Computer Simulation of an Automotive Engine Cooling System

An automotive engine cooling system is closely related with overall engine performances, such as reduction of fuel consumption, decrease of air pollution, and increase of engine life. Because of complex reaction between each component, the direct experiment, using a vehicle, takes high cost, long time, and slow response to the system change. Therefore, a computer simulation would provide the designer with an inexpensive and effective tool for design, development, and optimization of the engine cooling system over a wide range of operating conditions. In this work, it has been predicted the thermal performance of the engine cooling system in cases of stationary mode, constant speed mode, and city-drive mode by mathematical modelling of each component and numerical analysis. The components are engine, radiator, heater, thermostat, water pump, and cooling fans. Since the engine model is the most important, that is divided into eight sub-sections. The volume mean temperature of eight sub-sections are simultaneously calculated at a time. For detail calculation, the radiator and heater are also divided into many sub-sections like control volumes in finite difference method. Each sub-section is assumed to consist of three parts, coolant, tube with fin, and air. Hence it has been developed the simulation program that can be used in case of design and system configuration changes. The overall performance results obtained by the program were desirable and the time-traced tendencies of the results agreed fairly well with those of actual situations.

자동차 엔진 냉각시스템의 컴퓨터 시뮬레이션