Summer 2016 is here and the Automotive and Energy Research Industrial Mentorship Research (AERIM) program at Oakland University is underway! This program, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation is providing aspiring undergraduate engineers with an awesome research and mentorship experience to help develop potential and career interests.
This summer Morgan Jones and myself, Aaron Demers, will be conducting research under Dr. Guessous on an engine cooling project. To preface our research, in today's world the demand for more efficient engines is leading to the development of smaller engines that can produce the same amount or even more power than before. Because of the increase in power density, today's engines are facing somewhat of a cooling problem as increasing thermal loads can cause many issues. Our research is geared towards cooling the bottom of engine pistons using an upward facing oil jet. To achieve this end, we are using ANSYS Fluent 15.0, an advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation software, to simulate and solve for the impingement area of the oil jet on the flat plate of a piston. Optimizing the technology of oil jets is essential to the automotive and energy industry and the usage of CFD programs is becoming an industry standard.
This first week, our group practiced running simulations with ANSYS Fluent using available tutorials online in order to get the hang of using the software. The training included learning how to build geometries, use different CFD solution methods, importing mesh, creating boundary conditions, and analyzing results from the simulation. Understanding the typical workflow for Fluent is imperative for our continuing research. Below are just a few pictures of some of the results we simulated.
 |
| Tutorial 1 : Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Through a Mixing Tube Elbow |
 |
| Tutorial 3: Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Through a Heat Exchanger |
 |
| Tutorial 4: Periodic Flow Through a Tube Bank |
No comments:
Post a Comment