Prediction of airflow for automotive cooling applications using OpenFOAM

This research focuses on studying OpenFOAM's capability of underhood thermal simulations and investigating the performance of various fan modeling techniques in comparison to other commercial software packages. An isolated fan is modeled in OpenFOAM using Moving Reference Frame (MRF) and Actuator Disk techniques. To evaluate their performances, the simulation results are compared to the experimental data which was provided by a fan testing facility and the available simulation results from Star-CCM+ and ACE+. The pressure rise is the main parameter that is used for comparisons. To further investigate OpenFOAM's capabilities, a full vehicle model using MRF technique is studied and the airflow rate across the radiator from simulation results was compared to experimental data and ACE+. The simulation results showed that OpenFOAM has a promising performance on solving the pressure rise across an isolated fan using MRF and Actuator Disk Model. Both fan modeling techniques in OpenFOAM gave more accurate results than Star-CCM+ and ACE+, while the Actuator Disk Model predicted the pressure rise more precisely than the MRF model. By modeling the fan using MRF technique in a full vehicle simulation, the predicted airflow rate across the radiator in OpenFOAM was less accurate than ACE+.