CASE STUDY: Engine Cooling System

Overview 

Ballistic louvres protect an armoured vehicle's cooling pack from projectiles and blast debris but every louvre blade the air passes through adds resistance, and an inlet and outlet placed close together can pull hot exhaust air straight back into the intake. This case study covers an engine cooling system built to solve exactly that problem inside an unusually shallow space envelope. 

Customer Challenge 

The customer encountered significant design constraints due to a highly restrictive space envelope for the engine cooling system. The available depth was extremely shallow, which posed challenges for airflow management and component integration. Ballistic louvres were incorporated on both the inlet and outlet top covers, adding additional limitations on geometry and airflow paths. These factors required innovative solutions to ensure optimal cooling performance within the confined space. 

Our Solution 

Leveraging our Ansys thermal design tools and extensive industry experience, we optimised the system layout to achieve uniform airflow across the entire stack of heat exchanger faces. This approach minimised acoustic noise and effectively mitigated recirculation issues caused by the close proximity of the inlet and outlet louvres. 

During testing, system performance demonstrated strong correlation with our predictive models, validating the design approach. Despite the constraints of the restricted space envelope, the flexibility offered by the mixed-flow fan solution ensured that cooling requirements were fully met within the specified ambient limits. 

This case draws on the same mixed flow fan advantage we build into our broader military vehicle engine cooling range: the ability to arrange bulky components on the discharge side of the cooling fans without obstructing airflow, and to flex air intake and discharge orientation in ways a conventional axial or centrifugal fan can't both of which matter most exactly when heat load is high and space is tight. 

Technical Highlights 

• Extremely shallow depth envelope
• Ballistic louvres on inlet and outlet
• Ansys-validated thermal design
• Recirculation minimised at close louvres
• Uniform flow across full heat-exchanger stack