A Novel Approach Towards Predicting Cabin Cool Down by Using Coupled 1D & 3D Simulation 2021-28-0146

With the global competitiveness in automotive segment, vehicle manufacturers are facing steep competition in reducing the overall cost, development time without compromising the performance and quality. So the development of each aggregate, system and sub-system also need to be faster than ever before. Being an automotive AC manufacturer, it is quite obvious that the AC system should also be developed within short span of time. However it is quite imperative to meet or exceed the cooling requirement. Hence a novel approach of combining the 1-dimensional (1D) and 3-dimensional (3D) simulation is developed in order to evaluate and predict the cabin cool down before the actual prototypes are being made.

The present study employs the combined approach of predicting the system level performance through 1-D simulation and predicting the airflow field inside the vehicle using 3D simulation. System level simulation was carried out in Kuli software. Further the CFD analysis was carried out at vehicle level using STAR CCM+ and airflow field was predicted. The airflow results obtained from 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) becomes input to the 1D simulation. A transient simulation setup was done in 1D KULI and performed the cool down cycle and temperature at various locations inside the cabin was predicted. The cabin temperature was further correlated with 3D transient cabin simulation in STAR CCM+. Good trend was observed between 1D simulation results and that of 3D simulation and a reduction of almost ~8-10 % cycle time was achieved.