A distributed combustion solver for engine simulations on grids

Multi-dimensional models for predictive simulations of modern engines are an example of multi-physics and multi-scale mathematical models, since lots of thermofluiddynamic processes in complex geometrical configurations have to be considered. Typical models involve different submodels, including turbulence, spray and combustion models, with different characteristic time scales. The predictive capability of the complete models depends on the accuracy of the submodels as well as on the reliability of the numerical solution algorithms. In this work we propose a multi-solver approach for reliable and efficient solution of the stiff Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) systems arising from detailed chemical reaction mechanisms for combustion modeling. Main aim was to obtain high-performance parallel solution of combustion submodels in the overall procedure for simulation of engines on distributed heterogeneous computing platforms. To this aim we interfaced our solver with the CHEMKIN-II package and the KIVA3V-II code and carried out multi-computer simulations of realistic engines. Numerical experiments devoted to test reliability of the simulation results and efficiency of the distributed combustion solver are presented and discussed. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.