eFan - a key enabler for eMobility
Title: eFan - a key enabler for eMobility
DNr: SNIC 2022/5-224
Project Type: SNIC Medium Compute
Principal Investigator: Niklas Andersson <niklas.andersson@chalmers.se>
Affiliation: Chalmers tekniska högskola
Duration: 2022-04-28 – 2023-05-01
Classification: 20306
Homepage: https://www.chalmers.se/en/projects/Pages/30224004-eFlQktarQSE.aspx
Keywords:

Abstract

To comply with the Paris Climate Agreement the automotive industry is now in a rapid transition phase to electric propulsion and development of Hybrid (HEV) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV). With the introduction of electric propulsion for passenger cars and trucks, there is a need for a step change in thermal management in order to comply with the new challenges. Four examples of new challenges are listed here: 1. Low-temperature circuit for cooling of thermally sensitive batteries 2. Hybrid powertrain cooling with densely packed under-hood regions 3. Brake power cooling of up to 60 ton heavy trucks in downhill situations, when the batteries are already fully charged 4. Battery cooling during fast charging of parked vehicles To be able to fulfill these requirements, cooling performance must be improved, which means that the air flow needs to be increased. Consequently, electric fans are the limiting factors and key components for meeting the requirements. The objective of the project is to study the impact of generic disturbances on eFan performance by means of fluid flow simulations and simulation of aeroacoustics (aerodynamic noise generated by the electric fans). In order to eventually be able to optimize fan geometries for both high aerodynamic performance and low noise generation, a first step is to gain understanding by doing highly resolved unsteady simulations fluid flow/acoustic simulations, which leads to large-scale computations. The long term goal is to establish guidelines for robust aerodynamic fan operation and for multi-fan concepts.