Cutting propulsion system losses

Predicting the friction losses of combustion engines is a crucial topic for today’s racing teams who are under ever mounting pressures to find the most cost effective approach to improve performance, drivability and speed whilst maximising fuel economy and overall mechanical efficiency. Powertrain friction plays a significant part in a vehicle’s efficiency, but it is difficult to calculate precisely and hard to measure confidently.

The Realis integrated friction solution offers a complete toolset allowing users to assess trade-off of design changes on other constraints, vibration characteristics and durability. Helping to minimise friction and improve engine efficiency.

WAVE is a 1D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool that includes a predictive friction module called FAST, that enables the rapid estimation of cycle averaged friction to assess the significant contributors to total Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Friction Mean Effective Pressure (FMEP), together with other types of losses.

The structural mechanics suite, including ENGDYN, PISDYN, RINGPAK, SABR, and VALDYN, are higher fidelity tools complementary to FAST, that predict ICE friction (FMEP) and transmission efficiencies for detailed component design and as input to a vehicle system model to assess drive cycle energy consumption.

IGNITE is a complete physics-based simulation package. With a library system of building blocks, the user can quickly and accurately model vehicle systems, to predict vehicle drive cycle energy consumption.