Numerical Simulation for Underhood Thermal Management at PSA Peugeot Citroen

摘要

Numerical tools are most important in vehicle thermal development as validation prototypes are not always available early in the design process. At PSA Peugeot Citroen, a combination of simulation tools is used to model the thermal behavior of a vehicle's underhood and underbody. Several design goals are addressed by numerical simulation, from global thermal synthesis to cooling unit optimization. These objectives are achieved based using three major codes. Firstly, the general purpose commercial CFD package FLUENT is used to consider full complex cooling and thermal managing purposes in detail. A 1D code, ITI SimulationX, along with specific thermal modeling libraries, is also used to study components or circuit thermal behavior. Lastly, PSA Peugeot Citroen developed an in-house macro-element three-dimensional code, eSTHER3D, in order to obtain fast and reliable simulations in early design stages. A general overview of all those simulation capabilities for thermal underhood management is exposed, along with some validation results.