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Nearly all Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) This white paper looks at one way OEMs
designers today are under pressure to contain can roll out significantly more power ful
costs. In fact, many are working with tiny IC development at an af fordable cost: by
teams and even tinier budgets, as extending vir tual product development
manufacturers slash the number of combustion capabilities with specialised in-cylinder
engine models in their line-ups to free up thermal prediction sof tware that addresses
resources to invest in electric vehicles. Some all of the key challenges of delivering green
automakers have even gone so far as to say IC engines— ef ficiency, per formance and
their days of investing in conventional engines emissions.
are over.
Looking at the limited-capability tools now
Yet ICEs are still the most prevalent being used for thermal analysis, this paper
powertrain. Now augmented by electrification, concludes that OEMs would be wise to consider
they have a long life ahead of them in hybrid investing in the next generation of predictive
and new E-fuel architectures. This means tools, as a way to truly do more with less.
the challenges associated with ICE design and
development have not gone away, even
if the budget has. In fact, due to the smaller
engine size in the hybrid set up and different
combustion models for hydrogen / E-fuels
CONTENTS driven by the constant pressure on emissions,
they’ve become more acute.
4 INTRODUCTION: DOING MORE WITH LESS How can Original Equipment Manufacturers
(OEMs) possibly make resource cuts and
5 ICE: WHERE ARE WE NOW ? overcome ICE design challenges at the same
time?
7 THE CHALLENGES OF DELIVERING MODERN
INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES The answer is by doing more virtually, to
create new efficiencies that radically shorten
development times and reduce costs. This
9 THE LIMITATIONS OF CONVENTIONAL TOOLS
current period of transition, where lower-
emission ICEs are competing with hybrids, pure
11 EXTENDING YOUR DESIGN CAPABILITIES WITH
electrics and alternative-fuel vehicles
REALIS SIMULATION SOFTWARE for engineering design resources, is an ideal
time for OEMs to make careful investments in
15 SUMMARY processes that wring better business results
from smaller development budgets.
3 HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT 4
ICE: WHERE WE ARE NOW ?
IC engines are smaller, more ef ficient, more Caught between a rock and a
power ful, more reliable, more environmentally hard place
friendly and more af fordable today than at
At the same time, petrol and diesel-powered
any point in history. A century of innovation
engines are not done yet. Of all new UK
has brought us here, fuelled by heavy R&D
passenger car registrations in 2021, over 80%
investments that manufacturers were happy to
still used petrol or diesel. (2) And hybrid electric
make as they could be reasonably assured of
vehicles (HEVs), which combine a petrol or THE FACT THAT ENGINEERS ARE HAVING TO
healthy returns.
diesel engine with an electric motor, have made
DELIVER IC ENGINE INNOVATION DESPITE HAVING
up at least 60% on average of all electric
Against the onslaught of electric, that’s no
passenger vehicles sold since 2015. A LOW BUDGET ALLOCATION IS JUST THE LATEST
longer the case.
This throws up a series of interesting PLOT TWIST IN A CENTURY OF DESIGN
challenges for IC engineers. HEVs are a
A timeline with a hard stop: competitive technology because there’s the IMPROVEMENTS FOR INTERNAL COMBUSTION
2050 possibility of downsizing the IC engine as the
Traditional ICEs are power units with a limited power of the electric motor increases, thus
lifespan. Passenger vehicles and vans in the EU reducing fuel consumption and emissions But forcing the IC engine to be turned of f ICE design cannot afford to
are scheduled to be zero tailpipe emissions by overall. But the smaller engine needs for long periods leads to higher cold-star t stand still
2035 (1)
. Replaced by electric vehicles, sales are considerable design changes to fulfil its new emissions, which potentially requires a new For OEMs, a fast and proactive design process
set to peak soon in most western markets. role as a lighter, simpler, range-extending approach on how thermal warm up is managed. is not a nice-to-have frill, but an essential
Heavy duty long haul and off-highway ICEs will power train. bottom-line function that every manufacturer
be around for longer as cleaner alternatives are According to at least one trade body, Euro should consider carefully.
more difficult to achieve for these vehicles. But The fact that engineers are having to deliver 7 emissions proposals pose an early danger
The brutal fact is, if you do not invest in
the industry is planning full electrification by innovation despite having a very small budget to ICEs and could make some of today’s ICE
ICE development, then you’re going to have
2050 and/or to convert to other forms of allocation, is just the latest plot twist in a power trains economically unviable by 2026
trouble satisfying emissions standards moving
propulsion like E-fuels, natural gas, hydrogen century of design improvements for ICEs. without a huge technical leap to manage the
forward—and you will lose market share.
combustion and hydrogen fuel cells. new emissions standards. (3) Details of Euro 7
History shows that companies that get these
were announced in 2022 and will come into
The clock is ticking. Ever-changing emissions force on 1st July 2025. It is expected to be
impor tant investment decisions wrong risk
With the industry up against hard deadlines, it’s standards reduce design and the final European Union emissions standard
going under.
no surprise that we’re seeing minimally viable development product cycles prior to all cars becoming zero-emission at the
The challenge is designing ef ficient, high-
investments in combustion engine Then there are increasingly restrictive emissions tailpipe in the future.
per formance ICE power cylinders in less time
R&D as suppliers prepare for electrification. standards to consider. The new 2025 Euro 7
and with fewer resources, via tools that are
The combination of lower budgets and rules, for example, could see the further Whatever form they take, it’s clear that global
easier to use by a smaller number of people.
subsequent reskilling of the workforce means extension of Ultra Low Emissions Zones emissions standards are not standing still.
And that means extending vir tual product
ICE development teams are smaller and less regulations which would require hybrid cars Updates come out frequently and this puts
design ( VPD) capabilities to applications
resourced than ever before. forced to drive in electric-only mode in certain pressure on IC engineers to design and develop
that to date have not been fully suppor ted by
locations. compliant engines faster than ever before.
computer-aided simulations.
(1) European Parliament : EU ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 explained, November 2022
(2) Statista: Passenger car registrations in the United Kingdom between 2018 and 2021, by fuel type, April 2022 (3) Autocar, New rules could make ICE engines unviable by 2026, 28 May 2021.
5 HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT 6
THE CHALLENGES OF DELIVERING Temperature analysis, per formed at the earliest predict ef fects in order to approach the optimum
point in the concept design, must take account of design. These tools come with various features
MODERN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES every relevant permutation. but a quality toolset will:
Thermal warm-up presents a greater challenge • Simulate the lubrication of the piston-liner
Today, hardly any vehicle goes into production By shor tening the time in which the engine with HEVs than conventional combustion engines inter face and the wrist pin bearing
without at least some of its components is operating inef ficiently, more fuel can be since the vehicle is running from cold more of ten. • Calculate the forces, torques and secondary
being designed and prototyped in a vir tual saved, leading to lower amounts of pollutant Every time the engine switches from electric to motions of the piston, wrist pin, and
environment. This is even more necessary emissions. Lubricants per forming at optimum ICE propulsion is the equivalent of another cold connecting rod as a function of crank angle
today as ICEs are exposed to much greater cost should also cause less wear; meaning a longer star t. If future emissions standards do indeed over a complete engine cycle
and time pressure than a few years ago —they engine life. require HEVs to operate in electric-only mode • Save money by reducing the need for
must adapt to new per formance and emissions in cer tain locations—as the EU is proposing— expensive engine tests.
standards, and quickly, as we have seen. There are a number of strategies and solutions there is the very real risk that higher cold-star t
emissions could land the OEM on the wrong side However, while 3D simulation tools can deliver
for shor tening engine warm-up time. However,
of regulation. significant incremental benefits in reducing
Central to ICE per formance is temperature selecting the most appropriate solution is not
parasitic losses due to friction, they do not
regulation. There is no escaping the fact an easy task. Many factors impact the warm-
Thermal maps are essential to predicting the deliver in-cylinder thermal predictions with any
that ICEs get hot and to levels that have a up rate, including external temperatures,
occurrences of thermal warm-up. Engineers need degree of accuracy. They are good tools, but
significant ef fect on both the per formance environmental conditions, driving terrains,
the ability to per form transient calculations, there is a gap in functionality that engineers have
of the system and its structural integrity. As driver profiles, loads and vehicle speed.
where they can input the drive cycle — electric to fill with temperature calculations derived from
such, the accurate prediction of temperature
driving, ICE taking over, stop-star ts and other other sources.
distributions throughout a power train structure
is the rock on which many key aspects of engine cold-to-hot states—and map them across all
design are built. driving profiles to highlight problems. Noise, Vibration and Harshness
Piston slap is an subjectively unpleasant noise
In par ticular, we can identify three interrelated Friction and oil consumption characteristic that occurs when the piston ‘slaps’
challenges that warrant a precise, vir tual Friction between the piston and the ring system the cylinder liner during a cold start. It is a minor
analysis of thermal conditions throughout the accounts for a major portion of the losses in an problem in conventional ICEs since the engine is
engine: engine. High friction means more wasted energy warmed up only once at the start of the journey. It
and lower performance. Therefore, any effort to is a far greater problem in HEVs because the
• Managing thermal warm up control the clearances to minimise lubrication loss vehicle is running from cold more often.
• Minimising friction and oil consumption to will have an immediate impact on engine There is a tradeoff between reducing NVH under
meet ever-challenging emission targets efficiency and vehicle fuel economy. cold conditions and reducing piston friction under
• Reducing noise, vibration and harshness hot running conditions. The first requires tighter
Temperature analysis is critical when seeking to
(NVH) installation clearances to reduce perceivable
reduce parasitic losses due to friction. Structural
temperatures drive the localised increased NVH levels in the vehicle cabin. However,
Thermal warm up reduced clearances have the detrimental ef fect
temperature of the oil between the piston and
Reducing the time it takes for an engine to heat of going against ef for ts to increase engine
liner which, when interacting with the sur face
up from cold to optimum conditions is vital for ef ficiency and reduce whole engine friction.
proper ties, can cause scuf fing. In the worst case,
combustion performance and emissions control.
the piston can fail entirely from wearing as the
During the engine warm-up phase, thermal and
piston skir t hits the liner. Finding the correct balance for these two
brake efficiency is low due to less efficient
characteristics is a major driver for engine
combustion. Friction is also higher due to high
Advanced 3D simulation package for the design manufacturers.
viscosity oil at the lower temperatures.
and analysis of piston assemblies is the preferred
method to understand these phenomena and
7 HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT 8
THE LIMITATIONS OF CONVENTIONAL What’s the alternative? For tunately there is another option. Table 1
TOOLS
compares the three conventional tools with a
If empirical equations are not robust enough, 1D
new solution from Realis Simulation that can
gas dynamic simulation is not accurate enough,
be used easily, with limited data, in timescales
and CFD is not fast enough, what other choice is
appropriate for real engineering development,
there?
As engineers are trying to optimise systems Empirical equations and and which delivers results that are discrete
before testing, they obviously cannot rely on databases: not robust enough enough for conclusive structural investigations.
costly physical development to produce the The empirical equations and database method
thermal measurements required. Rather, they of measuring the heat flux in the cylinder uses
will use predictive methods to successfully test-bed data from other engineering
TABLE 1
capture thermal ef fects early in the design developments to make predictions for the next
phase. generation of engines. It is a fast and simple
method that can yield accurate results, but it Databases 1D CFD Realis Solution
Any at tempt to derive the temperature relies heavily on the past experience of engines
Speed Fast Fast Time consuming High speed
distribution analy tically relies heavily on the of a similar family. As such, the method is not calculation of
accuracy of the boundary conditions used. robust for novel engine design or suppliers who heat prediction
And the key dif ficulty for obtaining boundary don’t have access to OEM test data.
conditions comes from predicting the heat flux Predictive No Yes Yes Yes
9 HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT 10
EXTENDING YOUR DESIGN CAPABILITIES Any gap in your VPD capabilities, where Using FEARCE-Vulcan as par t of an integrated
11 HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT 12
Bar-raising accuracy; make rapid as far as possible. This works very well for Once the first build is delivered into production, Ideally, the model should be constructed as
process improvements with low-fidelity tools which run very quickly there invariably is a re-alignment to resolve an infinite feedback loop, where calculations
fewer resources and have small data packets that can easily problems, make adjustments and improve the made at the concept level can be continuously
move between the cloud and a local desktop. engine based on feedback gained from real-life updated and refined as the engine is
Uniquely, FEARCE-Vulcan is a thermal analysis
However, moving higher-fidelity tools to the conditions. designed—avoiding overengineering and
tool which is able to consider all the heat flows
cloud is unrealistic as these applications create excessive costs.
in and out of the cylinder. Currently, it
gigaby tes—and sometimes teraby tes— of data.
is common for engineers to run temperature
calculations where they take combustion CFD DIGITAL ENGINEERING COVERS THE FULL DEVELOPMENT CYCLE, LEVERAGING DATA TO
Another benefit of using an integrated toolsuite
and apply it to the structure. But they won’t OPTIMISE CURRENT AND FUTURE PRODUCT
is that it allows engineers to use the cloud in
necessarily include the interactions of the
a more ef ficient way. All the lower-fidelity
pistons and the liner in that calculation—or, if
they do, it would not be a coupled simulation.
tools in the toolsuite are in the cloud. This new 1 2 3 6
tool is the cement between these dif ferent Digital Backbone UX Based Virtual Product Fleet Management
The capability offers a bar-raising level of
products; it allows as many calculations as Centralised Specification Development Defining predic tive
accuracy as it captures all heat transfer paths ecosystem to connec t
Bringing the user System Optimisation / prescriptive
possible to be run in the cloud before the teams across the
experience to the forefront and Vir tual Calibration maintenance to improve
in detail, and considers all heat inputs and produc t lifecycle.
results are fed into the higher-fidelity system. Authoritative source
of the development Leveraging connec ted, produc t per formance
outputs together in a coupled simulation. For programme to create a state of the ar t modelling and reduce warrant y
This reduces the need for on-premise hardware of truth for produc t in
more compelling produc t. tools to reduce claims.
the first time, engineers have data that allows development and use.
development time and cost
solutions which has an obvious cost benefit.
investigation into the ef fects of detailed Automated Data
design parameters on component temperatures Insight S IG N
AND AN AL
YS I TI CS 6
What is more, the days when OEMs had near- DE S- OS
RI GN
(cooling jet targeting, cooling jet flow, gallery Supplying auto- 2 GH
T PR
O
per fect visibility into every par t of the engine curated, validated, FI
RS
volumes, engine operating conditions, etc). and up to date data T
design are long gone. Today, it is common for TI
M
through interac tive
VIRTUAL 3
TE
DA
E
some design elements, such as piston design, dashboards to enable
UP
Thermal maps showing temperatures at timely and ef fec tive
\SERVICE
to be outsourced. Frustratingly, the piston
dif ferent loads and speeds can quickly be fed
decision making.
1 DIGITAL BACKBONE DIGITAL TWIN 5
supplier may have only sketchy knowledge of
into the per formance simulation, so engineers
PHYSICAL
TA
the OEMs data as the OEM will not share it.
O
can see how the engine is behaving transiently
This means that the supplier cannot do all the
in real time in a real drive-cycle environment.
calculations it needs to do. 4 SM
ART N
From there, you can predict emissions V IR VA LI DATI O
7 T UA
L C A LI B R ATI O N
significantly bet ter than with any other
FEARCE-Vulcan has very low requirements
toolchain. It’s expected that future iterations
for input data and so is ideal for clean-sheet
of the tool will be able to make real-time
design or for suppliers without access to 7 4 5
predictions of emissions in a real drive system. Feedback loop Prototype Phase Manufacturing
detailed engine information. Looking forward,
Leveraging in-field Deletion Insight
we anticipate a shif t towards using data data insights to enable
And, since every thing in the toolsuite is Smar t Validation Enabling Leveraging insight
encryption so that OEMs can seamlessly share continuous improvement
systems validation from manufac turing
in both current and
integrated and streamlined, there is next-to- using plant models in data to drive
data throughsof tware tools. The industry is not future produc t
collaboration with physical produc tion qualit y.
no learning curve to achieve these benefits for components to reduce
there yet with safe data collaboration—but it is
time-strapped engineers. development cost .
coming.
Move to the cloud; slash Future-proofed for an uncertain As you can see, VPD is an essential par t of a The result is a compelling business case:
hardware costs future digital engineering approach, enabling more shor ter time to market, higher design quality
Designing an IC engine has many costs and one robust designs, more agile response to events, and a more competitive product, enabling IC
The problem with a conventional systems
of those costs is computer hardware. Hence, flexible collaboration, and the ability to make engine designers to stay ahead—no mat ter
engineering approach is that it assumes the
there is an industry-wide drive to use lower- tradeof fs to select the best design solution what the road ahead.
engine design process ends when you go to
cost cloud-based computing for VPD activities from an array of possible outcomes.
production. In reality, this is not the case.
13 HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT HOW THERMAL ANALYSIS MEETS THE CHALLENGES OF FUTURE IC ENGINE DEVELOPMENT 14
SUMMARY
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