Engine Mounted Oil Cooler 3D CFD CHT Analysis for Predicting Thermal Performance 2021-26-0351

This paper describes steady state, computationally rigorous, three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer 3D CFD analysis of an oil cooler. Thermal performance of an oil cooler is very significant from engine oil consumption, bearings performance etc. In an engine water jacket, coolant flows around and through the oil cooler making the flow three dimensional. Therefore, demanding the need of a 3D CFD analysis for capturing all the flow and heat transfer aspects and thereby accurate prediction of thermal performance. An oil cooler contains intricate turbulators in flow paths and have dimensions varying from as small as 0.25 mm to as large as 350 mm, therefore making the meshing and solution a formidable task. In current work an oil cooler with all the intricate details is modelled in a commercial CFD code. Objective is to develop a solution approach which can predict thermal performance of an oil cooler in an accurate way. An engineering practice with guidelines for geometry simplification, meshing and solution is developed in order to predict thermal performance of an engine mounted oil cooler. Unique ways have been innovated in order to handle high cell count in the range of 350 million - 500 million. The predicted heat transfer is compared with test data and the results are found to be within engineering accuracy. The developed procedure can be used to further improve the oil cooler design and also to predict impact of any changes in the flow path around the oil cooler during engine design and development.