An intake manifold geometry for enhancement of pressure drop in a diesel engine

Abstract

Intake manifolds are one of the most important components affecting performance in internal combustion engines. An intake manifold having low pressure drop is very important to maximize the mass of the drawn air into the cylinder. In addition, the intake manifolds ensure that the air is sent in equal amounts to the cylinders in order to obtain stable and compatible piston movements. Therefore, optimizing the geometry of intake manifolds is very important. One of the traditional methods in optimization is to manufacture a prototype having different manifold geometries, to test these manifolds in engine tests and to select the best performance. This method is very expensive both in terms of time and cost. It also does not provide the best possible design with an information about the behavior of the air passing through the manifold. If a designer gets this information, he may know exactly which regions need to be improved. Nowadays, optimization studies supported by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used commonly since they cost lower in time and money than conventional methods and give optimum results faster. The influence of the changes in the manifold geometry on the flow and pressure can be investigated in detail by using the CFD method. The best solution can be obtained with a high accuracy by focusing directly on the region where the geometry problem is. Our optimization study has been carried out by using Ansys-Fluent software.