Innovative Simulation and Analysis Tool for Vehicle Thermal Management

Military vehicles are being deployed in extremely hot environments. Designing optimized cooling systems has become a considerable challenge. System performance can be optimized if system integrators can analyze proposed configurations rapidly and accurately, while keeping pace with an evolving vehicle design. A modeling tool to support rapid trade studies of vehicle thermal management system variants integrated into vehicle design variants is proposed to meet this need. We are proposing to add features to MuSES, the Army standard for thermal and IR signature analysis of ground vehicles, to enable rapid, easy-to-setup analyses of engine cooling systems. We intend to create a library of 1D, or limited node number models of component parts, including values for parameters necessary to describe their thermal behavior. We will then create a means to include these 1D models within a 3D MuSES vehicle model, so a designer can investigate the cooling performance quickly and easily. These features, combined with MuSES’ ability to model a complete vehicle in a natural weather environment, will produce the desired prototyping modeling capability.