Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization

Sharjah,U.A.E January 20-22 2009

THE SIMULATION OF TRANSIENT HEAT TRANSFER WITHIN PISTON

IN SPARK IGNITION COMBUSTION ENGINES

Dr. Mahmood Farzaneh Gord Hamid Hajializadeh

Shahrood University of Technology Shahrood University of Technology

The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,
Shahrood, Iran Shahrood, Iran
mahmood.farzaneh@yahoo.co.uk Hamid.hajializadeh@gmail.com

ABSTRACT The equation of state for an ideal gas is

A combined thermodynamic simulation and transient PV = mRT (1)

conduction heat transfer through piston has been carried out in
Taking the logarithm of both sides and differentiating with
this study. In the thermodynamic simulation, a computer program
respect to crank angle gives
has been developed to study the full operation cycle of a four
stroke internal combustion engine. The simulation used to 1
calculate the pressure and temperature field existing in realistic ( PdV + VdP) = mdT + Tdm (2)
engine combustion chambers for various engine parameters. The R
axisymmetric conduction heat transfer equation has been solved It can be assumed that the internal energy is only a function
numerically to study transient temperature distribution within of the temperature and the combustion process is modeled as a
piston. The results show a good agreement with previous studies single zone. The first law of thermodynamics can be written in
where applicable. differential form for an open thermodynamic system. If changes
in potential energy are neglected, then
INTRODUCTION
mC CV (dT ) + CV TC (dm) = ∂Q − PdV + (dm)hi
(3)
It is well known that heat transfer influences internal + mi C P (dT ) − (dm)he + m e C P (dT )
combustion engine (ICE) performance, efficiency and emissions
significantly. Cooling the cylinder wall and piston head is desired With combining equation (2) and (4) and arranging it we get
because of problems such as thermal stresses, deterioration of the CV C
lubricating oil film and knock and pre ignition. On the other hand, (1 + ) PdV = ∂Q − V VdP + (dm)hi + mi C P (dT )
an increase of heat transfer to the combustion chamber walls will R R (4)
lower the gas temperature and pressure within the cylinder, and − (dm)he + m e C P (dT )
this reduces the work per cycle transferred to the piston. The
piston is one of critical places in term of thermal load as no CV 1
effective way of cooling exists in reality. In order to obtain the Introducing = and C P = CV K then rearranging
temperature distribution in a typical ICE piston, a combined
R K −1
thermodynamic simulation and transient conduction heat transfer equation (4) we have
through piston has been done in this study. The thermodynamic dP K − 1 ∂Q K dV dm dT
simulation was based on first law of thermodynamics in which = − P + ( i ) RKTi + mi RK ( i )
the combustion chamber was assumed an open system. The dθ V ∂θ V dθ dθ dθ
simulation has been carried out for full cycle (720 degree of crank dme dTe
angle) so the intake and exhaust stroke has been modeled. −( ) RKTe − me RK ( )
dθ dθ
Axisymmetric transient conduction heat transfer equation was
(5)
solved numerically in order to obtain temperature distribution
through piston. The engine simulator and heat This equation has to be solved iteratively, and to do so, we
Conduction solver has been coupled to predict in cylinder should calculate its terms.
properties and piston temperature. This approach allows more
accurate simulations of engine combustion and heat transfer.

1.1.Engine & Heat Transfer Modeling

As analytic functions cannot be used to describe engine

processes, it is necessary to solve the governing equations on a
step-wise basis.

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization
Sharjah,U.A.E January 20-22 2009

  θ − θ  m +1 

0
x b (θ ) = 1 − exp − a    (10)
  ∆θ  

Where, θ is the crank angle, θ 0 is the start of combustion,

∆θ is the total combustion duration ( x b = 0 to x b = 1 ). a and
m are adjustable parameters. Varying a and m changes the
shape of the mass fraction burned curves. Actual mass fraction
burned curves have fitted with a = 5 and m = 2.
Ql , is the lost heat due to convection in combustion chamber.
It can be calculated from
hA π
∂Ql = (T g − TW ) (11)
ω 180

Where, h is the heat transfer coefficient, A is the surface

area in contact with the gases, T g is the mean charge temperature
and TW is the wall temperature.
Figure1.Engine geometric properties To calculate convective heat transfer coefficient we use
woschni correlation.
According to figure1, the volume of the engine cylinder and h = 3.26b −0.2 P 0.8 T −0.55 v 0.8 (12)
the rate of its change can be expressed, respectively, by
Where, p is instantaneous cylinder pressure, b is bore
1 πB 2  2 a  diameter, T is instantaneous gas temperature and v is the
V = s( ) ( ) + 1 − cos θ + (1 − cos 2θ ) (6)
2 4  Cr − 1 4r  characteristic velocity of gases.
According to woschni correlation, the characteristic velocity
dV 1 πB 2  a  of in cylinder gas for a four stroke engine without swirl is
= s( ) sin θ + sin 2θ  (7)
dθ 2 4  2r 
V d Tr (13)
Where, B is the cylinder internal diameter, S is the engine v = c1 S p + c 2 ( p − pm )
Pr V r
stroke, Cr is the engine compression ratio, a is the crank radius
of the engine and r is the length of the connecting rod. The constants are:
Equation (5) is valid whether or not dQ is interpreted as the
−180 ≤ θ ≤ θ 0 c1 = 2.28 c2 = 0
heat addition due to combustion or the heat lost by the gases in
(14)
the cylinder because of convection. To admit both possibilities,
we can write
θ 0 ≤ θ ≤ +180 c1 = 2.28 c 2 = 3.24 × 10 −3
dQ = Qin dx − dQl (8) (15)

Where Qin is the total value of the heat that can be released
from the combustion of the quantity, m f , of fuel.
Qin = η C m f C fl
(9)
Where, C fl is the lower calorific value of the fuel and η c is
the combustion efficiency. We consider the combustion
efficiency, the value of 0.9.
The heat addition for spark ignition engines may be a
prescribed function of crank angle. The function that is generally
used for calculating mass fraction burned during combustion is
weib function.
p m , is the motoring pressure that can be calculated from
CrV d γ
[( ) pa ]
pm = Cr − 1 (16)
Vγ
The mass flow rate through a poppet valve is usually
described by the equation for the compressible flow through a
flow restriction. This equation is derived from a one dimensional
isentropic flow analysis and the real gas flow effects are included
by means of an experimentally determined discharge coefficient,
CD .
The mass flow rate is related to the upstream stagnation
pressure p 0 and stagnation temperature T0 , static pressure just
downstream the flow restriction p r and a reference area AR
characteristic of the valve design.

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization
Sharjah,U.A.E January 20-22 2009

0.5 chamber was a specified heat flux, which was obtained through
  γ −1   1
. C A P P  2γ  P  engine simulation in first part of analysis.
m = D R 0.50 ( T )  1 − ( T ) γ  γ (17)
Computational model for this analysis is shown below.
( RT0 ) P  γ − 1  P 
0
 0
 
γ
When the flow is choked, PT ≤  2  γ −1 the appropriate
 
P0  γ + 1
equation is
γ +1
1
. C D AR P0  2  2(γ −1) (18)
m= (γ ) 2  
( RT0 ) 0.5  γ + 1

The value of C D for both intake and exhaust valves is taken

0.7 [3] and the reference area AR is the valve head area.
The approach to determine the piston temperature
distributions is deduced from the energy conservation law. For
simplicity it is assumed that the engine geometry is axisymmetric.
In this paper we calculate two dimensional temperature variations
in piston. Figure2.The grid structure and boundary condition used
For two dimensional temperature distribution, the unsteady in heat transfer computation
heat flow equation is
1 ∂ ∂T ∂ ∂T 1 ∂T The two dimensional model has been considered as three
(r )+ ( )= ( ) (21) blocks and temperature distribution on the joint grids of blocks
r ∂r ∂r ∂z ∂z α ∂t boundary, preserved as an average temperature of up and down
Where r and z are the coordinates in the radial and axial grids.
k
directions, respectively, T is the wall temperature, α = is 1.2.Results & Discussion
ρc p
the thermal diffusivity and t is time. Now the equation (5) can be solved iteratively using governed
Using the explicit Saul’yev finite difference method, the explicit functions and equations of thermal parameters. Throughout the
finite difference expression can be obtained. present work, a prototype single cylinder, four stroke engine is
used to illustrate all of the thermodynamic points to be made. It
Ti n, j+1 − Ti n, j 2α h h has a bore of 100mm, a stroke of 111.1mm and a swept volume of
= [h1 (1 + 2 )(Ti n+1, j − Ti n, j ) − h2 (1 − 1 )(Ti n, j+1 − Ti n−+1,1j )] +
∆t h1h2 h 2ri 2ri 872.5cm3 and it works with speed of 3000rpm. The fuel is octane
(22)
2α with a declared calorific value of 44.3 MJ/kg.
[l1 (Ti n, j +1 − Ti n, j ) − l 2 (Ti n, j+1 − Ti n, j+−11 )]
l1l 2l Initial temperature of piston was considered 400K and engine
Where simulation started with this value of temperature. In this case the
piston was stationary and the material was an aluminum alloy
h1 = ri − ri −1 with conductivity k=150W/mK, density p=2790kg/m3 and
specific heat cp = 883J/kgK.
h2 = ri +1 − ri
The temperature on the outer boundaries was considered
h = h1 + h2 375K [4]. After first simulation the temperature of piston will be
(23) modified and the program re simulates engine cycle till results get
l1 = z j − z j −1
a good precision.
l2 = z j +1 − z j In figures 3 and 4 the simulated pressure and work of the
l = l1 + l2 engine has been shown for various compression ratio of engine.
The increasing cylinder pressure with greater compression
The equation then can be solved using iterative method. ratio is easily seen. The higher compression ratio means
As the boundary conditions, the temperatures on the outer compression into a smaller volume at TDC, raising the pressure
surfaces of the piston were treated as constant surface and temperature at the end of compression.
temperature conditions, in which the temperature equals either the
measured coolant temperature or the oil temperature in the
crankshaft case [4]. This is reasonable because the variation of
the temperature on these surfaces is much smaller than that on the
inner surfaces of the combustion chamber. The boundary
condition on the inner gas-side surface of the combustion

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization
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In figure 5 the convective heat transfer coefficient that has

been calculated using equation (12) is drawn for various
compression ratios. Because of the direct dependency of
convective heat transfer coefficient to pressure of the cylinder, at
higher compression ratios there is an obvious increment in heat
transfer coefficient.
In cylinder temperature for engine cycle is also drawn in
figure 6. Increasing pressure of the cylinder causes increment of
in-cylinder temperature. But increasing the convective heat
transfer coefficient, transfer this energy of fuel to the coolant and
causes lower in-cylinder temperature at higher compression ratio.

Figure3. Simulated pressure of engine for compression

ratio 5 to 11

Figure6. In cylinder temperature variation with crank

angle for compression ratio 5 to 11

Using the in-cylinder thermal parameters, the boundary

Figure4. Simulated pressure of engine for compression
ratio 5 to 11 versus volume
condition for upper boundary of piston is achieved.
The two dimensional temperature distribution of piston is
calculated for the full cycle of engine. In figures 7 and 8
temperature distribution of piston are shown for compression
ratio 5 and 11 at the moment that piston position is at TDC after
ignition.

Figure5. Heat transfer coefficient variation with crank

angle for compression ratio 5 to 11 Figure7. Temperature distribution of piston at TDC for
compression ratio 5

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization
Sharjah,U.A.E January 20-22 2009

Figure8. Temperature distribution of piston at TDC for Figure10. Temperature distribution of piston at TDC for
compression ratio 11 fuel METHANOL

From the figures, it is obvious that mean temperature of

piston is higher in higher compression ratio.
Simulation repeated for various fuels and temperature profile
calculated in the piston when compression ratio is 8. At table 1
some properties of these fuels have shown.

Molecular
Fuel Formula LHV(Kj/Kg) (A/F)stoi
weight
Methane CH4 16 50010 17.2
Propane C3H8 44 46360 15.6
Methanol CH4O 32 19910 6.5
Ethanol C2H6O 46 26820 9
Table1. Alternative fuels with properties

Figures 9 to 12 show the temperature distribution in the Figure11. Temperature distribution of piston at TDC for
piston when piston is at TDC after ignition. fuel ETHANOL

Figure9. Temperature distribution of piston at TDC for Figure12. Temperature distribution of piston at TDC for
fuel METHANE fuel PROPANE

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization
Sharjah,U.A.E January 20-22 2009

CONCLUSIONS

A combined thermodynamic simulation and transient

conduction heat transfer through piston has been carried out in
this study. In thermodynamic simulation, a computer program has
been developed to study the full operation cycle of a four stroke
internal combustion engine. The simulation used to calculate the
pressure and temperature field existing in realistic engine
combustion chambers for various engine parameters. The results
of the thermodynamic simulation are agreed well with
experimental and analytical results of previous studies by other
researchers. The one dimensional conduction heat transfer
equation has been solved numerically using an explicit finite
difference method. The thermodynamic simulation and heat
transfer solver has been combined to study transient temperature
profile within piston. The computed temperature swings at
different depths into the metal below the piston surface
demonstrate that for a depth exceeding about 1.2mm, the
temperature profile exhibits pseudo steady state characteristics.
These results also have a good agreement with the results of Liu
and Reitz [4].

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