Automotive and Transportation
From external aerodynamics to electronics cooling, Mentor’s CFD design/analysis software is empowering Automotive and Transportation manufactures to design better products in less time, to a higher quality, and for less cost.
Service to OEM's and component suppliers
Mentor’s software solutions serve OEMs as well as suppliers of components such as valves, catalytic converters for diesel and lean burn engines, cylinder heads, exhaust manifolds and side pipes, electronics systems, vehicle HVAC, and even windscreen wiper design.
Our simulation software, consultancy and training services are widely used by customers in the Automotive and Transportation industry to accelerate and optimize product design, eliminate mistakes, and reduce weight and costs.
Pressure Drop Analysis of a Automotive Intake Manifold: This demonstration shows how to perform an internal flow distribution analysis through an intake manifold and to measure pressure drop across the... View Video
Application Examples
External Aerodynamics
Flow streamlines and cut plot showing velocity distribution
Determining the aerodynamics of cars and other vehicles can be expensive and time-consuming. Usually, the goal is to predict and optimize lift and drag forces. Some organizations spend thousands on creating models and then place them in wind tunnels to measure the external aerodynamics of their new designs.
Velocity distribution near car surface
With FloEFD, engineers can test and improve the aerodynamics of a vehicle – or any object subjected to external wind loading such as airplanes, trains, motorcycles, or even buildings… the list is endless. For this task, the engineer was interested in calculating drag forces and visualizing the recirculation zones. FloEFD is extremely adept at such tasks and allows the user to take advantage of many time-saving tools such as automatic meshing directly from a 3D CAD model; automatic laminar, transitional and turbulent flow simulation … all within the same model. Therefore the FloEFD user can focus on engineering design without worrying about when and where the flow characteristics change within the model.
Catalytic Converter
Flow streamlines
Catalytic converters are used to reduce the toxicity of emissions from internal combustion engines. A typical design consists of a reaction chamber where exhaust gases are mixed with excess air to oxidize carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon pollutants into carbon dioxide and water.
Pressure and flow distribution
With FloEFD, engineers can investigate the flow of the various gases inside a catalytic converter quite easily. For this specific task, the engineer is interested in improving the performance of the part by minimizing the flow resistance. Therefore, FloEFD was used to calculate the flow distribution and pressure drop of the exhaust gases through the two sections of the catalytic converter . By taking advantage of the FloEFD porous media model, the engineer was able to reduce the calculation time significantly.
Isolines of pressure are displayed on a cut plane through the model. As the flow enters through the inlet at the bottom left it is immediately turned through a relatively sharp angle. This results in a rapidly varying pressure distribution between the inlet and the first catalyst stage. It can be seen that pressure varies across the inlet, suggesting that the flow here is non-uniform.
A cut plane displaying contours and isolines of pressure is augmented by vector plots through the two porous catalyst stages. Since the catalyst material is porous in one direction only the flow is immediately straightened, as can be seen from the vectors. A region of high pressure is seen opposite the inlet, extending into the first catalyst stage. By contrast the pressure distribution across the second catalyst stage and the outlet is more uniform.
Velocity trajectories
Velocity trajectories (coloured by speed) provide a useful insight as to how the flow progresses through the model. As a result of the angled inlet, it can be seen that the flow passes more readily through the top half of the first catalyst stage. This indicates that the mass flow through the catalytic converter is overly biased towards this region. Using FloEFD, the engineer can readily perform a number of “what-if” analyses to investigate the relative performance of alternative designs.Airflow–Heavy Goods Vehicle Cabin
Temperature plot inside cabin
Climate control is extremely important to allow for safe and healthy conditions no matter where you are … in a car, inside a building or on an airplane. In this case, the engineer was interested in optimizing airflow inside the cabin of a heavy goods vehicle.
Flow distribution inside cabin
FloEFD features many time-savings capabilities. By using existing 3D CAD geometry and solid model information such as features and parameters, FloEFD can help you simulate your designs in real-word conditions. It also provides you with functionality that is not easily offered by other CFD programs. For example, traditional CFD programs require users to create additional solid parts to represent the fluid (empty) regions – an extremely time-consuming process since each region must be identified manually and then geometry needs to be created to fill it. But FloEFD automatically differentiates between the two for internal and external flows and automatically represents the fluid domain. As a result, FloEFD frees the user from creating unnecessary geometry just to prepare a solid model for analysis.
HVAC System for Vehicles
Velocity plot
Climate control is extremely important to allow for safe and healthy conditions no matter where you are … in a car, inside a building or on an airplane.
Velocity plot
In this case, the engineer was designing an air-conditioning system for large vehicles and wanted to obtain a uniform airflow at the outlets. FloEFD was used to calculate mass flow at given rotating speeds.
Velocity plot
Since the process of optimizing a design is iterative in nature, the engineer was able to conduct “what-if” analysis with relative ease. The process was simple: FloEFD allowed the engineer to create multiple variations of his design by simply modifying his solid model and without having to reapply loads, boundary conditions, material properties etc to analyze it. He was then able to compare the results among the many design options to choose the best possible design.
Surface Contours
FloEFD’s comprehensive range of post-processing tools may be used to perform both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Here, contours of pressure displayed on the impeller blades show that the pressure distribution varies depending on their location relative to the outlet shown at the bottom right of the image.
Related Products
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FloEFD™
Award winning FloEFD. Embedded into major MCAD systems, FloEFD is a full-featured 3D fluid flow and heat transfer analysis simulation tool to help Design Engineers optimize product design and speed up their workflow. Better products, faster.
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FloTHERM®
FloTHERM® is a powerful 3D computational fluid dynamics software that predicts airflow and heat transfer in and around electronic equipment, including the coupled effects of conduction, convection and radiation.
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FloTHERM XT
FloTHERM XT is an industry unique thermal simulation solution designed to be used during all stages of the electronics design process – from conceptual design to manufacturing, improving product quality, reliability and time-to-market.
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Flowmaster®
Flowmaster is a 1D general purpose CFD solution for thermo fluid system engineers to model and analyze the fluid mechanics and pipe flow in complex systems.
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FloVENT®
FloVENT is a powerful Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software that predicts 3D airflow, heat transfer, contamination distribution and comfort indices in and around buildings of all types and sizes.
Learn more about how Mentor Graphics' Mechanical Analysis solutions.
Customer Success
VENTREX Automotive GmbH
CATIA V5-Embedded CFD allowed VENTREX Automotive to meet the new design requirements without having to build a new prototype with every design change.
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Valeo
Valeo uses FloTHERM® to quickly and accurately ensure the reliability of an electronic motor control unit governing the speed of an engine-cooling fan.
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