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The application of high performance engines and climate control systems, coupled with constraints relating to vehicle styling, aerodynamics and underbonnet packaging, continues to present demanding thermal management challenges in the design and layout of the front-end cooling module. Several computational fluid dynamics techniques are now available to assist in this design and packaging process, but many of these require a high level of specialization from the user. The work reported here outlines a relatively simple 1-dimensional technique to aid in the analysis and optimization of the cooling pack configuration. The tool can be used interactively by a multi-skilled vehicle engineer throughout the entire design and development of a new vehicle.

A survey and analysis of the body sealing and interior airflow performance of a range of medium-sized passenger cars has been conducted. These studies have been carried out under static and dynamic exterior airflow conditions in a full scale wind tunnel, at airspeeds of up to 96km/h, and the ventilation performance of the vehicles characterized in terms of body leakage and extract airflow, equivalent hole size, total interior airflow and blower power requirements. In addition, more fundamental laboratory studies of the effect of interior airflow path and extract geometry have been conducted, leading to an enhanced understanding of the results obtained from the full-vehicle work.

This paper presents the findings of theoretical and practical studies of an exhaust-gas reforming process, as applied to hydrocarbon fuels. It is shown that hydrogen-containing gaseous reformed fuels can be produced by the interaction of hot combustion products and an n-heptane feedstock in a small-scale catalytic reforming reactor. Predicted and observed reformed fuel chemical compositions were found to correlate well at the lower reactor space velocities tested, where chemical equilibrium conditions can be closely approached. Under these conditions, respective hydrogen and carbon monoxide yields of around 32 and 20 volume per cent were obtained. Under certain conditions, it was found that carbon solids were deposited on the reforming catalyst. Measures taken to avoid this problem included changes in the reforming oxidant to fuel ratio, and the addition of excess steam to the oxidant composition.