Real Fuel Chemistry Solution to Design the Engines of the Future

San Diego, CA - April 5, 2011 - Today Reaction Design, a leading developer of combustion simulation software, introduced FORTÉ™--the most advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package for realistic 3D modeling of fuel effects in internal combustion engines. Incorporating the industry’s most advanced spray models, as well as high-fidelity fuel chemistry models that are backed by decades of research, FORTÉ CFD delivers simulation accuracy and speed that enables clean and efficient engine design. FORTÉ CFD provides accurate results in just hours where traditional CFD tools would take days or weeks.

“FORTÉ CFD will help automotive engine designers develop the most fuel-efficient and low-emission power plants to propel the vehicles of the future,” said Bernie Rosenthal, CEO of Reaction Design. “Practice shows that existing CFD tools can’t handle realistic fuel chemistry required for accurate emissions and efficiency predictions. FORTÉ gives designers the ability to model efficient engines that are able to take advantage of the broadening fuels landscape while meeting increasingly strict emissions standards.”

Incorporating decades of experience and advances in fuel chemistry, FORTÉ CFD enables accurate simulations using detailed chemistry mechanisms. The mechanisms for real fuel chemistry that can be used in FORTÉ are backed by years of research within the Model Fuels Consortium, which has extensively validated model predictions over the wide range of pressures, temperatures and equivalence ratios important for advanced designs. While existing CFD simulation packages cannot handle the complexity of real fuel models, FORTÉ CFD’s industry leading technology simplifies and accelerates the chemistry calculations that are required to achieve unprecedented accuracy with time-to-solution metrics that fit in commercial-development timeframes.

Through a joint venture between Reaction Design and Wisconsin Engine Research Consultants, FORTÉ CFD integrates unique “grid independent” spray models that greatly reduce the amount of calibration required for predicting engine performance. These high-fidelity spray models also allow real fuel analysis by matching multi-component physical properties with a multi-component chemistry model.

Generating the computational meshes required for internal combustion engine simulations have traditionally required expert personnel and long cycle times. Some commercially available CFD packages use automatic meshing techniques that claim to reduce the time and expertise required to create a mesh. These solutions often add more complexity to the problem that can actually increase the overall time-to-solution and affect the accuracy of the calculations. FORTÉ CFD includes a novel and proprietary automated mesh generator that, combined with the advanced mesh independent spray models, produces accurate meshes without compromising run time or solution accuracy.

Benchmark tests have shown that FORTÉ CFD delivers more accurate predictions of basic combustion characteristics, such as ignition timing, knocking tendency and pollutant and soot emissions, when compared to other CFD software products. FORTÉ CFD also allows simulation of advanced engine concepts promising dramatic efficiency improvements, such as Premixed or Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (PCCI or HCCI) and dual-fuel engines.

Key features of FORTÉ CFD include:

Proprietary combustion chemistry solver: Employing industry leading numerical solution methods, FORTÉ CFD is the only commercial CFD software that supports the modeling of real fuel chemistry effects with acceptable time-to-solution metrics.

Advanced spray models: High-fidelity spray models provide mesh-independent results and account for multi-component fuel-vaporization effects and flash boiling, as well as state-of-the-art droplet breakup and collision effects.

Automatic mesh generation: Starting from a CAD description of the geometry, FORTÉ CFD creates a Cartesian mesh that is dynamic, adapts on-the-fly, and is fully automated throughout the piston cycle.

Availability: Reaction Design’s FORTÉ CFD product for predictive engine simulation is available today. For more information, please visit http://www.reactiondesign.com/products/open/forte.html. For pricing information, please contact the Reaction Design sales team at 1-408-550-1920.

About Reaction Design Reaction Design, a San Diego, California-based software supplier, enables transportation manufacturers and energy companies to rapidly achieve their Clean Technology goals by automating the analysis of chemical processes via computer simulation and modeling solutions. Reaction Design is the exclusive developer and distributor of CHEMKIN, the de facto standard for modeling gas-phase and surface chemistry that provides engineers ultra-fast access to reliable answers that save time and money in the Development process. Reaction Design’s ENERGICO software brings accurate chemistry simulation to gas turbine and boiler/furnace combustion systems using automated reactor network analysis. Reaction Design also offers the CHEMKIN-CFD software package, which brings detailed kinetics modeling to other engineering applications, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) programs. Reaction Design’s world-class engineers, chemists and programmers have expertise that spans multi-scale engineering from the molecule to the production plant. Reaction Design serves more than 400 customers in the commercial, government and academic markets.

Reaction Design can be found online at www.reactiondesign.com

CHEMKIN®, CHEMKIN-PRO® and Reaction Design® are registered trademarks of Reaction Design. FORTÉ, ENERGICO, CHEMKIN-CFD and Model Fuels Consortium are trademarks of Reaction Design. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.