ANALYZIS BY SIMULATION OF IN-CYLINDER TUMBLE MOTION

Abstract: In internal combustion engines coherent and stable tumble motion generation is still considered
an effective mean in order to both reduce engine emissions and promote higher levels of combustion
efficiency. In this research field the engine modeling and flow simulation are of great importance because
the application field of the experimental measurements is very narrow, time-consuming and expensive.
This paper briefly presents the strokes of the four-stroke engine and the various types of in-cylinder
motion during the intake event. The papers purpose is to evaluate current means for tumble motion
generation and flow simulation by presenting existent simulation software, such as AVL Fire, SolidWorks
Flow Simulation and others.
Key words: Four-Stroke Engine, Flow Patterns, Tumble Motion Generation, Engine Design, Flow
Simulation.

1. INTRODUCTION
Among the many design goals of
combustion engines, the mixing process of fuel
and oxygen occupies an important place. If a
good mixture can be achieved, the resulting
combustion is both clean and efficient, with all
the fuel burned and minimal exhaust
remaining. In turn, the mixing process strongly
depends on the inflow of the fuel and air
components into the combustion chamber or
cylinder. If the inlet flow generates sufficient
kinetic energy during this valve cycle, the
resulting turbulence distributes fuel and air
optimally in the combustion chamber. For
common types of engines, near-optimal flow
patterns are actually known and include,
among others, so-called swirl and tumble
motions. To analyze these in-cylinder flows
good visualizations are necessary. With the
general progress of CFD (Computational Fluid
Dynamics) simulations, the discipline of engine
design is made accessible to both numerical
simulation and visualization of the resulting
datasets, allowing for rapid testing of engine
designs.
2. FOUR-STROKE ENGINE
The four-stroke engine was first
demonstrated by Eugen Langen and Nikolaus
August Otto in 1866. It is also known as the
Otto cycle, however, the technically correct
term is actually four-stroke cycle. The four

strokes of the cycle are intake, compression,

power, and exhaust. Each corresponds to one
full stroke of the piston; therefore, the complete
cycle requires two revolutions (720) of the
crankshaft to complete. The four-stroke cycle
engine is the most common type of small
engine.
2.1. Intake Process [5]
The intake event is when the air-fuel
mixture is introduced to fill the combustion
chamber. The intake event occurs when the
piston moves from TDC (Top Dead Center) to
BDC (Bottom Dead Center) and the intake
valve is open. The movement of the piston
toward BDC creates a low pressure in the
cylinder. Ambient atmospheric pressure forces
the air-fuel mixture through the open intake
valve into the cylinder to fill the low pressure
area created by the piston movement. The
cylinder continues to fill slightly past BDC as
the air-fuel mixture continues to flow by its
own inertia while the piston begins to change
direction. The intake valve remains open a few
degrees of crankshaft rotation after BDC,
depending on engine design. The intake valve
then closes and the air-fuel mixture is sealed
inside the cylinder.
2.2. Compression Process [5]
The compression stroke is when the trapped
air-fuel mixture is compressed inside the

cylinder. The charge is the volume of

compressed air-fuel mixture trapped inside the
combustion chamber ready for ignition.
Compressing the air-fuel mixture allows more
energy to be released when the charge is
ignited. Intake and exhaust valves must be
closed to ensure that the cylinder is sealed to
provide compression.
When the piston compresses the charge, an
increase in compressive force supplied by work
being done by the piston, causes heat to be
generated. The compression and heating of the
air-fuel vapor in the charge results in an
increase in charge temperature and an increase
in fuel vaporization. The increase in charge
temperature occurs uniformly throughout the
combustion chamber to produce faster
combustion (fuel oxidation) after ignition. The
more the charge vapor molecules are
compressed, the more energy obtained from the
combustion process.
The energy needed to compress the charge
is substantially less than the gain in force
produced during the combustion process. For
example, in a typical small engine, energy
required to compress the charge is only onefourth the amount of energy produced during
combustion.

The power stroke is an engine operation

stroke in which hot expanding gases force the
piston head away from the cylinder head.
Piston force and subsequent motion are
transferred through the connecting rod to apply
torque to the crankshaft. The torque applied
initiates crankshaft rotation. The amount of
torque produced is determined by the pressure
on the piston, the size of the piston, and the
throw of the engine. During the power stroke,
both valves are closed.

2.3. Ignition Process [5]

From a simplified point-of-view, there are

two types of ideal flow patterns in an engine
cylinder: swirl motion (with the cylinder axis as
the axis of rotation and the flow entering
tangentially through the intake ports) and
tumble motion (orthogonal to the cylinder axis,
the axis of motion moves as the cylinder
expands and stays halfway between the top
cylinder wall and the piston head at the
bottom). Both are rotational motions, however,
the axis of rotation is different in each case.
Depending on the type of engine, one of these
patterns is considered optimal because it
maximizes mixing of injected fuel and air,
resulting in homogeneous combustion. The
basic geometries of the respective motion
patterns (henceforth termed swirl motion and
tumble motion) are presented in Figure 1.

The ignition (combustion) event occurs

when the charge is ignited and rapidly oxidized
through a chemical reaction to release heat
energy. Combustion is the rapid, oxidizing
chemical reaction in which a fuel chemically
combines with oxygen in the atmosphere and
releases energy in the form of heat. Proper
combustion involves a short but finite time to
spread a flame throughout the combustion
chamber. The spark at the spark plug initiates
combustion at approximately 20 of crankshaft
rotation before TDC. The atmospheric oxygen
and fuel vapor are consumed by a progressing
flame front. A flame front is the boundary wall
that separates the charge from the combustion
by-products, which usually progresses across
the combustion chamber until the entire charge
has burned.
2.4. Power Stroke [5]

2.5. Exhaust Process [5]

The exhaust stroke occurs when spent gases
are expelled from the combustion chamber and
released to the atmosphere. As the piston
reaches BDC during the power stroke
combustion is complete and the cylinder is
filled with exhaust gases. The exhaust valve
opens, and inertia of the flywheel and other
moving parts push the piston back to TDC,
forcing the exhaust gases out through the open
exhaust valve. At the end of the exhaust stroke,
the piston is at TDC and one operating cycle
has been completed.
3. IN-CYLINDER FLOW PATTERNS [2]

Figure 1. (Top) Stable, circulating swirl motion.

(Bottom) Transient tumble motion. [2]

3.1. Phases of the flow [3]

The flow in the cylinder can be divided into
several distinct phases. The flow into the
cylinder through the inlet valve or valves
(forming a jet) does two things: first, the
geometrical configuration of the inlet ports and
the valves, and their opening schedule creates
swirl and tumble motions in the cylinder;
second, the jet itself is turbulent, and in
addition much of the directed (nonturbulent)
energy in the jet is converted to turbulence,
resulting in a very high turbulence level during
the inlet stroke. During the second half of the
inlet stroke much of this turbulence decays,
which is to say that the intensity decreases
markedly, both because the source (the jet) is
coming to an end, and due to the effects of
viscosity.
During the compression stroke, the increase
of density and the changes in length scales (due
to the change in geometry of the charge as it is
compressed) have the effect of amplifying the
turbulence which remained from the inlet jet,
although the viscous decay and turbulent

transport continue. In addition, the swirl and

tumble are affected by the same phenomenon.
If the piston and combustion chamber have
been designed to produce squish (that is: if the
piston crown approaches very close to some
part of the combustion chamber roof), then this
will have two effects: first, the fluid squeezed
out of the squish clearance volume will produce
organized motions, most of which will break up
into turbulence; and second, the change in
geometry due to the squish will have dynamical
effects on the organized tumble and swirl.
Near TDC, some of the organized motions
may find they have insufficient room to
maintain their form, and they will break up into
turbulence, increasing the turbulence level. By
this time conditions in the cylinder have
become crudely homogeneous, due to the
transporting effect of the turbulence and the
organized motions.
During combustion the turbulence level
rises somewhat. Then, during the power stroke,
the geometrical changes result in a strong
attenuation of the turbulence, and any
organized motion that has survived. This,
combined with the viscous decay, results in the
turbulence being sharply suppressed, so that by
the time the exhaust valve opens, there is
virtually nothing left. Very little turbulence is
generated during the exhaust stroke.
3.2. Inducing swirl and tumble [3]
By the way in which the valves and ports
are arranged, and the schedule of valve
opening, mean flows can be induced in the
cylinder. Motions like this are often called
coherent, meaning that they are organization
buried in the disorganized turbulence. Swirl and
tumble, or a combination of the two, represent
the most general motion that can be induced at
the scale of the cylinder. In fact, it is essentially
impossible to generate swirl without inducing
some tumble, so that the two are always
associated.
It is possible to generate tumble without
swirl. However, tumble is always associated
with other secondary motions, since it is
generated by flow through two valves. This
secondary motion, schematically presented in
Figure 2, has the effect of isolating the fluid
entering through the y > 0 valve from the fluid

entering through the y < 0 valve. The size of

this secondary motion is approximately onehalf of the bore (b/2), and the intensity is also
about one-half of the intensity of the main
tumbling motion.

Figure 2. Schematic of secondary motion induced in

tumble [3]

Tumble appears always to break down to

turbulence, because as the piston approaches
TDC, there is no room between the piston
crown and the cylinder head for a vortex with a
diameter of the order of b; only motions with
scales of the order of the clearance height can
survive, so the vortex breaks up into turbulence
of this scale.
In the case of swirl, if the combustion
chamber is pancake shaped, the swirl can
survive through the burn. However, if the
combustion chamber is a penta head, with
squish providing the transition from cylinder to
head, and/or with the piston crown protruding
into the head, the swirl must accommodate
itself to the changing shape of the space
available to it (from circular to rectangular, and
increasingly narrow), and will also break up
into turbulence. It is now clear from
computational fluid dynamics and flow
visualization that even in engines that were

designed for high swirl, is principally the

associated, unavoidable, tumble that yields the
turbulence just before TDC.
4. GENERATING TUMBLE
For most of the modern stratified charge
and direct injection engines, tumble flows are
more crucial than swirl flows. A tumble
structured vortex having the dimensions
comparable with the piston stroke promotes the
formation of a high turbulence level close to the
spark plug at the end of the compression stroke,
which speeds up the combustion and allows the
adoption of lean burn strategies, that otherwise
are characterized by high cyclic variability
because of the combustion instabilities.
The parameters which are believed to be the
most significant in affecting the tumble vortex
formation, stabilization, breakdown and of
consequence the final level of turbulence at the
end of the compression stroke are [1]:
The intake duct shape and most of all the
duct angle entering the head;
The compression ratio;
The piston shape;
The squish area.
4.1. Tumble Flaps [7]
Tumble flaps, also called charge-motion
flaps, are used in petrol direct injection
engines (e.g. FSI engines) to generate a
stratified charge. This is achieved by dividing
the air intake channel into two separate
channels, one of which can be closed by the
tumble flap (Figure 3).
At higher engine speeds and torques, the
tumble flap is opened to achieve a better filling
level. During this so-called homogeneous
operation, the engine functions like a
conventional fuel injection engine, but with
higher efficiency due to the higher
compression.
This enables a reduction of fuel
consumption in the low engine speed range,
without sustaining losses of power or torque at
higher engine speeds. The flaps are driven with
either electric or pneumatic power, depending
on their design.

Figure 3. Tumble flap. (Left) Stratified charge operation. (Right) Homogeneous operation. [7]

4.2. Tumble Generating Intake

5. CFD Simulation

Both the intake duct shape and the duct

angle affect in a great measure the formation of
turbulence during the intake event. A specific
design that generates strong tumble motion, by
means of an inclined intake port, is presented in
Figures 4 and 5.

Computational fluid dynamics, usually

abbreviated as CFD, is a branch of fluid
mechanics that uses numerical methods and
algorithms to solve and analyze problems that
involve fluid flows.
CFD modeling of direct injection engines is
used to simulate 3D flows, mixture formation,
burning and pollutant formation. It also makes
it possible to analyze the interaction between
the fuel and the motion of the intake air inside
the combustion chamber. The main advantage
of CFD modeling is that it minimizes
prototyping time. CFD software is capable of
making numerous studies in a relatively short
time, based on the computational power [4].
The main interest in the visualization of the
in-cylinder flow is the extraction and visual
analysis of the swirl and tumble motion
patterns. The motion of the intake jet within the
cylinder simulated in CFD software is shown in
Figure 6, where regions with different flow
velocity appear in different colors (red
represents the highest value of flow speed).
For the use in design analysis, the
constructed visualizations need to be objective
and reproducible, meaning that the quality of
the visualization result must not depend on vital
parameters to be supplied by the user. This
results in comparable visualizations for
different simulation results of the same
prototype or possibly even among different
design prototypes [2].

Figure 4. Inclined intake port [4]

Figure 5. Tumble generated by the intake duct [9]

Figure 6. Visualization of tumble motion using CFD

simulation [4]

In order to analyze tumble flows in CFD

software, a static mesh is required. This can be
created using graphical design programs. After
having a static and a moving mesh, initial data
is required regarding atmospheric and incylinder conditions [4]. The simulation results
are given in the form of attributes defined in the
interior of the respective cylinder geometries.
As is quite common in CFD simulations, the
flow is required to vanish on the domain
boundary (no-slip condition) in order to
correctly model fluid-boundary friction.
Nevertheless, values on the boundary of the
domain are easily inferred by e.g. extrapolation
of volume values next to the boundary. It is also
notable that in classical engineering analysis,
visualization is widely performed on twodimensional slices [2].
Overall, the level of information that can be
provided by a visualization technique increases
with the dimension of the data it treats. At the
same time, the visualization result need not
necessarily improve due to perceptual issues
such as cluttering [2].
6. FLOW VISUALIZATION METHODS
6.1. Integration-based Methods [2]
Integration-based methods are well suited to
the analysis of time-dependent flows. Despite
their simplistic nature, particle visualizations
can provide valuable insight into the overall
structure of a flow dataset. This is especially
true for time-dependent data. While the basic
principle is similar to that of streamlines or
pathlines, an animation of moving massless
particles manages to convey the dynamic nature

of the flow much better than static imagery

alone. In the general case, integral methods
suffer from seeding issues, although strategies
have been proposed to circumvent this.
However, none of these approaches are
concerned with time-varying data. Fortunately,
engine geometries offer the inlet pipe as a
natural choice of a seeding region. Integration
of pathlines in time-dependent 3D flows is
straightforward through the application of
standard numerical integration algorithms that
only require the integrand at a sparse set of
points.
Figure 7 depicts a frame from an animation
of massless particles moving with the flow
during the early stage of the valve cycle, seeded
at positions in the intake pipe. The particles are
of uniform size and color-coded according to
flow velocity magnitude.

Figure 7. A hybrid visualization of particles and

singularity paths [6]

6.2. Topology-based Methods [2]

Topological methods provide efficient
means for the visualization of essential
structures in steady flows. As opposed to the
integral methods, they offer a fully automatic
way to gain insight from vector datasets. The
topological technique is typically applied in the
visualization of planar flows for which it yields
synthetic graph representations. It consists of
critical points (vector field zeros) and
connecting separatrices.
For viscous flows, the information conveyed
by boundary topology can be enhanced
naturally by showing the strength of flow
separation and attachment along separatrices.
Flow separation occurs when the flow

surrounding an embedded body interrupts its

tangential motion along the object's boundary
and abruptly moves away from it. The opposite
phenomenon is called flow attachment. Direct
visualization of the boundary topology
produces images such as Figure 8. Critical
points are colored by type, and separatrix color
varies with separation/attachment behavior
from dark blue (weak) to cyan (strong).
Separatrices indicate the separation between
neighboring vortices on the boundary.

Figure 8. Visualization of swirl motion using boundary

topology [2]

A moving cutting plane (traversing the

volume of the dataset) on which the vector field
is resampled and projected at regular intervals
can be a powerful tool in the analysis of 3D
datasets. The projection of the vector field on
the plane effectively manages to discard
structures orthogonal to the plane, but preserves
plane-parallel flow patterns. If assumptions on
the orientation of features are given, this
property can be exploited. Cutting-planes are
hence well suited for the qualitative analysis of
swirl or tumble motion, since its axis of
rotation is known.
Figure 9 shows frames from an animation of
a tumble dataset, where the moving cutting
planes have been applied orthogonal to the
tumble axis and are color coded by their
distance to the back wall of the combustion
chamber for increased visual clarity. Although
the visualization is not exact, the prevalent
tumble structure is captured well in spite of its
overall weakness and instability. The color of
separatrices varies from blue to red on
successive cutting planes. Tumble-like flow
structures emerge clearly from the otherwise
incoherent lines. The paths of critical points
over the cutting plane continuum are displayed
in green.

Figure 9. Visualization of flow field structures using

cutting plane topology [2]

7. CFD SIMULATION SOLUTIONS

Due to an intense world request, the number
of simulation models developed using CFD
code has considerably increased. The
continuous request for answers regarding direct
injection engines and the necessity of
developing more efficient calculation systems
led to the apparition of numerous CFD
simulation programs and interfaces.
The commercially available AVL Fire is a
world leader in the CFD simulation solutions
and a powerful multi-purpose thermo-fluid
dynamics software with a particular focus on
handling fluid flow applications related to
internal combustion engines and powertrains.
Tailored to meet the requirements of
automotive research and development teams,
AVL Fire proved fast and easy to use with
adjustable modeling depth and can always be
upgraded by user generated code [11].
Fully embedded with SOLIDWORKS 3D
CAD, SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation
intuitive CFD tool is used to simulate liquid
and gas flow in real world conditions, run

what if scenarios, and efficiently analyze the

effects of fluid flow, heat transfer, and related
forces
on
immersed
or
surrounding
components. SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation
solutions
include:
Computational
fluid
dynamics; Thermal comfort factors; Simulation
Visualization; Fluid flow analysis; Thermal
fluid analysis [10].
ANSYS CFD simulation software predicts
the impact of fluid flows on any product,
throughout design and manufacturing as well as
during end use. The software can be used to
design and optimize new equipment and to
troubleshoot already existing installations.
ANSYS CFD solutions are fully integrated into
the ANSYS Workbench platform which
integrates pre-processing, simulation and postprocessing, as well as multi-physics
functionality [8].
8. CONCLUSIONS
Due to the necessity of step-by-step
improvements for optimizing the engine cycle,
engine modeling and CFD simulations are of
great importance, providing advantages and
opportunities that the application field of
experimental measurements cannot. Hence
these techniques are widely used and widely
recognized instruments in the design process,
with the main goal of aiding designers with the
most important guidelines and fundamentals.
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the
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