Data Sheets

AVL FIRE ® is a powerful multi-purpose 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. It specifically addresses problem solutions in the field of research and development of conventional and alternative powertrains. This page offers information about the capabilities of the software and its modules.

FIRE® for internal combustion engine design and development

For more than two decades AVL FIRE® has been used successfully in research and development departments of leading engineering companies to design and optimize internal combustion engines in terms of thermo-fluid dynamics. AVL itself maintains a team of 25 people, who perform CFD simulation as customer service and as service within in-house research projects. Besides the permanent development and improvement of numerical, physical and chemical simulation models, this project work, which is directly integrated into the actual engine design and development process, is the major contribution to create reliable, accurate and successful software, providing countless benefits.

FIRE® for general purpose CFD

AVL FIRE® represents the latest generation of 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics. FIRE® offers the highest flexibility in regard to the supported grid types due to its Arbitrary Cell Type technology. Fluid flow simulations on the basis of meshes with polyhedral elements, arbitrary and sliding interfaces or hanging nodes are performed in a natural manner without penalties in simulation time or accuracy.

ESE Diesel – Optimization of injection strategies and combustion chamber

The AVL FIRE® Engine Simulation Environment Diesel is the first CFD simulation tool, which allows beginners, intermediate users and experts to set up, perform and analyze the injection and combustion process in Diesel engines reliably and accurately with minimum effort. Highly specialized software users are no longer required to fulfill combustion chamber analysis based on aerodynamics, injection and combustion simulation. ESE Diesel opens the door to advanced CFD for designers, mechanical and testbed engineers.

FAME CAD Data management

The CAD Data Manager offers the possibility to directly import the most common native CAD formats, e.g. CATIA and Pro/E and to convert them into the FIRE® native flm format making it obsolete to deal with exchange formats such as igs, vda or others that have caused many problems in the past..

FAME Surface wrapping

Surface data that shall be used for computational grid generation needs to fulfill certain requirements regarding quality and resolution. Complex data, such as e.g. engine compartments often contain both extremely fine resolved and small elements as well as very coarse parts. Also such data is usually assembled by importing smaller data sets from different sources. This frequently leads to assemblies that are unsuitable to be applied for automated grid generation. The AVL FIRE® FAME Surface wrapper helps to overcome the deficits of such data.

FAME 2D Sketching environment

Since on the one hand three-dimensional CAD data are often not available during the concept phase and on the other hand detailed simulations would last too long to investigate numerous designs quickly, it often seems necessary and appropriate to reduce real 3D fluid flow situations to simple, easy to modify geometrical descriptions in 2D or 2.5D. A suitable tool to accomplish this is the AVL FIRE® 2D Sketcher.

FAME Computational grid generation, hexahedron dominated (1)

The pre-processor of AVL FIRE® offers an automated grid generation tool for hexahedron dominated, boundary fitted computational model generation: FAME Advanced Hybrid, Flexible Automated Meshing Environment, applying advanced hybrid grid generation techniques, which enables fast, reliable and accurate discretization of complex three-dimensional domains.

FAME Computational grid generation, hexahedron dominated (2)

Beside the already known standard functions available to users of previous versions of the AVL FIRE® hexahedron dominated grid generation tools, FAME Hexa offers advanced technologies for grid boundary layer generation and grid generation of fully and partially enclosed materials.

FAME Computational grid generation, tetrahedron dominated

In addition to its standard hexahedron dominated grid generation tools FAME Advanced Hybrid and FAME Hexa AVL FIRE® also provides tetrahedral grid generation capabilities with its FAME Tetra. The tool offers common advantages of tetrahedral grid generation software such as applicability to problems with highest geometrical complexity while absolutely easy to use.

FAME Grids sets for internal combustion engine simulation

FAME Engine + is a user friendly environment for setting up and running the process of generating computational grids required to simulate flows in internal combustion engines. Linked to FAME Advanced Hybrid and FAME Hexa it applies the settings of a preceding FAME meshing process to online adopted CAD data and generates all grids necessary to simulate a desired crank angle range .

The FIRE® Main program

The AVL FIRE® Solver is based on the Finite Volume approach. The solution algorithm employed enables flexibility in the usage of any unstructured grid including grids consisting of polyhedral calculation volumes. The code solves incompressible and compressible flows including supersonic flows. State-of-the-art turbulence models are implemented for accurate calculations of turbulent flows.

The FIRE® Eulerian multiphase capabilities

The FIRE® Eulerian Multiphase Module is used for the simulation of multiphase flows. Its major feature is the ability to calculate the volume fraction distribution in multiphase flows in addition to all other flow variables.

The FIRE® Lagrangian multiphase capabilities

The development of AVL FIRE® has a strong focus on capabilities related to the simulation of dispersed sprays, in particular internal combustion engine fluid flow simulation including the injection of liquid fuel. Hence the Lagrangian Multiphase Capabilities is one of the most advanced and best validated parts of AVL’s CFD solution.

The FIRE® Wall film capabilities

The deposition of liquid fuel as film on the walls of intake ports, valves, liner or piston of internal combustion engines, its transport and the subsequent evaporation of the fuel may significantly influence the engine warm-up, the generation of emissions and the oil distribution along the cylinder sleeve surface. The AVL FIRE® Wall Film Capabilities enable the simulation of the film generation, its transport and its evaporation. It accounts for film interaction with gas flow and fuel spray and is considering the effects of surface roughness on the film transport.

The FIRE® Combustion and emissions module

The ability to simulate the process of converting chemical into thermal energy enables CFD software users to design, analyse and optimize high tech equipment such as internal combustion engines, jet engines, reactors, power plants, heaters, burners and many others. To make AVL’s software applicable to the simulation of combustion processes, different combustion models have been developed and included in AVL FIRE®.

The FIRE® Eulerian / Eulerian spray capabilities

AVL and the Austrian Center of Competence AC2T have jointly developed an Eulerian spray model based on the AVL FIRE® Multiphase module. The new model solves some of the major shortcomings of the established Lagrangian spray and is available for the first time for public use in FIRE® v8.5. The model is now in the transition from development to productive use.

The FIRE® Aftertreatment module

The AVL FIRE® Aftertreatment Module is part of the AVL Aftertreatment Suite, which consists of complementary modules available in AVL BOOST, AVL CRUISE and AVL FIRE ® comprising the most advanced and most powerful set of exhaust gas aftertreatment simulation software on the market. These tools are indispensable elements in the design, development and optimization of Diesel and gasoline aftertreatment devices, with outstanding capabilities in respect to physical and chemical modeling, applicability to all common exhaust gas aftertreatment systems and perfectly complementing each other.

The FIRE® De-icing and de-fogging module

As one of the first commercial CFD codes AVL FIRE® has offered a module enabling the simulation of de-icing and de-fogging of wind screens and windows of vehicles. Its capabilities are meanwhile extensively verified in countless tests and vehicle development projects.

The FIRE® Aero acoustics module

Especially along main traffic links noise has become a major problem. Practical measures helping to fight noise pollution include speed limits on roads and highways, setting up noise barriers and shutting down airports during night hours. They are more or less effective, but none of them is actually attacking the source of the problem. But AVL FIRE® offers an efficient method to evaluate and optimize designs in respect to their noise emission during both concept and detailed design phase.

The AVL Code Coupling Interface

The AVL Code Coupling Interface (ACCI) enables coupling (co-simulation) of two or more simulation tasks. Coupling in that context means that current field values of participating simulation runs are used as either boundary condition values (e.g. pressure or velocity) or source terms (mass, momentum, enthalpy etc.) for other participating cases. Through ACCI a user may couple AVL FIRE® with itself, with other AVL Software or with 3rd party tools.

IMPRESS for 3D Post-processing

The post-processor of AVL FIRE® offers all functions required to monitor, visualize, analyze and present CFD simulation results.

IMPRESS Chart for 2D Post-processing

IMPRESS Chart is AVL’s 2D post-processing tool. It displays integrated values computed from detailed results obtained using AVL’s thermodynamics, computational fluid dynamics and multi-body dynamics simulation software in two-dimensional graphs, diagrams and in multi-dimensional tables.