[AdamL]

Hello OpenFOAM world,

I am new to the forum and to OpenFOAM. I'm getting started on an engine simulation. I would greatly appreciate any insight from those of you who have run engine simulations. Here's a little background on my project:

For my capstone project my team and I are redesigning the combustion chamber of the engine of our SAE Supermileage vehicle to facilitate stratified charge combustion.

The ultimate goal for the model is to simulate airflow and the fuel spray to guide the design of the combustion chamber. Our advisor has suggested that we keep the fuel spray model as simple as possible -- he suggests modeling the spray with solid spheres.

How difficult would it be to implement something like what's used in dieselFoam?

Currently I am working on getting the moving mesh working. My first goal is to model just airflow during compression and expansion strokes. Later I will add in the fuel spray. I am having a hard time finding any documentation on how the moving engineMesh works. The mesh in KivaTest is structured in layers and it moves like an accordian. My best guess is that the points and faces is just being mapped to the new position. I also see that you define the patches for the piston, the liner and the cylinder head.

How does this engineMesh work?
Do I simply create a mesh, define patches, and set the engineGeometry object ?
Does the orientation of the mesh matter?
(ex. Does the axis of the cylinder have to be aligned in a particular direction)

Thanks in advance for your help!