Thermo-Fluid-dynamic Analysis of a High Performance Engine Cooling System

During the development of high performance engines attention must be paid to the cooling system design. In fact this plant design, on one hand, should guarantee the thermal power transferred from the engine while, on the other hand, should minimize the car aerodynamic resistance with no excessive crossing sections.In this paper are shown the results of thermo-fluid-dynamic model of an 8 cylinder high-performance engine cooling system, validated by both thermal and hydraulic experimental data.The model validation has been carried out by a dedicated experimental tests with temperature, pressure and flow data acquisition of the cooling system that, generally, are not monitored during the standard experimental data.In particular, this study has been carried out on a simulation of a standard test, called “Punto di Fiorano” where the expansion tank temperature and pressure behaviour have been simulated together with other cooling circuit parameters during an engine heatstroke test.