An Automated Computational Fluid Dynamics Workflow for Simulating the Internal Flow of Race Car Radiators

Abstract

In this article, we present a software tool developed in Python, named T-WorkFlow. It has been devised to meet some of the design needs of Tatuus Racing S.p.a., a leading company in the design and production of racing cars for the FIA Formula 3 Regional and Formula 4 categories. The software leverages the open-source tools OpenFOAM and FreeCAD to fully automate the fluid dynamics simulation process within car radiators. The goal of T-WorkFlow is to provide designers with precise and easily interpretable results that facilitate the identification of the geometry, ensuring optimal flow distribution in the radiator channels. T-WorkFlow requires the radiator’s geometry files in .stp and .stl formats, along with additional user inputs provided through a graphical interface. For mesh generation, the software leverages the OpenFOAM tools blockMesh and snappyHexMesh. To ensure uniform mesh quality across different configurations, and thus, comparable numerical results, various pre-processing operations on the specific geometry files are needed. After generating the mesh, T-WorkFlow automatically defines a control surface for each radiator channel to monitor the volumetric flow rate distribution. This is achieved by combining the OpenFOAM command topoSet with specific geometric information directly obtained from the radiator’s CAD through FreeCAD. During the simulation, the software provides various outputs that automate the main post-processing operations, enabling quick and easy identification of the configuration that ensures the desired performance.

Keywords

• computational fluid dynamics
• OpenFOAM
• automated workflow
• race car radiators