Steady State Analysis of Coolant Temperature Distribution in a Spark Ignition Engine Cooling Jacket

A full scale SI engine has been imported in to the CFD tool to analyse the temperature distribution of coolant throughout the cooling channels. The segregated approach solver has been adopted to solve the energy equations along with the RANS two layer turbulence model to find out accordance with the available theoretical and published results. The input values are collected from complete vehicle test and from available documents, too. The main objective of the analysis was to observe the coolant temperature distribution inside the cooling jacket when the engine is turned off. The steady state simulation shows that though the average coolant outlet temperature is found within the acceptable limit of cooling system operation principle, there is a large temperature gradient in fluid thermal boundary layers within cross section and overall jacket path. The analysis demands that there should be some special arrangement of maintaining the fluid flow inside the cooling jacket even after the engine is turned off to avoid further loss of the engine body due to high temperature accumulation inside the cooling jacket and fluid in it. The lump capacity conduction equation for first sec shows that the wall temperature obtained through the energy equation is in accordance with it, too.