Arc Electric Vehicle - Design Process of Fan Shroud

In today’s world, with advancements in technology, there is a need for a more robust and efficient process for developing new products in the automotive sector. This process starts from idea generation through designing and manufacturing to product release. There is 'Design Paradox' between these stages of the process due the lack of information availability during the initial stages, which leads to higher cost implications because of changes made in the later stages

Note: Images of this project cannot be included due to NDA. The images used here are representative images from Altair website.

Sanmit worked as a Design Process Intern and was responsible for the design compromises that arise due to the manufacturing tolerance and geometry design of the fan shroud. The Design Process of an electric vehicle is optimized by studying the impact of the fan shroud and cooling system on the vehicle and analyze the mass flow characteristics around the vehicle to evaluate the overall performance of the vehicle. This is done by first creating the model of the whole vehicle, and then running various simulations with different design settings and scenarios to analyze the flow features around the vehicle. All of this is done with the help of Inspire Studio and CFD tools like virtual wind tunnel and Fieldview. After running the model with different settings of fan shroud designs, the results are taken forward for post-processing simulations and high-quality visual renderings. This allows the study of mass flow through the fan shroud and evaluate the drag and lift values for the vehicle. This design process story of the fan shroud shows the implications of using simulation-driven techniques and methodology in any design process of a product. It is seen that a simulation-driven design in early stages of the process allows you to eliminate any losses that occur due to design problems and helps in coordinating any compromises that occur due to it, which in turn helps in making the whole process more robust and efficient

The short-term recommendation is to eliminate any gap size that arises between the fan shroud and the radiator, as this will give the least drag and highest mass flow. The drag and lift values improved by 2% and 5% respectively. With respect to manufacturing, as the level of precision and tolerance has an impact on shroud design, the recommendation is to use the sampling adaptive methodology to find out the optimized gap size between the fan shroud and the radiator and the optimized geometry design of the fan shroud. This optimization study will allow you to find the optimized settings for the fan shroud reducing the impact of manufacturing tolerances and precision on the mass flow and performance of the vehicle