Improving Engine Performance through Fluid Dynamics and Biofuels

Most of us seek to avoid turbulence in our lives, but Dr. Farhad Jaberi thrives on it. He studies turbulent flows in engines and in other systems using a technique called computational fluid dynamics. Computers at MSU’s High Performance Computer Center (HPCC) allow him and his colleagues to perform this analysis at far greater precision for far more complex systems than would be possible using conventional computers.

Dr. Jaberi is an associate professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. His work in fluid dynamics extends to many areas, including helping NASA design advanced jet engines. Recently he joined a team of colleagues in Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering to collaborate with Ford Motor Company and with Visteon to develop advanced, low-emission designs for diesel engines that run on biofuels. Dr. Harold Schock leads the Mechanical Engineering team; Dr. Dennis Miller of Chemical Engineering leads MSU’s partnerships with Ford. The Department of Energy and state of Michigan are providing $4.8 million in funding.

“We’re using an integrated approach, which hasn’t really been done before,” said Dennis Miller, MSU professor of chemical engineering and materials science, who is leading MSU’s partnership with Ford. “These new biofuels will be more sophisticated than ethanol and biodiesel. By designing the engines at the same time, we believe we can optimize efficiency, performance, and environmental benefits.”

Dr. Jaberi explains that modeling the flow of air and fuel in an internal combustion engine uses the same equations used to predict the weather. He cites the “butterfly effect” – the notion that small changes in the environment could cause noticeable changes in the weather pattern. The details of what happens within an engine are enormously complex. Variables include turbulent flows, chemical reaction, complex geometries, moving pistons, moving valves, unsteady flows, and the method of injection. The HPCC allows Dr. Jaberi and colleagues to apply computational fluid dynamics to understand these complex interactions. They use many processors in each simulation and perform a large number of computations.

The research combines this modeling with the work of experimentalists. The simulations allow the team to refine designs that experimentalists, led by Dr. Schock, can use to build test engines. This minimizes the number of test engines that need to be built, which in turn could lead quickly to a more efficient engine designs. “The process involves continuous feedback with experiments.”

“Few people are doing this kind of large-scale and detailed computations. There is very little in the literature” says Dr. Jaberi. The HPCC enables this pioneering research at MSU. Dr. Jaberi says “The HPCC helps persuade funding agencies. Without the HPCC, it would be harder to secure funding.”

Dr. Jaberi has published articles in numerous scientific journals. He won the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award as well as the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program Award.

To Dr. Jaberi, this research is vital. “Any time we can use agricultural byproducts or food waste to produce biofuels it’s a huge gain. This is an issue of national security; we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”