Innovative Simulation and Analysis Tool for Vehicle Thermal Management

Heat loads due to on-board power, combined with hot environments imposed on military ground vehicles, have resulted in situations where vehicle performance is limited by thermal management issues. To counteract this, the cooling system must be optimized, preferably early in the design process. Current modeling practices make it difficult for an analyst find an optimal system configuration from many design options in a timely manner. ThermoAnalytics is proposing to create a modeling tool that will allow an analyst to rapidly assess the performance of a cooling system based on the evaluation of multiple approaches and parametric studies for a vehicle in different environments and load scenarios. Our approach is to adopt a component model paradigm that uses pre-built models of cooling system components as building blocks for system analyses. We will modify the thermal and IR signature code MuSES to interface with a database of component models, and streamline and semi-automate the process of importing and integrating a component into a parent model. This will reduce the time required to find and assign critical performance data to models, and allows a modeler the flexibility to apply geometric detail to models only when and where it is needed.