FEARCE offers unique capabilities for the prediction of temperatures in combustion systems. In powertrain analysis, the accurate determination of the temperature distribution at key operating conditions is critical to component design. FEARCE has been developed specifically to address these needs and provides a number of tools for the application of thermal-boundary conditions to a finite element (FE) analysis.

Coolant boundary conditions

For coolant-side-boundary conditions, FEARCE can quickly and efficiently map fluid temperature and heat-transfer coefficients (HTCs) from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis onto the appropriate coolant surfaces of the FE models. This can be done by either linking directly into Ricardo’s VECTIS CFD code, or by mapping HTC values from any major CFD solver. In addition to linking directly to VECTIS to extract results, the FEARCE graphical user interface (GUI) can display the VECTIS models, allowing an engineer to visualize the results alongside the loaded models.

Thermal-boundary conditions

For in-cylinder thermal boundary conditions, FEARCE can import VECTIS or other CFD results for predictions of gas-side HTCs resulting from combustion. FEARCE then calculates cycle averaged loads from the imported full-cycle values to calculate steady-state temperatures. Simplified methods of generating thermal boundary conditions without using CFD are also available.

Key features

•    HTCs mapped directly from CFD results
•    Links directly with VECTIS for results extraction and visualization
•    HTC and heat-flux profiles automatically generated for cylinder bores and flame faces