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The efficiency of the vehicle cooling system strongly depends on the air flow through the radiator core. The flow through the radiator core in turn depends on other panels that are in the vicinity of the radiator. In this study, the effect of geometrical change at vehicle front-end including the whole bonnet, grille and bumper area is investigated by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Numerical modeling is carried out by means of CAE tools. Simulations are performed for maximum power and maximum torque conditions, monitoring the mass flow rate through the radiator core and velocity contribution over the radiator face. To the velocity field of the airflow, the heat exchangers are represented as porous media and fan module is modeled utilizing Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) approach. The validity of the developed simulation capability is tested by successful comparison with the available experimental data for the base model at the given operating conditions.

The main purpose of this research is to reduce the transmitted engine vibration to the subframe structure via improving the mobility of engine mountings. In fact, the main focus is on the geometry optimization of the subframe part, implementing the design of experiments method, to increase the dynamic stiffness of the part to reduce the vibration transfer function in the mountings location. In order to perform the optimization process, the front end model of the reference vehicle including the suspension, steering system, engine and deriveline system is generated in FE software. According to the prevalent guidelines, the mobility of engine mountings should be greater than target value which is usually obtained through benchmarking. To do so, some structural parameters that are apt to influence on the mobility function, e.g the section of subframe, thickness of subframe and vehicle body are selected as design variables for doing the design of experiments analysis.