CFD code for IC engine modelling
 

As part of my research I intend to use a commercial code to study combustion in an IC engine. I am wondering what commercial would be best for this task. I know that this has been many times before and I have had a look at some previous postings such as

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/flu...s-star-cd.html
http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/mai...on-engine.html

By reading these, it appears that Star-CD has the edge over Fluent when it comes to IC engine modelling. I know a few people using Fluent in our lab but none that I know of who uses Star-CD. I would like to know how easy it is to start using Star-CD, in terms of user-

I would need to modify the existing combustion model provided by the package. I have had experience with in-house CFD codes where I have had to modify codes and I am fairly confident of coding.

I have not considered other codes such as KIVA, FIRE etc.

Well, I have had the chance to use all of the mentioned software. First of all, are you going to use a commercial software or a kind of code? codes are open source and you can modify the models or so. But they are not THAT user-friendly.
On the other hand, Commercial software are easy to use, but one has limited control on the details of the models.
Definitely FIRE is a professional software dedicated to ICE calculations originally, and might be the best choice overall. But you can perform your modeling in any of the mentioned software with a little difference in the level of difficulty.
I certainly choose Fluent to learn in comparison to STAR-CD, the latter is not as user friendly as the former.

I have not seen any ICE+combustion calculation with moving cylinder and moving valves done with fluent. Maybe there is a good reason for that ;-)

Thanks for the replies. I'm looking for a commercial code, mainly because of the lack of time (we have licenses for Fluent and Star-CD). I only intend to model the combustion chamber of a chosen IC engine.

A co-worker has already implemented the combustion model into Fluent using UDFs, so I suppose I will save some time if I go along the Fluent route. But the model at the moment has only been used to study combustion chamber of a gas turbine engine.

I don't know how easy it would be to code these models in Star-CD.

I guess you'd be able to do it readily in the fluent. Moving mesh capability of Fluent is really something. However, you can use STAR-CD too! the motion definition in STAR-CD is harder than that of Fluent. Both software exhibit useful tools for the modeling, but as I mentioned, I guess you'd do it easier with fluent. :P

The problem is the combination of the combustion together with the mesh motion.

Fluent uses a remeshing approach which requires a mapping of the results from timestep to timestep. This gives problems for turbulence mixing combustion calculations.