Guide Vane Swirl and Tumble Device to Improve in-cylinder Air Flow of CI Engine Using Vegetable Oil

A guide vane swirl and tumble device (GVSTD) can be used in compression ignition (CI) engines running on vegetable oils to generate better in-cylinder air flow characteristics to improve combustion efficiency. In this paper, IC engine simulations were performed to determine the effect of GVSTD on the air flow using 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. The effects of various vane heights by means of parametric optimization were investigated. The results of average in-cylinder pressure, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and velocity were analyzed before the optimum vane height to the pre-set values of vane angle, number and length were decided. Interestingly, the highest vane height failed to improve all the analyzed parameters. At a GVSTD vane height of 0.2 times the intake runner radius, the average in-cylinder pressure, TKE and velocity were found better than with other settings.