Engine Air Intake Thermal Modelling in Full Vehicle Underhood Environment

The current trend of highly boosted petrol engines is demanding significant engineering effort on the air intake system development. The package of the air intake system is done early in the programme phase and the main engineering effort have historically been around achieving the system pressure drop targets. The thermal impact of the package is assessed during the vehicle testing phase. This can lead to significant design changes in order to maintain engine performance under all operating conditions late on in the development, driving up cost and programme delays. The highly boosted engine performance is very sensitive to heat pick up of the intake air and therefore requires an optimised system. To be able to support the engine intake design at the early program phases with thermal input, an analytical method has been developed. The full conjugate heat transfer method developed consists of a coupled simulation approach between a full vehicle CFD model and a thermal radiation and conduction model. The paper will discuss the model development and set up including correlation against vehicle test data.