Numerical Prediction of Vehicle Front End Module Effects on Engine Cooling System Performance
Neelakandan K1, Goutham Sagar M2, Tushar Damodare3, Pooja Nemade4
1Neelakandan K, PT-Cooling, TATA Technologies Ltd, Pune, India.
2Goutham Sagar M, PT-Cooling, TATA Technologies Ltd, Pune, India.
3Tushar Damodare, PT-Cooling, TATA Technologies Ltd, Pune, India.
4Pooja Nemade, PT-Cooling, TATA Technologies Ltd, Pune, India.
Manuscript received on November 01, 2014. | Revised Manuscript received on November 20, 2014. | Manuscript published on December 30, 2014. | PP: 73-77 | Volume-4 Issue-2, December 2014. | Retrieval Number: E3178063514/2013©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: A numerical study to investigate the effects of passenger vehicle front end module on engine cooling system performance has been conducted. Since the front end module has a direct impact on vehicle drag and vehicle cooling performance, it plays an important role in vehicle design. The current study investigates the effects of grill area, horn blockage, condenser, and fan capacity on engine cooling performance. A 1-dimensional CFD modeling methodology is used with different sub-systems such as coolant, engine oil circuit, intercooler, condenser and other components such as thermostats, radiators, fans and pump etc. using GT-SUITE. A pre-processing tool called COOL3D which is part of GT-SUITE is used to build the 3D under hood of vehicles using a component-by-component build approach, and therefore allowing inclusion of much more details than a usual 1D simulation model. GT-SUITE object-based code helps us to build reliable cooling systems and optimize the front end module for various operating conditions and reduces our effort on real time testing. With above considerations and methodologies we significantly improved the engine cooling performance.
Keywords: Automotive cooling system, Front end module, Under hood, 1D CFD simulation, GT Suite.