Instantaneous heat flux simulation of a motored reciprocating engine: unsteady thermal boundary layer with variable turbulent thermal conductivity

Due to the inherently unsteady environment of reciprocating engines, unsteady thermal boundary layer modeling may improve the reliability of simulations of internal combustion engine heat transfer. Simulation of the unsteady thermal boundary layer was achieved in the present work based on an effective variable thermal conductivity from different turbulent Prandtl number and turbulent viscosity models. Experiments were also performed on a motored, single-cylinder spark-ignition engine. The unsteady energy equation approach furnishes a significant improvement in the simulation of the heat flux data relative to results from a representative instantaneous heat transfer correlation. The heat flux simulated using the unsteady model with one particular turbulent Prandtl number model agreed with measured heat flux in the wide open and fully closed throttle cases, with an error in peak values of about 6% and 35%, respectively