As a way to meet fuel-consumption targets and emissions legislation, commercial vehicle manufacturers are finding innovative new ways to improve the efficiency of their vehicles, including digital simulation, according to a Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) story in CV News.
Engineers are placing their trust in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which solves complex equations to simulate the flow of fluids and gases across, around or inside an object. The results are then rendered in graphics that enable engineers to visualize the flow around a vehicle body or through an internal combustion engine.
Ford used Convergent Science’s CONVERGE CFD during the development of its new EcoBlue diesel engine for the Transit. One of the areas where it was applied was in perfecting a new, mirror-image porting design for the integrated inlet manifold. This enabled the engineers to have closer control over the way the engine burns fuel.
Ford says that when fine-tuning the combustion process, digital experiments used measurements from more than 1,400 factors that affect performance of the valve lift and timing alone.
The full story is here.