One of the key issues in internal combustion engine development today is the minimization of engine raw emissions. Although 1D thermodynamics and 3D CFD simulation is already widely used in IC engine research and development at major OEMs for more than one or even two decades, emission models still lack the ability to make accurate quantitative predictions.
In an attempt to overcome this problem AVL has joined forces with acknowledged researchers in this field and is working on continuous improvements of existing models as well as on the development of new approaches. Together with FIRE v2008 we have released a first version of the so-called kinetic soot model. Together with the improvements introduced now in v2009 – this is a model to consider water as oxidizer - the model is now capable to predict soot emissions significantly better than any other previously release model.
Compared to the formerly recommended Lund model our engine tests show that the simulation result for soot emission has improved with the v2009 kinetic model in 20 out of 21 cases.
In v2009 the kinetic soot model offers also parameter sets for additionally fuels, so that the list of supported fuels now includes CH4, C3H8, C7H16, C14H30, C2H5OH.