GM Taps DOE Supercomputer for Diesel Combustion Modeling

General Motors Co. is using a U.S. Dept. of Energy supercomputer to improve the combustion process and reduce emissions for diesel-powered cars.

The carmaker has been using the Titan supercomputer at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee since 2015. The company was approved for additional time under the department’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge to help reduce exhaust emissions.

Titan is a 27-petaflop Cray XK7 supercomputer with a dual CPU–GPU architecture and is said to be the most powerful computer for open scientific research in the U.S.

The new research will study the effect of heat transfer and combustion chamber wall temperatures on the formation and oxidation of emissions. GM says the program will focus on improving emission predictions (especially carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons), more accurate boundary temperature analysis, spray calibration and the use of a virtual model to study engine transient behavior.

Led by researcher Ronald Grover, the GM team also is working with DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California on the program. Both the Oak Ridge and Livermore efforts are funded by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office.

GM says the supercomputer allowed it to triple the number of chemical species studied along a broader crank angle spectrum. The team also was able tocomplete the work 33% faster with as much as 20% improvement in nitrogen oxide emission predictions. What had taken more than two weeks to do in-house was completed in 5 days on Titan.​​​​​​