Engineers will be able to design better fuel systems for
everything from motorcycles to rockets faster and more inexpensively because of
a mathematical fuels model developed at The University of Alabama in
Huntsville.
The fuels model will increase the pace of injector design
for greater efficiency, better gas mileage and more horsepower in cars and
trucks. But the beauty of this approach is that it works for all combustion
processes and fuels, from mopeds to missiles and from gasoline, ethanol and
diesel fuel to decane/hexadecane.
Instead of costly real-world modeling, which requires the
design, machining and production of parts before they can be bench tested and
performance modeled, the mathematical model lets designers test their ideas on
computers first. The model also brings research into alternative fuels into the
computer before it needs to be prototyped.