This article is an extension of our discussion about the complexities of combustion engines. National Geographic is following a story about a new supercomputer that the US is building. It’s called Titan and it will be ready for use later this year. Modeling a new type of combustion for engines was high on the list of things that would require the Titan’s processing power. Researchers are currently studying a new way of harnessing combustion for the use in automobiles. It’s called Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) and it’s similar to diesel engines in that compression is used to ignite the air/fuel mixture instead of an electric spark. The key to HCCI improving efficiency is that it runs at much lower temperatures so that there is a lot less waste heat. However, HCCI is very sensitive to the chemical makeup of the fuel being used. That’s why the folks working on it need access to Titan in order to make a model that will allow them to study make a model of what goes on during HCCI.
HCCI requires complex fluid and chemical dynamics models