To develop high quality products within a limited period of time, it is essential to conduct proper study and rigorous verification activities in the first half of development period. Especially in this phase, in addition to the verification of individual system performance, it must also be verified that performance targets for both vehicle and associated individual systems & components are satisfied without discrepancy between them after target setting is done by cascading the targets from vehicle level to individual component level. Based on this concept, Mazda has successfully developed a method of predicting cooling performance. This method consists of a cooling system model linked with driving performance & fuel consumption model and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) prediction of the velocity of air flow passing through a radiator. Combining these factors made it possible to study a cooling system while both design and vehicle performance targets are taken into account at the same time. The verification result demonstrates that they provides sufficiently high accuracy and practicability, and can achieve optimum cooling system specifications for the vehicle by cascading vehicle performance target down to cooling performance target.
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