The thesis “Fluid dynamics of exhaust manifolds for internal combustion engines. Analysis and optimization of geometry through a numerical approach based on a mesh morphing algorithm’ by Walter Savastano focuses on the parametric analysis of a manifold exhaust system for a four-cylinder internal combustion engine using a model provided by Ansys UK. The goal was to optimize the pressure drops between the inlet and outlet. Different geometric configurations were proposed and analyzed to address turbulence and vorticity issues. RBF Morph solutions were developed for each pipe and integrated within the Fluent framework to optimize the geometry efficiently. A total of 224 fluid-dynamics simulations were performed thanks to an automated workflow. The results showed that the proposed configurations eliminated pressure drop differences in symmetrical pipes and reduced differences by 70% in non-symmetrical pipes.
