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An automatic transmission torque converter is usually used as a power transmission element, which performs the function of the torque matching and the torque amplification of the engine power output. This is referred to as the fluid performance of the torque converter, which is determined by its blade shape. Therefore, it is necessary to predict the fluid performance of the torque converter at the design stage to determine the blade shape, to which computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis can be applied. At present, time-averaged turbulence models such as k-ε (called Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes—RANS—model) are often used in such CFD analysis for industrial purposes, and are not limited to torque converters because of its appropriate calculation time. However, major traditional RANS models are less reliable for applications to complex three-dimensional flows in the torque-converter than those to simple pipe, channel and boundary layer flows.

A Lock-Up clutch is installed inside a Torque Converter to improve fuel efficiency. The Lock-Up facing generates heat, and the temperature of the friction surface rises during Slipping Lock-Up. The temperature must be maintained below the acceptable level for ATF (Automatic Transmission Fluid). Therefore, a prediction technics is required at the development stage. Heat flow analysis by CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) has been conducted to predict the temperature of the Lock-Up clutch friction surface. In this paper, the target is a Torque Converter with multi plate Lock-Up clutch. An appropriate boundary condition was applied to the flow simulation in order to set the correct total flow rate in the torque converter, and by verifying analysis results, it is confirmed that the prediction of friction surface temperature is close to the data from the experiment. In addition, it is realized that the flow rate has great influence on the temperature of friction surface.