Thermal simulation of vehicle under-hood region. Methodology for conjugate heat transfer simulation of a fullscale truck using STAR-CCM+

Abstract

Trucks with internal combustion engines (ICE) represent a significant majority of the EU long haul freight sector due to their reliability, refueling infrastructure, and versatility in handling highly varied environmental conditions. As noise and emission regulations continue to become more stringent, the current and future fleets of ICE vehicles continue to face highly technical challenges in maintaining thermal performance while meeting new standards. As a result the need for an efficient simulation methodology has never been more critical for driving timely design evolution. Today, these simulations are typically performed through co-simulations with multiple software packages to resolve radiation and convection heat transfer phenomena. This study looks to develop a streamlined conjugate heat transfer simulation methodology within Siemens STAR-CCM+ Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. A Volvo truck model was simulated utilizing a simplified under-hood. The simulation was compared against limited experimental data for four different steady-state engine operating conditions. The results from the simulations corroborated well with the test data for the chosen components. Further development of such a method will lead to a viable solution for full-scale under-hood simulations using only STAR-CCM+, i.e., within a single simulation model.