Effects of Temperature and Pressure Loads on the Structural Behavior of Automotive Cooling Heat Exchangers Utilizing CFD and FEM Technology

There is today a need to understand the distribution of temperature- and pressure loads and their influence on structural behavior of an automotive cooling heat exchanger. With this knowledge we gain a thorough understanding enabling us to optimize the components efficiently. Experimental analysis is costly and time consuming. This paper presents a method to combine CFD simulations with FE-analysis to evaluate the structural effects of temperature- and pressure loads. This procedure has been carried out for a standard charge air cooler design. The CFD simulation results in accurate pressure and temperature distribution descriptions. These descriptions are used as the boundary conditions for FE-analysis. The output from the final calculation enables to design an optimized charger air cooler from structural aspects.