Applications of Local Adaptive Mesh Refinement Scheme for Engine Spray Simulations

The accurate prediction of fuel sprays is critical to engine combustion and emissions simulations. A fine computational mesh is often required to better resolve fuel spray dynamics and vaporization. However, computations with a fine mesh require extensive computer time. This study developed a methodology that uses a locally refined mesh in the spray region. Such adaptive mesh refinement will enable greater resolution of the liquid-gas interaction while incurring only a small increase in the total number of computational cells. The present study uses an h-refinement adaptive method. A face-based approach is used for the inter-level boundary conditions. The refinement criterion is based on the mass of spray liquid and fuel vapor in each cell. The efficiency and accuracy of the present adaptive mesh refinement scheme is demonstrated. Results show that the present scheme will achieve similar accuracy in spray modeling as compared to a uniformly fine grid with significantly lower computational cost.