Abstract
Current political and environmental concerns are driving renewed efforts to develop techniques for improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines. A detailed thermodynamic analysis of an engine and its components from a 1st and 2nd law perspective is necessary to characterize system losses and to identify efficiency opportunities. We have developed a method for performing this analysis using engine-simulation results obtained from WAVE�, a commercial engine-modeling software package available from Ricardo, Inc. Results from the engine simulation are post-processed to compute thermodynamic properties such as internal energy, enthalpy, entropy, and availability (or exergy), which are required to perform energy and availability balances of the system. This analysis is performed for all major components (turbocharger, intercooler, EGR cooler, etc.) of the engine as a function of crank angle degree for the entire engine cycle. With this information, we are able to identify potential efficiency opportunities as well as guide engine experiments for exploring new technologies for recovering system losses.
