Search Results

The drive to reduce CO2 and fuel consumption from passenger cars requires improvements from various subsystems. In particular, the ever growing importance of effective and efficient thermal management will no doubt benefit the quest for more efficient vehicle. While many established automakers have decided to increase the sophistications of the engine cooling circuits through electronics, the increase in complexity and costs are still not desirable especially for A and B passenger car segments. With this in mind, simple mechanical based cooling systems with enhanced functionalities are in high demand. To meet such demand, a simplified engine split cooling circuit previously proposed, simulated and reported seems to be promising. To further verify the indicated advantages, a prototype unit was built and physically tested using a dynamometer with motoring capability.

The ongoing global trends in engine downsizing and continuous need for higher engine specific output require more heat to be transferred out of the engine and into the radiator. This higher heat rejection necessitates higher coolant flow rate which is often accompanied with higher water pump power consumption and increased coolant circuit's cavitations risk. An enhanced split cooling concept is proposed to overcome the stated limitations with more efficient and effective coolant distributions to the cylinder head and cylinder block. The proposed concept also enables the cylinder head to run cooler than the cylinder block without the need for additional thermostat or water pump. The temperature differences are achievable by optimizing the coolant flow rates going through the cylinder head and cylinder block using both the 1D and 3D simulation packages.