In-cylinder CFD simulation using a C++ object-oriented toolkit

Journal article, 2004

Successful simulation of fluid flow, heat transfer, fuel injection and combustion in internal combustion engines involves a spectrum of physical models operating in a complex 3-D geometry with moving boundaries. The models are formulated in the Eulerian and Lagrangian framework and interact in complex ways. In this paper, we present FOAM, an object-oriented software toolkit designed to facilitate research in physical modelling by separating the handling of physics from numerical discretisation techniques. This is achieved by mimicking in the code the continuum mechanics equations of the physical model. Complex mesh handling, choice of numerics and the simulation efficiency are handled transparently. Capabilities of the toolkit are demonstrated on two in-cylinder combustion simulations.