Performance Improvement on Electric BUS A/C through CAE & CFD Simulation

Less weight, structural integrity, good dynamic behavior, material selection, performance & energy consumption are important parameters while designing A/C components for EV applications. Structural integrity and dynamic behavior of these components is predicted by conducting dynamic analysis of A/C unit under standard vibration load test conditions. Material selection is another important point while designing A/C and simulation helps designer for proper material selection at initial design stage. Achieving required cooling capacity with less compressor power is another important factor while designing A/C unit and this is done by proper design changes on condenser and evaporator side with proper compressor selection. For this, CFD analysis helps to predict the air flow accurately with the given design parameters. In this paper, information about both CAE & CFD analysis performed effectively for improvement of unit is provided.CAE analysis is performed to check strength of unit as per vibration std and CFD analysis is performed to check air flow and pressure drop on condenser side. Design modification is done as per requirement keeping the same performance and structural integrity. On dynamic analysis, modal frequency followed frequency response function analysis is performed to check dominant resonance frequencies and strength of unit under dynamic conditions at these critical frequencies. Pre processing is carried out on Hyper mesh and post processing on Altair Hyper view & Star CCM+.