Search Results

Front end cooling module which consists of condenser, intercooler, radiator and fan is an important part of vehicle design as it affects radiator thermal performance. The current study describes a CFD based method to predict air-to-boil (ATB) temperature of a sport utility vehicle radiator. The predicted ATB values were compared with experimental data obtained from outdoor cooling trials. The predicted and the experimental values agreed to within 3-5 °C for operating conditions ranging from low gear-low speed condition to high gear-high speed conditions. It is anticipated that such analyses will lead to reduction of design cycle time and prototyping costs.

Increasing demands on engine power to meet increased load carrying capacity and adherence to emission norms have necessitated the need to improve thermal management system of the vehicle. The efficiency of the vehicle cooling system strongly depends on the fan and fan-shroud design and, designing an optimum fan and fan-shroud has been a challenge for the designer. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques are being increasingly used to perform virtual tests to predict and optimize the performance of fan and fan-shroud assembly. However, these CFD based optimization are mostly based on a single performance parameter. In addition, the sequential choice of input parameters in such optimization exercise leads to a large number of CFD simulations that are required to optimize the performance over the complete range of design and operating envelope. As a result, the optimization is carried out over a limited range of design and operating envelope only.