1D Transient Simulation of Heavy Duty Truck Cooling system – HDEP 16 DST, Euro 6

In future and also in the present time, with the focus on minimizing environmental impacts, the truck industry faces a big technological challenge in terms of meeting statutory emission legislations and also on satisfying the ever increasing demand of customers in terms of minimizing the fuel consumption. There are other challenges in terms of having a short development time and reducing the overall development cost. All the above stated challenges requires measures in terms of how computer simulations can be used to better represent a system, how different concepts can be tested, how the overall system can be tested in particular system working environment which ultimately will give a short development time with minimum cost. This thesis work basically answers the above questions in a holistic manner by considering how the truck cooling system be modeled using different CFD tools like AMESim and GT Cool to understand how different performance parameters of a cooling system vary for a steady and transient driving cycle. In this thesis work, the cooling system model has been developed for an ongoing project in Volvo Powertrain AB. The model has been developed for 16L DST, 750 Hp, Euro 6 heavy duty truck engine with other auxiliary components like, air compressor, transmission oil cooler, cab heater, urea heater to mention a few. The model has been developed such that it can run on both steady and transient cycles by changing few elements in terms of how the input is given to the model. One of the aims of this thesis work was to evaluate the two tools mentioned above in terms of workability, implementability and reliability. Results in terms of pressure drop, mass flow rate, heat transfer rate, thermostat valve fluctuation etc. have been compared for above mentioned tools. It is pointed out that since the model has been developed for an ongoing project, the validation of the model by performing actual tests couldn’t be performed because of the unavailability of the engine. In the end certain conclusions have been drawn out in terms of cooling system performance and how effective the tools were in simulating the cooling system