Thermal Management of a Vehicle's Underhood and Underbody Using Appropriate Math-Based Analytical Tools and Methodologies

Traditionally, powertrain generated thermal management in a vehicle's UH/UB (underhood/underbody) has relied primarily on physical testing. However, today's highly competitive marketplace is forcing the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to constantly compress the vehicle development cycles. Under these conditions, math-based analytical tools are becoming increasingly popular. One of the key reasons for this can be attributed to their proven effectiveness in identifying and resolving thermal issues in the nascent stages of vehicle development cycle wherein no physical hardware is yet available for testing. However, accurate analytical predictions of maximum temperature at any location in a vehicle's UH/UB during a transient thermal validation procedure still remains a tremendous modeling challenge. In order to address this complex task of vehicle thermal modeling, three thermal analysis methodologies that utilize both commercial software packages and internally developed software codes, sometimes in combination, are discussed in this work. The key objective of this study, therefore, is to investigate novel approaches that would further help enhance the predictive capability of current thermal analysis methods.