Dynamic coupling of vehicle power losses and motion cooling

PhD-Student: TBD
Start: 2020

Electrification and the introduction of new technologies in electrical sub-systems will change the cooling requirements in vehicles during operation, opening opportunities for passive convective cooling to deliver the required performance. Models must be developed to evaluate the cooling performance, which is transient and load-cycle dependent, as the temperatures of the component and the flow vary continuously. Additionally, there is also a spatial coupling when components are placed downstream of one another: as the air cools one component, its temperature rises, and it becomes less effective for the cooling of subsequent components. Together, these imply that transient simulations of the full vehicle are required to make predictions. However, simulating this performance in the required conditions is a challenge with the current methods. As such the main research questions to be answered in this project are: how to model the dynamic interaction between the heating and cooling of a component as a function of time-varying vehicle velocity? How to model multi-component sequential cooling? What degree of coupling is needed? What are the effects of space and time variations in ambient conditions?