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With new and more stringent standards addressing emission reduction and fuel economy, the importance of a well-developed engine thermal management system becomes even greater. With about 30% of the fuel intake energy dissipated through the cooling system and another 30% through the exhaust system, it is to be expected that serious research has been dedicated to this field. Thermal Management in Automotive Applications, edited by Dr. T. Yomi Obidi, brings together a focused collection of SAE technical papers on the subject. It offers insights into how thermal management impacts the efficiency of engines in heavy vehicles, the effects of better coolant flow control, and the use of smart thermostat and next-generation cooling pumps. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the possible gains in optimum warm-up sequence and thermal management on a small gasoline engine.

Gas turbines play an extremely important role in fulfilling a variety of power needs and are mainly used for power generation and propulsion applications. The performance and efficiency of gas turbine engines are to a large extent dependent on turbine rotor inlet temperatures: typically, the hotter the better. In gas turbines, the combustion temperature and the fuel efficiency are limited by the heat transfer properties of the turbine blades. However, in pushing the limits of hot gas temperatures while preventing the melting of blade components in high-pressure turbines, the use of effective cooling technologies is critical. Increasing the turbine inlet temperature also increases heat transferred to the turbine blade, and it is possible that the operating temperature could reach far above permissible metal temperature. In such cases, insufficient cooling of turbine blades results in excessive thermal stress on the blades causing premature blade failure.