A Numerical Tool for Flow Simulation in a Wankel Motor

We describe the main steps in the development of a new numerical tool for simulating gas flow and heat transfer in a rotary engine (“Wankel motor”). Our approach comprises a 2D/3D grid generator for the Wankel motor geometry, an implicit finite element discretization for coping with the stiff pressure-velocity coupling and robust multigrid solvers on strongly distorded meshes. These components are implemented within a new FE-software package named Hi-Flow++ which is presently under development.