CFD Simulation in the Individual Channels of the

Particle Filter
David Lvika, Jindich Kourek and Ji Polansk
New Technology Research Centre
University of West Bohemia, CZ

SYNOPSIS
A particle filter (also known as a Diesel Particle Filter DPF) can be used for cleaning soot
particles from exhaust gases. These particles pose a serious health risk, because they can
be deposited in the lungs and lung cells. In a filter, exhaust gases flow through a labyrinth of
porous walls leaving particles at the surface. After filling up a filter with particles, a
regeneration process (burning particles) is started and the particle filtration can continue.
The regeneration-to-regeneration time defines the working cycle of the DPF. When
comparing to the engine life time, the life time of the DPF is much shorter depending on the
driving mode and also on the efficiency of the working cycle. The exhaust gas flow
description through very small channels (from 1 to 2 millimetres) is the object of this article.
The process of the particles deposition at the porous walls of the filter for one working cycle
is presented, too, using for both cases a numerical simulation in FLUENT 6.2.

1. INTRODUCTION
Recent years have seen stiffening up of the emission limits of exhaust gases in the
automobile industry. These strict emission limits encourage application of new technologies
and new devices to decrease exhaust emissions in the automobile industry. Emissions limits
are stiffer for all components covered by the Europeans emissions limits (EURO). These are
Nitrogen Oxide (NOx), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Hydrocarbons (HC) and Particles.
Nowadays, the attention is paid to the particle limits as you can see in the Table 1 where the
particle emission limits over the last few years is shown. European emission limit EURO5 is
five times stricter in comparison to the emission limit EURO4.
Table 1: European emission limits for soot particles for diesel engine
Emission Norm Diesel

Euro 2

Euro 3

Euro 4

Euro 5

Particles [mg/km]

80-100

50

25

Soot particles are produced only by diesel engines and often contain remains of carbon, oil
and fuel. The size of particles is in the order of several micrometers. These particles pose a
serious health risk, because they can be deposited in the lungs and lung cells, where they
can invoke various respiratory infections and even lung cancer.
Strict particle emission limits are problem for diesel particle filters, which must have higher
efficiency for keeping particles. This problem is connected with a pressure loss at a diesel
particle filter, because filter with higher efficiency has higher pressure loss. The increasing
pressure loss is causing higher fuel consumption and also reducing the engine power. The
numerical simulation using FLUENT 6.2.16 should help to describe the pressure loss

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dependency through the working cycle of the filter involving the particles deposition
phenomena and exhaust gases flow behavior.

2. DPF IN DETAIL
Diesel particle filters consist of several segments glued together as shown at the Figure 1.
These segments are made from porous carbon silicon (SiC) material forming a system of
many channels of the square profile of 1 to 2 millimetres, the length of these channels is the
same as the length of the whole filter.

Figure 1: Diesel particle filter and individuals segments with channels

Individual channels are divided to the clean (closed) channels and the dirty (open)
channels (see Figure 2). Clean and dirty channels are arranged in a chessboard
configuration. Exhaust gases go from the duct in front of particle filter to the individual dirty
channels. Then they pass through the porous wall of the channels leaving almost all
particles at the walls inside the dirty channels. Next, clean gases continue to the clean
channels and leave the filter by the following duct. Output exhaust flow gases are clean and
almost without particles. Normally, these particle filters have an efficiency about 95%.

Figure 2: Flow situation in the channels

In the course of a working cycle, the filter is filling up in dirty (open) channels with settling
particles. The engine is producing soot particles, metal particles, oil droplets and unburned

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fuel, too. Thus particles include aluminium, iron, sulphur and other materials, which originate
from engine and exhaust ducts in front of the particle filter. The particle size is commonly at
intervals from 1 micrometer to 100 micrometers, with the majority being soot particles, and
only small quantities of other particles.
Particles travel within the flow field of the exhaust duct and their positions depend on their
volume and diameter and on the flow regime. Thus in front of the DPF particles can be
spread out in a non-uniform way. In the individual channels of the filter, particles can settle
down at different positions depending upon certain conditions also in a non-uniform way.
The loss of pressure between the input and the output of the particle filter is monitored. After
reaching the maximum permitted level, a signal is sent to the Electronic Control Unit (ECU)
and the ECU starts the process of regeneration. This consists of burning the soot particles
which have settled down in the open channels. Soot particles have self-ignition temperature
about 550 600C, this temperature is not a common operational temperature, because
diesel engines reach this temperature only by high loads or at maximum speed; therefore the
conditions have to be changed. There are two common ways to do this.
One possibility is to raise the combustion temperature by a catalytic converter and using the
injection of some extra additives to the exhaust ducts. The second way is to lower the selfignition temperature of the soot particles using a noble metals catalyst layer directly on the
surface of the particle filter. This causes self-ignition temperature to decrease to a value
around 350C 400C.
The driving mode (e.g. city mode, highway mode, frequent starts of cold engine) can affect
the process of filling up the DPF. These modes are important for timing the interval between
the individual regenerations. In general, the regeneration-to-regeneration cycle is about
400km. The regeneration process must run under specified operational conditions. The
problem is these conditions (higher loads and temperatures) are not reached in a city mode thus leaving the filter stacked with the particles and forcing the ECU to switch the engine to
the emergency mode. This is a very unpleasant situation for the driver and the crew, too. In
the course of time, the porous channel walls of the filter become stacked with particles even
immediately after the regenerations. Thus the filter pressure loss becomes higher and
higher, and by the end of the life time of the filter, regenerations come in very short intervals.
The filter loses its functionality, in fact.
The numerical simulation of exhaust gases distribution and the deposition of the particles in
the individual channels of a particle filter may help to understand the flow phenomena in
detail and hopefully to help to solve some of the marked problems or prolong the life time of
the filter or get the functionality better.
3. NUMERICAL MODEL
The numerical model presented is based on detailed geometry, with each of the individual
channels of particle filter modelled. The particle filter generally has the shape of the circle or
an oval. An example of the particle filter is showed at the Figure 1. The diameter of this
particle filter is about 150 millimetres and its length is commonly from 150 to 250 millimetres.
This particle filter is created by several segments, these segments consist of very small
channels, about 1-2mm apart. The thickness of the porous walls between individual
channels is usually from 0.3 to 0.5 millimetres.

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3.1 Numerical model for the exhaust gases flow

The computational model of the whole particle filter would be very complex; therefore we
were modelling only one segment. This segment can be used as a testing case for various
setups of computational models used in the simulations. The main problem was using
different turbulence models and the definition of the porous walls, which vary between clean
(closed) and dirty (open) channels.
The computational model geometry was prepared in the pre-processing software Gambit
2.2.30. For the numerical simulation we use a standard mapped hexagonal grid. The
computational mesh for one segment is given by approximately 1 200 000 cells. This grid is
created in the software Gambit 2.2.30, too. You can see the geometry and the boundary
conditions for the numerical simulation at the Figure 3 and Figure 2.

Figure 3: Numerical model for the exhaust gas or air flow

The inlet boundary condition is defined as a mass flow inlet, where the proportional part of
the total mass flow rate is set. Mass flow rate for the whole particle filter is 80 grams per
second. The computational model is divided to five parts. Figure 3 shows the detail of the
inlet part with a chessboard channel configuration, and the segment layout with the individual
channels for the particle separation from diesel engine exhaust gases. The output part is
similar, but the opposite channels are plugged vice versa according to the inlet part. The
output boundary condition is defined by a pressure outlet.
The porous walls separating the opened and closed channels are modelled by porous fluid
cells. The porous resistance coefficients values are set up in order to match the total
pressure loss for several mass flow values with values known from the measurements and
the publications.

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3.2 Numerical model for soot particles sedimentation

During the numerical simulation we had some problems with parallel computations on a
multiprocessor cluster, (see section 5 for details). Therefore we prepared a second model,
which wasnt as large as first model. This model included 16 channels, which were
staggered to the shape of 4x4 channels. The detail of the inlet part of this smaller
computational model is showed at the Figure 4. This model serves also for the numerical
simulations with the soot particles sedimentation in the individual channels of the particle
filter.
The numerical model for the soot particles sedimentation is similar to the first model for the
numerical simulation of exhaust gases flow. In this model we used similar boundary
conditions, too. The numerical model is specialized for the soot particle sedimentation, and
therefore is more detailed. This model has more cells in the cross-area of the segment and
also more cells along the height of the numerical model. The computational mesh for soot
particle sedimentation domain is given by approximately 500 000 cells. The mesh is again
created by standard mapped hexagonal grid as in the first numerical model.
For particles behaviour in the fluid flow we used the Discrete Phase Model capabilities in
FLUENT. Soot particles are treated as spherical object wit the density of carbon. Two
diameters of particle mixture were considered in this first phase of tuning the computational
procedures: 100 um and 200 um. For particle settling, an unsteady run with time step of
0.0004 s is provided in the segregated solver with RNG k-epsilon model of turbulence.

Figure 4: Numerical model for soot particles sedimentation

3.3 UDF for particle sedimentation
For the particle behaviour simulations at the DPF porous walls we use a UDF function. This
simple function increases the resistance coefficients locally at the places where particles
touch the wall of the dirty channel.
Firstly, a UDF function (DEFINE_DPM_BC) is used for scanning the particle presence at the
wall of the porous fluid. If so, an extra User Defined Memory array value is increased for the
corresponding cells. After that, the particle is aborted by returning the PATH_ABORT flag. In
the next phase, the function of DEFINE_PROFILE type is used for increasing the resistance
coefficient C2 through the cell loop using the values in previously described UDM array. In
addition, we use these UDFs for particle monitoring. Particle positions in the course of time
are written to an external file for further postprocessing.

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4. RESULTS
These results were computed for the mass flow rate of 80 grams per second for the exhaust
gases in the whole particle filter. The mass flow rate is reduced for these numerical models
proportionally to the cross section surface (inlet) area. A flowing medium is set as ideal-gas,
which is very similar to exhaust gas from diesel engine. The numerical simulation is provided
by Fluent 6.2.16, but we are ready for transition to newer version 6.3.26.
4.1 Results for flow exhaust gas through segment of particle filter
Figure 5 shows the flow field of the axial velocity (z-velocity) along the height of the
computational model in the open and closed channels. The value of the axial velocity is
monitored in different plane-cuts - shown on the left side of the Figure 5.
Plane-cut c is posited near the inlet part of the segment. In the plane-cut c we can see the
higher values of the axial velocity are located in the open channels and smaller in closed
channels. The flowing medium is not yet uniformly distributed in all the channels and the
situation is given by chessboard configuration of the inlet. The situation for the plane-cut d is
similar but axial velocity starts to grow up slightly in the closed channels. The chessboard
configuration of the individual channels is presented at the Figure 3.
In the next plane-cuts, e and f the axial flow velocity is distributed uniformly in all the crosssection. This condition is valid for the middle flow velocity field but on the edge of the
segment we can see the higher axial velocity values. This situation is probably because of
less closed channels, which are around the open channels.
Plane-cut g is posited near the output of the sedimentation part of the segment. The axial
velocity starts to have the higher values in the closed channels of the segment. The planecut h shows the situation in the outlet part where the flowing medium goes through only the
closed channels.

Figure 5: Flow velocity field along the height of segment at size 15x15 channels

156

4.2 Results for the different size of the channels cross-section

These results are computed with segment of the 4x4 channels geometry already described
before. The geometry and the shape for all variants are similar, but each model has different
size of the cross-section of the channel. The numerical simulation is provided for sizes of
channels 1.1, 1.5 and 1.9 millimetres. Figure 6 shows the dependence of the total-pressure
and the axial velocity on the size of the cross-section of channels. In the graph on the left,
we can see the pressure loss between the inlet and the outlet parts of the segment. From
this graph it is clear that the reduction of the cross-section of channels is increasing the
pressure loss of the segment (or the particle filter).

Figure 6: Dependence of the total-pressure and the axial velocity on the channel size
The graph on the right side is describing the course of the axial velocity along the height of
the computational model. Near the input part of the segment there is a higher axial velocity.
This is given by fact the flowing medium isnt uniformly distributed yet in the cross-section of
the segment as we noticed also in the previous section. Then, the inner segment axial
velocity has reduced to the value of approximately 7.7 m/s. Please note the flow goes from
right to left at the graphs.
4.3 Results for the particle settling simulations
The graphs at the Figure 7 are showing the course of the total-pressure and the axial
velocity in dependence on the sedimentation time. The basic course for the clean particle
filter is presented by the red curve. Others curves present the pressure loss and the axial
velocity during the soot particle sedimentation process.

Figure 7: Dependence of the total-pressure and axial velocity on the sedimentation time

157

In the left graph there is an increase in pressure loss in the input, because there are caught
up soot particles. The soot particle sedimentation at the porous walls creates the higher
resistance, here the flowing medium is accelerated. This phenomenon is showed also by
blue and orange curves in the graph on the right side of the Figure 7.
The next figure shows the trends in quantity of the soot particle sedimentation at the porous
walls of channels for 5000, 10000 and 18000 time step. The values of the resistance (i.e. the
presence of the particles) on the porous walls are presented; red colour corresponds to the
most affected locations. At the Figure 8 we can see the soot particle sedimentation is
happening mostly in the top (inlet) section of the segment, which continues to the direction
down (not showed). This situation is given by accelerating the flowing medium inside the
channel as it is described at the Figure 7.

Figure 8: Particle sedimentation in the course of time

At the Figure 9 there is a visualisation of the three-dimensional flow field by the pathlines and
soot particles positions, which are contained in exhaust gases of diesel engine. Soot
particles are coloured by the particle diameter and the walls of particle filter are coloured by
amount of the soot particles sedimentation. The right side of Figure 9 shows a detailed fisheye view into one of the channels. This view is captured from the transition section between
the inlet and the sedimentation parts of the particle filter segment.

Figure 9: The pathlines with soot particles and detailed view into channel

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5. COMPUTATIONAL ISSUES
All the results presented are given by a single processor run in FLUENT 6.2.16 under
Windows XP or Debian Linux. For future plans and estimates on how a case of this type
works on a larger number of processors or machines we would need to use for whole DPF
simulations. For this purpose some benchmarks were done under certain conditions for the
flow case of 15x15 channels segment. This case consists of 1.2 million hexagonal cells.
We used two versions of FLUENT, 6.2.16 and 6.3.26 under Linux at machines described in
the Table 2. In addition, partitioning of the case was done manually using several methods.
In the next tables and graphs, pax stays for Principal Axes partitioning with 10 merge and
smooth iterations and pre-test; xax stays for Cartesian X-coordinate partitioning and zax for
Principle Z-coordinate. All the cases were bandwidth-reduced except the cases marked orig
with default bandwidth and default principle-axes partitioning parameters. Case marked
band was a single partition case with bandwidth reduced. The partition cut planes are shown
at the Figure 10.

Figure 10: 4 partitions for different methods xax, zax, pax

159

Table 2: Machines used for benchmark

machine
(hostname)
ajax
orfeus
manwe

skirit

type/brand

CPU per node

SGI Altix 350

8x Intel Itanium2
1500 MHz
1x Intel Pentium
4 3200 MHz
8x dual-core
AMD Opteron
885 2600 MHz
2x dual-core Intel
Xeon 5160
(Woodcrest)
3000 MHz

Intel MB based
PC cluster
SUN Fire X4600

Intel MB based
PC cluster

RAM per
node
48 GB

nodes
used
1

interconnect

1 GB

GigaEthernet

64 GB

GigaEthernet

4 GB

GigaEthernet

N/A

FLUENT 6.2.16 was run with -psmpi option where available. For clusters, -pnmpi or -pnet
option was used. For FLUENT 6.3.26, several MPI options were used for -pethernet option
by setting -mpi option to hp (default), intel, mpich2 and net values. For single machine
computations, -pethernet option was used except ajax machine using -paltix instead.
In the Table 3 there are computational times in seconds for 100 iterations for used machines,
types of partitioning and FLUENT versions. You can see FLUENT 6.2.16 is not suitable for
parallel run for these cases at all. The original and zax partitioning is generally the worse.
Table 3: Computational times for 100 iterations
CPU
1
1
2
2
2
4
4
4
4
2x2
4x1
8
8
8
2x4
4x2
8x1

case
type
orig
band
pax
xax
zax
orig
pax
xax
zax
pax
pax
pax
xax
zax
pax
pax
pax

ajax
6.2
6.3
3580
3115
3220
2573
7775
10890
3349
10562
9755
10155
56754
4257
3340
12168
4963
8553
34713
3159
2426
480
10087
518
49563
483
-

orfeus
6.2
6.3
2013
1747
2132
1847
5597
1213
3262
1035
8032
1014
22307
672
4860
828
7338
646
20960
691
4418
743
17332
611
45300
465
-

manwe
6.2
6.3
1640
1415
1717
1455
7691
908
5385
787
13361
802
39819
488
8167
548
12602
478
34750
493
661
5000
343
356
316
407
-

skirit
6.2
6.3
1224
943
1223
951
3812
621
1838
601
6493
541
19872
419
1843
488
2758
429
15479
416
460
1268
408
3028
1710
2302
398
1302
373

FLUENT 6.3.26 is much better than the version it replaces - even for one CPU,
computational times are a bit shorter than for 6.2.16. Moreover, except ajax, the parallel run
leads to speeding up of the job significantly. Note the 2x2 and 4x1 configurations mean the 2
machines by 2 CPU used and 4 machines by one CPU, respectively; similarly for 2x4, 4x2
and 8x1 configuration. For FLUENT 6.2.16 the -pnmpi option results are presented; for

160

FLUENT 6.3.26, the -mpi=intel results are presented. Some of the results for FLUENT 6.3.26
are also showed in the graph at the Figure 11. You can see in general, now the zax
partitioning is the best - conflicting with results from FLUENT 6.2.16.
The different results for FLUENT versions are probably due to complicated cut planes of
parallel partitions. In the cut plane neighbourhood, there are cells of fluid flow, which are
fragmented by cells of porous fluids representing the particle filter porous walls. In many
cases, the FLUENT 6.2.16 parallel run took only by 3% of the CPU machine power, even for
completely free machine, thus leading to the enormous computational time.
New Intel Woodcrest processors are the most powerful for single CPU or few CPUs runs but
the shortest time (316 s, marked in red) in the benchmark was achieved by an 8 CPUs run
on the Sun Fire X4600 machine. As you can see one should provide some tests for such a
complex and fragmented geometry as we use here for DPF segment simulations to achieve
an excepted run times and speedup.

Figure 11: Computational times for 100 iterations for FLUENT 6.3.26

6. CONCLUSIONS
In this article, we presented the fluid flow simulations in the channels of a segment of a
particle filter. For a smaller segment, we also computed the soot particle sedimentation
process using the advanced technique of changing the porous walls resistance coefficients
through the UDF depending on the particle presence at the porous walls. Results are
showing that the dirty channels are filling up - starting in the inlet part and continuing to the
bottom of the filter.

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We would like to continue in advancing the particle sedimentation simulations, including the
effect of the effective channel cross-section reduction due to the soot particle settlement
layers. For this, we would like to use the dynamic mesh technique in FLUENT.
Some measurements are necessary for the result validations - for this, we plan to use the
experimental capabilities of the New Technology Research Centre including the Electron
Microscopes, element analyzers etc.
With FLUENT 6.3.26 we can also effieciently run parallel computers. This could lead us to
the simulations of the sedimentation processes in the whole DPF filter under defined flow
(maybe unsteady) conditions where the non-uniform particle load could appear. We plan to
include also the regeneration process hence simulating the whole life time of the filter.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This paper is based upon work sponsored by the Ministry of Education of the Czech
Republic under research and development project 1M06031. For using computational
resources, we would like to thank the METACentrum project under the CESNET institute.

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