Search Results

In aftertreatment system design, flow uniformity is of paramount importance as it affects aftertreatment device conversion efficiency and durability. The major trend of downsizing engines using turbochargers means the effect of the turbine residual swirl on the flow needs to be considered. In this paper, this effect has been investigated experimentally and numerically. A swirling flow rig with a moving-block swirl generator was used to generate swirling flow in a sudden expansion diffuser with a wash-coated diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) downstream. Hot-wire anemometry (HWA) was used to measure the axial and tangential velocities of the swirling flow upstream of the diffuser expansion and the axial velocity downstream the monolith. With no swirl, the flow in the catalyst monolith is highly non-uniform with maximum velocities near the diffuser axis. At high swirl levels, the flow is also highly nonuniform with the highest velocities near the diffuser wall.

The emergence of additive manufacturing (AM) technology has enabled the internal cooling channel layout for high pressure aluminium die casting (HPADC) tools to be designed and modified without topological constraint. Optimisation studies of a full industrial HPADC mould for extending the tool service life has received limited attention due to the high geometrical complexity and the various physics with multi time- and length- scales in addition to the manufacturability limitations. In this work, a new computationally efficient algorithm that employs the adjoint optimisation method has been developed to optimise the coolant channels layout in a complete mould with various 3D printed inserts. The algorithms significantly reduced the computational time and resources by decoupling the fluid flow in the coolant channels from the tool and simulating them separately.

Additive manufacturing (AM) provides significant geometric design freedom for the cooling of high pressure die casting (HPDC) tools. Designing cooling channels that can achieve a uniform temperature throughout the tool-cast interface during the moulding process can limit part warping and sink marks, internal part stresses, and increase tool life. However, the design of the embedded cooling channels requires high computational resources to model the heat transfer process for the cast, mould, and coolant from the moment aluminium is injected into the cavity until the injection for the next cycle. To enable the examination of the effect of various parameters, a simplified 3-D CFD conjugate heat transfer model is introduced by considering the experimental observations. The model decouples the cast part from the mould.

The porous medium approach is widely used to represent high-resistance devices, such as catalysts, filters or heat exchangers. Because of its computational efficiency, it is invaluable when flow losses need to be predicted on a system level. One drawback of using the porous medium approach is the loss of detailed information downstream of the device. Correct evaluation of the turbulence downstream affects the calculation of the related properties, e.g. heat and mass transfer. The novel approach proposed in the current study is based on a modified distribution of the resistance across the porous medium, which allows to account for the single jets developing in the small channels, showing an improved prediction of the turbulence at the exit of the device, while keeping the low computational demand of the porous medium approach. The benefits and limitations of the current approach are discussed and presented by comparing the results with different numerical approaches and experiments.

This study presents a one-dimensional model for the prediction of the pressure loss across a wall-flow gasoline particulate filter (GPF). The model is an extension of the earlier models of Bissett [1] and Konstandopoulos and Johnson [2] to the turbulent flow regime, which may occur at high flow rates and temperatures characteristic of gasoline engine exhaust. A strength of the proposed model is that only one parameter (wall permeability) needs to be calibrated. An experimental study of flow losses for cold and hot flow is presented, and a good agreement is demonstrated. Unlike zero-dimensional models, this model provides information about the flow along the channels and thus can be extended for studies of soot and ash accumulation, heat transfer and reaction kinetics.

Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) have been widely used in electrified vehicles, and the battery thermal management (BTM) system is needed to maintain the temperature that is critical to battery performance, safety, and health. Conventionally, three-dimensional battery thermal models are developed at the early stage to guide the design of the BTM system, in which battery thermophysical parameters (radial thermal conductivity, axial thermal conductivity, and specific heat capacity) are required. However, in most literature, those parameters were estimated with greatly different values (up to one order of magnitude). In this paper, an investigation is carried out to evaluate the magnitude of the influence of those parameters on the battery simulation results. The study will determine if accurate measurements of battery thermophysical parameters are necessary.

Micro-mobility vehicles such as electric scooters and bikes are increasingly used for urban transportation; their designs usually trade off performance and range. Addressing thermal and cooling issues in such vehicles could enhance performance, reliability, life, and range. Limited packaging space within the wheels precludes the use of complex cooling systems that would also increase the cost and complexity of these mass-produced wheel motors. The present study begins by evaluating the external aerodynamics of the scooter to characterise the airflow conditions near the rotating wheel; then, a steady-state conjugate heat transfer model of a commercially available wheel hub motor (500W) is created using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, StarCCM+. The CAD model of the motor used for this analysis has an external rotor permanent magnet (PM) brushless DC topology.