Study on Performance Characteristics of Scuderi-Split Cycle Engine

Many decades, the internal combustion engines are the promising prime movers on the earth. Many technologies like Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI), Common Rail Diesel Injection (CRDI) have been invented to enhance the performance and to reduce the pollutants from the internal combustion engines. Many split cycle concepts have developed but could not succeed. For the first time the Scuderi group has invented a new concept of split-cycle engine, in which the air is compressed in one cylinder and transferred to the other cylinder, which is in phase with the first cylinder through the crossover passage and ignited when the piston is moving away from TDC promising to enhance the performance and reduce the pollutants. So a detailed computational study of the Scuderi split cycle engine is essential for better understanding of the concept.

In this study work, the CFD analysis is carried out for both the conventional spark ignited engine and the Scuderi split cycle engine of approximately same volume and for same amount of charge. The geometrical models required for the analysis have been modeled in CATIA V5R18 environment and the CFD analysis is carried out in the 3-D Ricardo VECTIS platform as it has inbuilt automatic dynamic mesh generation. The analyses are carried out to understand the combustion phenomena for different speeds. The performance curves of the engines are plotted and compared. The obtained results are validated by the analytical results..

From the analysis, it was found that there is increase in the indicative thermal efficiency by 5% compared to the convectional engine. From the performance curves of the Scuderi engine, it was observed that the torque is high at low speed resembling the diesel engines. For the same amount of the charge, the torque and power produced by the Scuderi engine are 15–20% higher than conventional SI engine when compared.