Virtual Cooling System Development

The cooling system of today’s engines has to fulfill certain requirements which results from fuel consumption reduction, efficiency increase and tightened emission legislation. Additionally the warm-up behavior especially of the passenger cabin and the resulting heater performance requirement leads to controversial targets. Beside these aspects the main function of the cooling system, the limitation of fluid and material temperatures has to be guaranteed. Following the trend that one engine will be integrated in a few different vehicles, with different vehicle-sided cooling system components, the cooling system development gets more and more complex with the result of an increase of the necessary testing effort to develop the system to series status. With focus on this trend, FEV has extended the well proven 1-dimensional thermal management simulation model to a complete closed loop development approach starting from the engine internal coolant flow distribution in the early engine concept phase up to the virtual testing model, which allows to simulate common vehicle test rows on the climate chamber or at hot ambient conditions at rod tests.