A study on in-cylinder flow field of a 125cc motorcycle engine at low engine speeds

The in-cylinder flow characteristics of a four-stroke, four-valve, pent-roof small engine of motorcycle at engine speeds from 2000 rpm to 4000 rpm were studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The aim of this study was to investigate the in-cylinder flow characteristics of small engines, including tumble, swirl, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), angular momentum, in-cylinder air mass, turbulent velocity, turbulent length scale, and air flow pattern (in both intake and compression strokes) under motoring conditions. The engine geometry was created using SolidWorks, then was exported and analyzed using CONVERGE, a commercial CFD method. Grid independence analysis was carried out for this small engine and the turbulence model was observed using the renormalized group (RNG) k-ɛ model. The pressure boundary conditions were used to define the fluid pressure at the intake and exhaust of the port. The results showed that the increase in the engine speed caused the swirl flow in the small engine to be irregularly shaped. The swirl flow had a tendency to be stable and almost constant in the beginning of the compression stroke and increased at the end of compression stroke. However, the increase of in engine speed had no significant effect on the increase in tumble ratio, especially during the intake stroke. There was an increase in tumble ratio due to the increase in engine speed at the end of compression stroke, but only a marginal increase. The increase in engine speed had no significant effect on the increase in angular momentum, TKE, or turbulent velocity from the early intake stroke until the middle of the intake stroke. However, the angular momentum increased due to the increase in engine speed from the middle of the intake stroke to the end of compression stroke, and the angular momentum achieved the biggest increase when the engine speed rose from 3000 to 4000 rpm by 10 % at the end of the intake stroke. The increase in engine speed caused an increase of TKE and turbulent velocity from the middle of intake stroke until the end of compression stroke. Moreover, the biggest increase of TKE and turbulent velocity occurred when the engine speed rose from 3000 to 4000 rpm at the middle of intake stroke around 50 % and 25 %, respectively. Turbulent length scales appeared to be insensitive to increasing engine speed, especially in the intake stroke until 490 °CA. From that point, the value of the turbulent length scale increased as engine speed increased. The biggest increase in the turbulent length scales occurred when the intake valve was almost closed (around 20 %) and the engine speed was within two specific ranges (2000 to 3000 rpm and 3000 to 4000 rpm). Regarding the effect of engine speed, there were no significant effects upon the accumulated air mass in the small engine. The increase in engine speed caused an increase of turbulence in the combustion chamber during the late stages of the compression stroke. The increase in turbulence enhanced the mixing of air and fuel and made the mixture more homogeneous. Moreover, the increase in turbulence directly increased the flame propagation speed. Further research is recommended using a new design with several types of intake ports as well as combinations of different intake ports and some type of piston face, so that changes in air flow characteristics in small engines can be analyzed. Finally, this study is expected to help decrease the number of experiments necessary to obtain optimized systems in small engines.