well. Fig 4 shows the
in-cylinder flow patterns at the intake port valve center
cross-section during the intake process with the intake port
inclined angle variations. For all inclined angles, the strong
jet flows are generated by the pressure differences between
intake port and in-cylinder. At the valve curtain area region,
the inlet jet generates the counter-clockwise tumble below
the intake valve and the clockwise tumble flow is generated
at the exhaust valve side. At the initial stage of intake
process, the global intake flow patterns are not so variant
with the intake port inclined angle variations.

Fig. 1 The Engine Geometry for the Calculation

mesh was fully structured with higher mesh densities at the
valve seat region.
There are three steps in grid generation. First step is the
division of a computational domain into small logical
blocks. Because of the complexities of geometry, the
configuration of each block should be considered
carefully. Since the physical quantities such as velocities,
pressure, turbulent intensities etc, change significantly at
the valve curtain region special care was taken into to the
valve seat region for more accurate calculation. The
second step is the formation of a computational grid on
each face of block. This is the surface mesh generation
process used in the next step. The third step is the full
generation of three-dimensional volume grid. The process
of mesh generation is a quite involved and time consuming
due to the complexities of geometry and the structured
mesh requirement. The generated mesh size is of an order
of 100,000 ~ 200,000.
The calculation was performed the intake process from
10 degree intake BTDC to 0 degree Firing TDC and the
intake pressure boundary condition was obtained from
experimental data. The inclined angle of intake port for the

Fig. 3 The Comparison of Flow Patterns between

Calculation and the Water Rig Test
Fig. 5 shows the in-cylinder velocity vector flow
patterns at the valve center cross-section where the crank
angle is 465 degree. For all intake port inclined angle, the
in-cylinder vector flow show similar flow patterns but as
the inclined angle increases, the inlet jet strength at the
intake valve region increases. It is considered that as the
inclined angle increases, the vertically induced inlet jet at
the intake valve region is strongly generated.
Fig. 2 The Boundary Conditions for the Calculation

Fig. 4 The Valve Center Sectional Velocity Distributions For Various Port Angle
tumble generated by the inlet jet coalesce each other,
which results in the large global tumble flow in the
cylinder. In case of small intake port inclined angle, for the
case of inclined angle = 15 and 23 degree, the inlet jet
generated at the intake valve region is larger than the large

Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 show the in-cylinder velocity vector

flow patterns at intake valve center cross-section and
cylinder center cross-section at BDC intake process. As
shown in the figure, the clockwise and counter-clockwise

Fig. 5 The Valve Center Sectional Velocity Distributions For Various Port Angle(CA=465 Degree)
3

Fig. 6 The Bore Center Sectional Velocity Distributions For Various Port Angle(CA=BDC Position)
Intake port inclined angle, for the case of inclined angle =
30 and 40 degree and this results in the large global tumble
ratio.

Tumble ratio was calculated to express the rotational

motion in cylinder by a normalized number. Tumble ratio
is defined as organized rotations of the charge motion
around specific cylinder axis. In this study, the tumble
ratio were calculated for vertical planes in z-direction
which is perpendicular to the cylinder head plane. The

TUMBLE RATIO VARIATION

Fig. 7 The Valve Center Sectional Velocity Distributions For Various Port Angle(CA=BDC Position)
4

points within the entire calculated volume were used to

calculate the global tumble ratio variations. For the
calculation of tumble ratio, the center of the tumble
calculation used the coordinate system with a moving
origin located at instantaneous center of the cylinder
volume.
The definition of calculated angular momentum is shown
below. The angular momentum calculation is done for all
domain including whole cylinder.

i =

Mt
i ri ui i

[s -1 ]

r m
r m

[s -1 ]

D =

where,

Fig. 8 The In-Cylinder Tumble Ratio

Variations with Crank Angle

mi = i Mass
ri = i Dis tan ce
M t = Momentum

position, the in-cylinder tumble ratio increases and at 660

ATDC position, the in-cylinder tumble crashes and the incylinder tumble decreases.
Calculations of angular motions such as tumble ratio
have attempt to provide some insight into the motion of
fluid within an engine cylinder. This definition gives the
flow structure in the cylinder but they may not represent a
good resolution of the entire fluid motion as defined. The
results of the tumble calculations indicate that only small
size of tumble exists within the cylinder through the end
of compression stroke even though the two counter
rotating vortex structures contribute to the flow field
generating strong turbulence in the cylinder

i = i Area
u i = i Vector

The definition of revolution from the above angular

velocity is
nD =

30 D

[min -1 ]

The tumble raio definition from the calculated revolution

is
SN =

n
nD

Tumble is created by bringing intake flow into the

cylinder with an initial angular momentum. The rotational
motion set up during intake is sometimes used to promote
rapid mixing between the air charge and injected fuel.
Fig. 8 shows the tumble ratio variations in the cylinder
with the crank angle variations. In the early intake process,
the tumble ratio value got its peak at 390 degree and
thereafter the values decrease finally got nearly zero value
at 430 degree crank angle. This is caused by the strong
inlet jet at the valve curtain region. The counter-clockwise
vortex and the clock-wise vortex coalesce each other after
the 390 degree crank angle. The higher flow passing over
the intake valve causes the tumble ratio to be positive. The
tumble value is likely to locally decrease after the BDC
position which seems to be caused by the vanishment of
the momentum source that strengthen the in-cylinder
flows. After the BDC piston position, as the piston is going
upward and the in-cylinder flow is strengthened which
results in the well-developed tumble motions in the
cylinder. As the piston is going up from BDC to TDC

Fig. 9 The In-Cylinder Global Turbulent Kinetic

Energy Variations with Crank Angle
As shown in the Fig. 8, the in-cylinder tumble ratio got
larger when the inclined angle is 15 degree than the higher
intake port inclined angle. At the 30 degree and 40 degree
inclined angle, the tumble ratio variation is not so big. At
BDC position, for the 15 degree of inclined angle, the
5

inclined angle variations. As the intake port inclined

angle is larger, the in-cylinder tumble level is more
strengthened. If the intake port inclined angle was
larger than 30 degree, the in-cylinder tumble ratio was
saturated. For the global in-cylinder turbulent kinetic
energy level, the values were decreased as the intake
port inclined angles were increased.
3) At the early stage of intake process, the global turbulent
kinetic energy in the cylinder is likely to increase by the
strong annular inlet jet and get its peak value at near
480 degree ATDC. Due to the decrease of the inlet jet
strength, the turbulent kinetic energy decreases and
after the BDC position, the turbulent kinetic energy get
its peak at the end of compression stroke. As the intake
port inclined port angle is decreased, the turbulent
kinetic energy in the cylinder is likely to decrease.
4) At the early stage of intake process, the turbulent
kinetic energy level at the spark plug region is large for
the small intake port inclined angle. But at the end of
compression process, the turbulent kinetic energy level
at the spark plug region is large for the large intake port
inclined angle.

tumble ratio is 8% larger than the standard case and for the
30 degree of inclined angle, the tumble value is 35% lower
than the standard case. As shown in the figure, at the
inclined angle which is higher than 30 degree, the tumble
ratio seems to be saturated.
Fig. 9 shows the global turbulent kinetic energy
variations with the crank angle. As shown in the figure, at
the early stage of intake process, the global turbulent
kinetic energy in the cylinder is likely to be increased by
the strong annular inlet jet and got its peak value near 480
degree ATDC. Due to the decrease of the inlet jet strength,
the turbulent kinetic energy decreases and after the BDC
position, the turbulent kinetic energy got its peak at the
end of compression stroke. As the intake port inclined
angle is decreased, the turbulent kinetic energy in the
cylinder is likely to decrease.

REFERENCES
[1] Heywood,
J.B.,
Internal
Combustion
Engine
Fundamentals, McGRAW-HILL, 1989
[2] Brandstatter, W., Johns, R.J.R. and Wigley, A., SAE
Paper 850499, 1985
[3] Khalighi, B., El Tahry, S.H. and Kuziak, W.R. Jr., SAE
Paper 860462, 1986
[4] Arcoumanis, C., Valfidis, C., and Whitelaw, J.H., Journal of
Fluid Engineering, Vol. 109, 368~375, 1987
[5] Menne, R.J., Mennicken, A., and Adams, W., Proceedings of
European Automobile Engineers Cooperation Coference on
New Development in Power Train and Chasis Engineering,
Vol 1, Strasbourg, France, 1987
[6] Errera, M.P., SAE Paper 870594, 1987
[7] Taghavi, R., Dupont, A., Journal of Engineering for Gas
Turbines and Power, 1989
[8] Kang Y., Huh, Ku K., Kim, SAE Paper 920588, 1992
[9] Isshiki, Y., Shimamoto, Y., and Wakiska., Proceedings of the
COMODIA Symposium, Japan, 1985
[10] Argueyrolles, B., Taghavi R., and Zellat, M., Proceedings of
the Second Internaltional Coference on Supercomputing in
the Automobile Industry, Sellvia, Spain, Oct. 1988
[11] Vafidis, C., Aerodynamics of Reciprocating Engines.,
PhD Thesis, University of London, 1985

Fig. 10 The In-Cylinder Turbulent Kinetic Energy at

Spark Plug Region Variations with Crank Angle
Fig. 10 shows the turbulent kinetic energy variations at
the spark plug region in the cylinder. The global pattern is
likely the same to the global turbulent kinetic energy
variations. With the intake port inclined angle variations,
at the early stage of intake process, the turbulent kinetic
energy is large for the small intake port inclined angle
cases(Inclined angle = 15, 23 degree) but at the
compression process, the turbulent kinetic energy is large
for the large intake port inclined angle cases(Inclined
angle = 30, 40 degree).
The combustion phenomena and the flame propagation
characteristics investigation will be performed later to
investigate the influences of the turbulent kinetic energy
level and the mean velocity level at the spark plug region
at the end of compression stage.
CONCLUSION
1) The calculated in-cylinder flow patterns were in good
agreement with that of water rig test results.
2) In the early stage of intake process, the in-cylinder flow
patterns are not so different with the intake port