This thesis concerns computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of an internal combustion engine (ICE). The aim is to perform an unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation of an internal combustion engine under motored conditions, using newly implemented features in OpenFOAM, an open-source software for CFD simulations. Due to its simplistic design and availability of experimental data, the TCC-III engine running at 800 rpm was chosen as the engine case study. The engine was developed at the University of Michigan, USA, and the geometry and the experimental data are publicly available. The meshing of the engine was performed using two different software, a commercial (GridPro) and an open-source (snappyHexMesh). Engine valve and piston motion were achieved through Wärtsilä’s in-house mesh mover model, which will be released as a part of OpenFOAM-dev in the future. Simulation results were compared in a comprehensive manner with ensembled averaged flow field data originating from particle image velocimetry (PIV). Overall, the simulation results from both mesh has shown acceptable agreement with the PIV data. However, results from GridPro mesh yielded more accurate and faster results compared to snappyHexMesh, due to GridPro’s higher-quality, block-structured, body-conformed meshing capabilities. The generated setups provide a pathway for further benchmarking of numerical methods and models of an IC engine CFD using OpenFOAM.
