Flow-based Topology Optimization of Ventilation System for a Heavy Truck

In the engineering field, the design of a component with a material distribution that guarantees the best performance is one of the most crucial optimization problems. Topology optimization has been developed to provide an innovative method of design that accounts for defined objectives to be optimized and constraints to be respected, resulting in a procedure that is faster than the standard process of design, test and re-design loop. This approach was first investigated for structural optimization, however, the idea is applicable to any situations where the physics problem can be expressed by partial differential equations, which broadens its applications to a wide range of different fields such as heat conduction, electromagnetism and also fluid flow, where it is still in its early stages of development. The goal of this thesis is to develop a procedure for the topology optimization of fluid dynamic components. In this work, topology optimization is based on the Brinkman penalization model, which replicates the solid domain through a porous medium defined implicitly via a level-set function interface. Since this approach has just recently been introduced in computational fluid dynamic software, the aim of this thesis is to find and examine a design method that may be then applied to future design activity of the company. The objective of the proposed applications is the minimization of the pressure drop, while the constraints are the mass flow rate splitting on multiple outlets ducting, the flow velocity uniformity of the outlets surface and the minimum solid domain volume percentage. In addition, to reduce the error introduced by the Brinkman penalization model, a turbulence correction function is implemented. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed procedure, topology optimization is at the end applied to propose an alternative design for the Iveco Stralis MY 2024 ventilation ducts. The geometries obtained are then compared with the standard ducting currently under development using standard methodologies. This thesis is developed in collaboration with Iveco Group and all simulations are performed using Siemens Simcenter STAR-CCM+ 2021.2 (16.04.007).