400 Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 U.S.A. Tel: (724) 776-4841 Fax: (724) 776-5760 SAE TECHNICAL PAPER SERIES 2001-01-1722 A Numerical Simulation Strategy for Complex Automotive Cooling Systems Gerald Seider, Fabiano Bet, Thomas Heid, Ulrich Hess, Tobias Klein and Jürgen Sauer BMW AG, Munich, Germany Reprinted From: The Proceedings of the 2001 Vehicle Thermal Management Systems Conference (P-363) Vehicle Thermal Management Systems Conference & Exhibition Nashville, Tennessee May 14-17, 2001Downloaded from SAE International by Univ of California Berkeley, Sunday, July 29, 2018The appearance of this ISSN code at the bottom of this page indicates SAE’s consent that copies of the paper may be made for personal or internal use of specific clients. This consent is given on the condition,however, that the copier pay a $7.00 per article copy fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.Operations Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 for copying beyond that permitted by Sec-tions 107 or 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. This consent does not extend to other kinds of copying such ascopying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, for creating new collective works,or for resale. SAE routinely stocks printed papers for a period of three years following date of publication. Direct your orders to SAE Customer Sales and Satisfaction Department. Quantity reprint rates can be obtained from the Customer Sales and Satisfaction Department.To request permission to reprint a technical paper or permission to use copyrighted SAE publications in other works, contact the SAE Publications Group. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, in an electronic retrieval system or otherwise, without the prior wr itten permission of the publisher. ISSN 0148-7191 Copyright 2001 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. Positions and opinions advanced in this paper are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of SAE. The author is solely responsible for the content of the paper. A process is available by which discussions will be printed with the paper if it is p ublished in SAE Transactions. For permission to publish this paper in full or in part, contact the SAE Publications Group. Persons wishing to submit papers to be considered for presentation or publication through SAE should send the manuscript or a 3 00 word abstract of a proposed manuscript to: Secretary, Engineering Meetings Board, SAE. Printed in USAAll SAE papers, standards, and selected books are abstracted and indexed in theGlobal Mobility DatabaseDownloaded from SAE International by Univ of California Berkeley, Sunday, July 29, 2018 ABSTRACT A simulation strategy has been developed to predict the performance of an automotive coolant network of high complexity. The method is based on one- and three-dimensional flow and heat transfer analysis. A new flow and heat transfer model for the ATF circuit of the automatic transmission is included as well as a one-dimensional flow path model for the underhood flow through the cooling module. The model is applied to different steady state operating conditions of a passenger car for which the heat flux balance for the thermal system is derived and discussed. INTRODUCTION Cooling systems in automobiles, primarily designed to cool the engine, have been extended to complicated fluid networks to transport and balance heat fluxes between various powertrain components. Temperatures in the engine do not only influence deformation, thermal stresses, fatigue and durability but also friction losses and cylinder charge, thus having a direct impact on fuel consumption and emissions as well. In addition the thermal management of other powertrain components, such as the automatic transmission, influence the efficiency of the component itself, its operating strategy and thus the overall performance of the vehicle. To analyze, optimize and control this highly coupled thermal system a