A contribution in calculating the thermal fields in internal combustion engines

In literature, particular interest is directed toward procedures allowing for accurate predictions of thermal fields in Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) components facing gases. While the calculation of the steady part is straightforward, the evaluation of the unsteady temperatures is complex, time consuming and still calls for further refinement. The possibility of obtaining these predictions only in single portions of the components (without solving the whole thermal field, but keeping the same accuracy), reveals an even greater interest. In this paper a suggestion for reaching this goal is given. It is based on isolating a portion of the component on which a suitably defined steady calculation were firstly performed. This gives the initial condition for an unsteady calculation performed only over this portion: precise results in terms of instantaneous temperatures and heat fluxes are obtained in comparison with a traditional method based on the solution of the unsteady thermal problem on the whole component. © 1996 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.