[Colloquium] Seminar Announcement: Developing Predictive Multi-Dimensional Simulation Tools for Internal Combustion Engines Using Alternative Fuels of Interest

[Ninfa Mayorga]

~Reminder

Computation Institute Presentation

Speaker: Dr. Sibendu Som, Mechanical Engineer, Transportation Technology R&D Center, Energy Systems, Argonne National Laboratory
Date: June 6, 2013
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Location: Argonne National Laboratory, TCS Building 240, Room 5172, and broadcast via Adobe Connect (see below), 

Developing Predictive Multi-Dimensional Simulation Tools for Internal Combustion Engines Using Alternative Fuels of Interest

Abstract:
Second generation biofuels are going to be an important part of our country's plan to develop diverse sources of clean and renewable energy. These alternative fuels can help increase our national fuel security through renewable fuel development while simultaneously reducing emissions from the transportation sector. Given the cost for performing detailed experiments spanning a wide range of operating conditions and fuels, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), aided with high-performance computing (HPC), can potentially result in considerable cost savings. Additionally, the design cycle for engines operating on a variety of biodiesel fuels from different feedstocks of interest can be greatly reduced via high-fidelity, large-scale simulations.

An integrated modeling approach which enables coupling the nozzle flow with spray and combustion simulations, specifically developed for biodiesel fuel will be discussed. This approach accounts for nozzle flow effects such as cavitation and turbulence, in addition to aerodynamically induced breakup. The potential of Large-Eddy simulation (LES) based turbulence models together with high grid-resolution for spray combustion systems will be demonstrated. The results of LES model is compared against a standard Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) based RNG k-ε model which is routinely used for engine simulations. 

Biodiesel is a fatty acid methyl ester, which features the ester functional group and long carbon chains (e.g., C12-C18) with varying degrees of un-saturation. Due to the fuel's large molecular size and varying composition, the detailed chemical kinetics of biodiesel combustion is highly complex. These kinetic mechanisms are systematically reduced (while still retaining their chemical fidelity) for CFD simulations. The influence of uncertainty in reaction rate parameters on key engine performance parameters will be investigated. Extensive validation of the above modeling approaches will be presented against high-fidelity x-ray radiography data from Argonne and spray combustion data from Sandia National Laboratory. The detailed model developments necessitate the use of HPC to ensure acceptable wall-clock times. 

BIO:
Dr. Som received his PhD in the field of Mechanical Engineering from University of Illinois at Chicago in 2009. He was a post-doctoral appointee at Argonne National Laboratory for 1.5 years. Currently, Dr. Som is a Mechanical Engineer and Principal Investigator at Center of Transportation Research at Argonne National Laboratory, which is a Department of Energy lab. 

Dr. Som's research focus is on the development of nozzle-flow, spray, and combustion models for drop-in biofuels, high-performance computing for internal combustion engine applications, combustion chemistry.

Dr. Som serves as session organizer for ASME-Internal combustion engine division, The Combustion Institute, and Engine Combustion Network meetings. He also participates actively in Society of Automotive Engineers and International Liquid Atomization and Spray system meetings. Recently he has also been invited as a guest speaker at 'Indo-US Science and Technology' and 'The American Association for the Advancement of Science' forums.

Dr. Som has authored more than 20 journal and 40 conference papers, and one book chapter in book titled 'Fuel injection in automotive engineering'. He has more than 350 citations of his peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Som is also in the thesis committee of two MS and PHD students.

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