The Combination of Detailed Kinetics and CFD in Automotive Applications

There are many automotive applications where complex chemistry plays an important role. For example, more stringent regulatory requirements for automobiles and trucks have led to a need to fine-tune combustors in IC engines to reduce emissions of pollutants such as NOx and introduce catalytic converter systems for aftertreatment of exhaust gases to further reduce pollutant emissions. However, most computational fluid mechanics (CFD) simulations of chemically reacting flows utilize very simplified chemistry. STAR-CD, a general purpose commercial CFD code, has been combined with complex chemistry solver technology of CHEMKIN and SURFACE CHEMKIN to provide an easy-to-use package capable of applying detailed chemistry in complex multi-dimensional geometries.