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A passive thermal management system (TMS) using composite phase change material (PCM) for large-capacity, rectangular lithium-ion batteries is designed. A battery module consisting of six Li-ion cells connected in series was investigated as a basic unit. The passive TMS for the module has three configurations according to the contact area between cells and the composite PCM, i.e., surrounding, front-contacted and side-contacted schemes. Firstly, heat generation rate of the battery cell was calculated using the Bernardi equation based on experimentally measured heat source terms (i.e. the internal resistance and the entropy coefficient). Physical and thermal properties such as density, phase change temperature, latent heat and thermal conductivity of the composite PCM were also obtained by experimental methods. Thereafter, thermal response of the battery modules with the three TMS configurations was simulated using 3D finite element analysis (FEA) modeling in ANSYS Fluent.

SAIC Motor has developed an all new 2.0 L 4-cylinder turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine to meet the market demand and increasingly stringent requirement of CAFE and tail-pipe emission regulations. A series of advanced technologies have been employed in this engine to achieve high efficiency, high torque and power output, fast response low-end torque performance, refined NVH performance, all at market leading level, and low engine-out emissions. These main technologies include: side mount gasoline direct injection with 35MPa fuel injection system, integrated exhaust manifold, high tumble combustion system, 2-step intake variable valve lift (DVVL) with Miller Cycle, efficient turbo charging with electric wastegate (EWG), light weight and compact structural designs, NVH measures including balancer system with silence gear, friction reduction measures, optimized thermal management, etc.

The present paper describes a CAE analysis approach to evaluate the transient cylinder head gasket sealing performance of a turbo charged GDI engine in the bench test development. In this approach, both transient gasket sealing force and gasket wear work are calculated to allow design engineers to find out the root cause of cylinder head gasket leakage failures. In this paper, the details of the method development are described. Firstly how to use and get the cylinder head gasket property are described, which is the basic theory and data for the gasket sealing analysis. A transient heat transfer calculation for accurately simulating the engine thermal shock test is established, which is mapped to the transient gasket sealing calculation as pivotal boundary.

CuO-water nanofluids was utilized as heat transfer medium in the cooling system of the diesel engine. By using CFD-Fluent software, for 0.5%, 1%, 3% and 5% mass concentration of nanofluids, 3-dimensional numerical simulation about flow and heat transfer process in the cooling system of engine was actualized. According to stochastic particle tracking in turbulent flow, for solid-liquid two phase flow discrete phase, the moving track of nanoparticles was traced. By this way, for CuO nanoparticles of different mass concentration nanofliuds in the cooling jacket of diesel engine, the results of the concentration distribution, velocity distribution, internal energy variation, resident time, total heat transfer and variation of total pressure reduction between inlet and outlet were ascertained.

Turbochargers improve performance in internal combustion engines. Due to low production costs, TC assemblies are supported on floating ring bearings. In current lubrication analysis of floating ring bearing, inner and outer oil film are usually supposed to be adiabatic. The heat generated by frictional power is carried out by the lubricant flow. In reality, under real operating conditions, there existed heat transfer between the inner and outer film. In this paper, the lubrication performance of floating ring bearing when considering heat transfer between inner film and outer film is studied. The lubrication model of the floating ring is established and the heat transferred through the ring between the inner and outer film is calculated. The calculation results show that heat flow between the inner and outer film under different outer film eccentricity ratio and rotate ratio has a large difference.

In order to study the fast filling problem of large-capacity on-board hydrogen storage tank for highway passenger cars, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation model of 134L large-capacity hydrogen storage tank was established. By simulating different pre-cooling temperatures and mass flow rates, the temperature distribution and thermal transmission in the tank were observed. Due to the large ratio of length to diameter of the hydrogen tank, the temperature distribution is extremely uneven during the whole filling process, and the high temperature area is mainly concentrated in the tank tail. And the heat transfer between the gas and the tank wall is not obvious under the low and constant mass flow rate. The temperature rise process during the whole filling process under different mass flow conditions was simulated to satisfy the highest safe temperature limit.

Water and thermal management is an essential issue that influences performance and durability of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Water content in membrane decides its ionic conductivity and membrane swelling favors the ionic conductivity, resulting in decreases in the membrane’s ohmic resistance and improvement in the output voltage. However, if excessive liquid water can’t be removed out of cell quickly, it will fill in the pores of catalyst layer (CL) and gas diffusion layer (GDL) then flooding may occur. It is essential to keep the water content in membrane at a proper level. In this work, a transient isothermal one-dimensional model is developed to investigate effects of the relative humidity of inlet gas and cell temperature on performance of a PEMFC.

The thermophysical parameters and amount of composite phase change materials (PCMs) have decisive influence on the thermal control effects of thermal management systems (TMSs). At the same time, the various thermophysical parameters of the composite PCM are interrelated. For example, increasing the thermal conductivity is bound to mean a decrease in the latent heat of phase change, so a balance needs to be achieved between these parameters. In this paper, a prismatic LiFePO4 battery cell cooled by composite PCM is comprehensively analyzed by changing the phase change temperature, thermal conductivity and amount of composite PCM. The influence of the composite PCM parameters on the cooling and temperature homogenization effect of the TMS is analyzed. which can give useful guide to the preparation of composite PCMs and design of the heat transfer enhancement methods for TMSs.

A computational study was conducted in order to characterize the heat transfers in a sedan vehicle underbody and the exhaust system. A steady-state analysis with consideration for both the radiation and conjugate heat transfers was undertaken using the High-Reynolds formulation of the k-epsilon turbulence model with standard wall function and the DO model for the radiation heat transfer. All three mechanisms of heat transfer, i.e., convection, conduction, and radiation, were included in the analysis. The convective heat transfer due to turbulent fluid motion was modeled with the assumption of constant turbulent Prandtl number; and heat conduction was solved directly for both fluid and solid.

The thermal design requirements at transient state condition are becoming progressively more common in automotive electronic products specifications. For studying the characteristics of heatsink design and CFD thermal analysis in transient state environment, the theories about heat transfer at transient state condition are researched. Some key factors heavily affecting the thermal performance of heatsink are discussed, such as the thickness of heatsink base, the processes of heatsink surfaces and the intervals definitions of whole computation duration in transient state thermal simulation. Then some conclusions of those factors are summarized. Lastly, for an automotive amplifier heatsink design as example, those conclusions are studied and described further based on the correlation of test and analysis results.

As one of the most crucial components in electric vehicles, power batteries generate abundant heat during charging and discharging processes. Thermal management system (TMS), which is designed to keep the battery cells within an optimum temperature range and to maintain an even temperature distribution from cell to cell, is vital for the high efficiency, long calendar life and reliable safety of these power batteries. With the desirable features of low system complexity, light weight, high energy efficiency and good battery thermal uniformity, thermal management using composite phase change materials (PCMs) has drawn great attention in the past fifteen years. In the hope of supplying helpful guidelines for the design of the PCM-based TMSs, this work begins with the summarization of the most commonly applied heat transfer enhancement methods (i.e., the use of thermally conductive particles, metal fin, expanded graphite matrix and metal foam) for PCMs by different researchers.

The conventional crash box with thin-walled column conceals some limitations on pedestrian protection and lightweight. The metallic NPR metamaterials designed in this study are based on re-entrant lattice structures. Re-entrant structures are known to be one main class of axenic structures that display negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR), which can be manufactured by 3D printing technology. This kind of metamaterial has good designability and can be used as the filling structure of the crash box to improve the crashworthiness of the car. This paper starts from the relations between geometric parameters of the metamaterial. Considering the deformation characteristics of the crash box, the structure were designed into some gradient types. The mechanical properties of different gradient structures under the same impact conditions were compared to find the proper gradient structures. Based on the studies, the gradient lattice structure is applied to the automobile crash box.

In this study, effects of altitude on free diesel spray morphology, macroscopic spray characteristics and air-fuel mixing process were investigated. The diesel spray visualization experiment using high-speed photography was performed in a constant volume chamber which reproduced the injection diesel-like thermodynamic conditions of a heavy-duty turbocharged diesel engine operating at sea level and 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m above sea level. The results showed that the spray morphology became narrower and longer at higher altitude, and small vortex-like structures were observed on the downstream spray periphery. Spray penetration increased and spray angle decreased with increasing altitude. At altitudes of 0 m, 1000 m, 2000 m, 3000 m and 4500 m, the spray penetration at 1.45 ms after start of injection (ASOI) were 79.54 mm, 80.51 mm, 81.49 mm, 83.29 mm and 88.92 mm respectively, and the spray angle were 10.9°, 10.8°, 10.7°, 10.4°and 9.8° respectively.

Engine compartment thermal management can achieve energy saving and emission reduction. The structural design of the components in the engine compartment affects the thermal fluid flow performance, which in turn affects the thermal management performance. In this paper, based on the phenomenon that the surface of the parts in the engine compartment is abnormally high due to design defects of an SUV engine compartment bottom shield, the engine compartment is modeled and analyzed by CFD using the software STAR-CCM+. It is not conducive to the heat dissipation, so the bottom shield needs to be redesigned. To redesign the shape of the bottom shield, four dimensions and one coordinate value were selected as the design parameters, and the oil pan maximum surface temperature was selected as the optimization target. The Latin hypercube sampling method was used to sample the space uniformly, and the experimental design plan was constructed and simulated.

Improving the heat dissipation performance of the engine radiator in the real working environment is of great significance to the cooling of the engines. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of the radiator’s geometric parameters on its heat dissipation performance in the cooling module environment and optimize the geometric parameters to improve the heat dissipation performance of the radiator. Based on the performance data obtained from relevant component tests and the engine thermal balance test, the simulation model of the engine thermal management system is established, and the reliability of the model is verified. The heat dissipation performances of the single radiator and the radiator in the cooling module are compared by using the validated model.

The layout of component in the engine compartment affects the fluid flow performance, thereby affects the thermal management performance. Based on the fluid flow performance in the engine compartment of an SUV, this paper proposes local optimization plans of the cooling module—moving downward the oil cooler and forward the intercooler, tilting an angle of the cooling module and shifting the fan. This paper took the fan center temperature as the optimization goal and set three levels for the four factors. It was found that the deviation of the fan has the most significant impact on fan center temperature among four factors. Then we discovered that the interaction between the factors has a significant impact on the air intake volume of the cooling module.

The temperature of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is the key factor restricting fuel cell’s performance. A deep understanding of temperature on stack voltage consistency and transient characteristics is necessary for improving the output performance of fuel cell. In this paper, the variation trend of consistency and transient characteristics of 20kW PEMFC stack at different temperatures is studied by experiment. In consistency, the amplitude of voltage changes and voltage difference (voltage coefficient variation σV) under different thermal loading conditions is examined. In transient characteristics, discussing the trends of transient voltage at different thermal loading. As the result, once the stack temperature increases from 65 °C to 70 °C, the stack performance and dynamic response are significantly improved, which may be caused by the rise in temperature promoting the establishment of the internal quality transmission channel.

A comfortable thermal environment can alleviate fatigue, reduce irritability, and improve driving safety. However, it is rather a challenge to evaluate thermal comfort inside a vehicle due to multifarious geometric and environmental factors as well as human differences. This study conducted a series of field experiments both in summer and winter conditions, measuring the thermal environment parameters inside the compartment and the skin temperature of experimental personnel, and carrying out subjective thermal sensation and comfort questionnaires. The experimental results showed that head and trunk are the most relevant parts of all human body parts to the overall thermal sensation/comfort. For overall thermal sensation, the value of regression R2 referring to head/trunk is 0.691/0.721, while those corresponding to overall thermal comfort is 0.802/0.773.

Diesel engine is vital in the industry for its characteristics of low fuel consumption, high-torque, reliability, and durability. Existing diesel engine technology has reached the upper limit. It is difficult to break through the fuel consumption and emission of diesel engines. VVA (Variable Valve Actuation) is a new technology in the field of the diesel engines. In this paper, GT-Suite and ANN (artificial neural network) model are established based on engine experimental data and DoE simulation results. By inputting Intake Valve Opening crake angle (IVO), Intake Valve Angle Multiplier (IVAM) and Exhaust Valve Angle Multiplier (EVAM) into the ANN Model, and by using SA (simulated annealing algorithm), the optimized results of intake and exhaust valve lift under the target conditions are obtained.

Alternating current (AC) heating is an efficient and homogeneous manner to warm Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) up. The integrated design of AC heating combined with the motor drive circuit has been studied by many scholars. However, the problems of excessive heating frequency (>1kHz) and zeros torque output of the motor during the heating process have not been solved. High-frequency AC excitation may be detrimental to the battery because the effect of high-frequency AC excitation on the state of health of the battery is unknown. In addition, although the zero-torque output can be realized by controlling the q-axis current to zero, the torque ripple is still difficult to eliminate in a real-world application. To further solve the above problems, the motor’s neutral conductor is pulled out and connected to a large capacitor to increase the current amplitude of the AC heating at low frequencies.