CFD on ORNL’s Titan Simulates Cleaner, Low-MPG ‘Opposed Piston’ Engine

By Doug Black

December 13, 2018

Pinnacle Engines is out to substantially improve vehicle gasoline efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions with a new motor based on an “opposed piston” design that the company hopes will be widely adopted while the global small vehicle industry transitions to a non-fossil fuel future, decades away.

To speed up work on its design – formally called a four-stroke, opposed-piston, sleeve-valve engine – Pinnacle turned to the HPC resources at the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), including the 27-petaflop Cray “Titan” supercomputer. After optimizing commercial Converge CFD software for Pinnacle’s technical needs and Titan’s architecture, the team ran thousands of simulations on Titan and on ORNL’s Eos 736-node Cray XC30 cluster. According to a blog posted ORNL, the computational time totaled about six months, and Clayton Naber, Pinnacle’s lead analysis engineer, estimated it would have taken eight times longer had his team used Pinnacle’s in-house cluster.

“To do a really good job of characterizing the behavior of the engine through CFD, we would need about four years’ worth of raw computational time,” Naber said. “On Titan, we were able to compress that down into just a few months’ worth.”

Although the blog did not include estimated gas consumption and emissions reductions from the simulations run at Oak Ridge, early tests of Pinnacle motorcycle engines show a 33 percent improvement in gasoline efficiency.

In Pinnacle’s opposed-piston design, “two pistons reciprocate in relation to each other instead of a cylinder head,” where heat can be lost, wasting energy, in a conventional reciprocating internal combustion engine, according to ORNL. The Pinnacle design cuts heat loss and enables a range of piston motions that can be used to increase efficiency.

Using Titan, the Pinnacle team simulated design options for a multi-cylinder, 1.2-liter gasoline engine. The specific engine optimization revealed by Pinnacle’s Titan simulations is what Pinnacle calls “swumble mode,” “a combination of swirling and tumbling gas in the combustion chamber,” according to ORNL. “The variable valve timing and compression ratio optimize combustion for different engine speeds and work outputs during engine operation by responsively moving the pistons to adjust the gas compression. The swumble mode reduces fuel usage and emissions at certain operating conditions by improving fuel and air mixing.”

The company’s design also includes “a novel, reciprocating sleeve-valve system,” for exchanging fresh air and exhaust from the combustion chamber. “The timing and motion of the sleeve valves can be controlled to enhance air motion and fuel mixing, which improves combustion and reduces the creation of pollutant emissions,” according to ORNL.

Modeling all of this is, of course, highly complex.

“The primary issue we are faced with is the many degrees of freedom,” Naber said, “or the many variables, that impact both efficiency and exhaust emissions. It has been impractical to do these calculations on our in-house commercial computer cluster.”

Naber said before running simulations on Titan, “we had a partial view and some details about the air motion in the engine and how it affects combustion. But on Titan, we were able to run simulations to see what the flow field looks like at finer resolution and were, therefore, able to better understand it.”

The result: “Ultimately, we were able to find a design to achieve very low emissions while also maintaining high efficiency,” Naber said. “This was a design that we did not have prior to embarking on this project.”

Pinnacle gained access to Titan and the Cray cluster by applying through the DOE Small Business Vouchers program, which led to a collaboration with the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office and researchers at the National Transportation Research Center (NTRC) at ORNL.

Titan was built by Cray, uses a combination of GPUs and CPUs and became available to researchers in early 2013.

“The punchline is that we found a design that achieves diesel-like fuel efficiency without some of the more expensive after treatment equipment that diesel requires,” Naber said. “Through access to Titan and collaboration with NTRC researchers, we discovered a design concept that was able to achieve our technical goals of higher efficiency and lower nitrogen oxide emissions.”

Pinnacle now has moved to the next step: constructing a physical prototype of the engine for experimental testing.

“For us, it’s really about commercialization next,” Naber said.

Link to ORNL blog by Katie Jones: https://www.ornl.gov/blog/eesd-review/pinnacle-engines-develops-efficient-low-emission-gasoline-engine-using

Feature image caption: Adjacent CAD models of the Pinnacle Engines opposed-piston gasoline engine. Image courtesy Clayton Naber, Pinnacle Engines

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire