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The implementation of increasingly stricter regulations on CO2 emissions by the European Community is pushing the automotive industry towards a radical change. In a rush to electrify their model ranges, global carmakers are investing heavily on developing new electrified powertrains. Within this context, this work focuses on the analysis of electric axles drives (eAxles) for a BEV (battery electric vehicle) sport car, with the aim to develop an analytical tool useful to perform predictive analysis in the concept design phase. Through a parametric definition of the procedure, the tool is able to “adapt” to any drivetrain layout analysed. The tool actually allows to enter more than 100 input values including lubrication conditions (oil viscosity and operating temperature), gears (number, macrogeometry, mesh), bearings (number, type, geometry, mounting layout, angle mesh), shafts, oil seals, external layout and external fluid conditions.

Lithium ion batteries are the most promising candidates for electric and hybrid electric vehicles, owe to their ability to store higher electrical energy. As a matter of fact, in automotive applications, these batteries undergo frequent and fast charge and discharge processes, which are associated to internal heat generation, which in turns causes temperature increase. Thermal management is therefore crucial to keep temperature in an appropriate level for safe operation and battery wear prevention. In a recent work authors have already demonstrated the capabilities of a coupled lattice Boltzmann-Finite Volume Method to deal with thermal transient of a three-dimensional air-cooled Li-ion battery at different discharging rates and Reynolds numbers. Here, in order to improve discharge thermal capabilities and reduce temperature levels of the battery itself, a layer of porous medium is placed in contact with the battery so to replace a continuum solid aluminum layer.

Though CFD methods have become very popular and widespread tools in the early as well as more advanced automotive design stages, they are still not so common in the motorcycle industry branch. The present work aims at the development of a comprehensive simulation environment, based on the open-source finite volume toolbox OpenFOAM®, for the aerodynamic and thermal fluxes optimization of a full motorcycle-and-rider geometry. The paper is divided in two parts: in the first one, the OpenFOAM® code is evaluated for a cold flow aerodynamic analysis, using a slightly simplified version of the Aprilia RSV4 motorbike geometry; in the second one, a mixed reduced scale-full scale methodology is proposed for the simultaneous assessment of aerodynamic forces and heat transfer performances of the engine cooling system. Results have been compared against other well established commercial CFD packages and, where available, with experimental measurements.