Effects of ground vehicle inclination on underhood compartment cooling

This work reports on experiments carried out on a real passenger vehicle in a large wind tunnel to investigate the effects of car inclination on underhood cooling. The vehicle??s underhood is instrumented by thermocouples that measure the temperatures of many underhood components during different car functioning modes. Measurements are carried out for three thermal functioning points at car speeds 90, 110 and 130 km/h. In these experiments the engine was in operation and the front wheels positioned on the test facility with power-absorption-controlled rollers. Three car inclinations are investigated: flat, uphill and downhill. The results show that car inclination, even if very small, can have significant effects on underhood cooling and must be taken into consideration in numerical simulations and controlled in experimental tests. It was shown that down-hill and up-hill inclinations increase temperatures of components, air zones and engine parameters in the underhood, with higher effect for the down-hill inclination. Temperature increases in constant-speed driving phase are higher than in thermal soak phase.