Article from Fluent News • Summer 2005
ACOUSTICS
EACC 2005
A Sound Method
Velocity (left) and pressure (right) contours on the mid-plane of the radiator fan
for Fan Modeling
D
By Jonghyun Park, Applied Technology Research Department, Hyundai MOBIS, Korea
URING THE DEVELOPMENT of a new car,
module designs are commonly used to simplify
the manufacturing process and minimize prob-
lems occurring during the assembly of compo-
nents. A Front End Module (FEM) is one such
automotive component consisting of a cooling
module (condenser, radiator, fan, and shroud),
headlamp, bumper, and carrier. The cooling
module is a core part of the FEM because of its
role in the air conditioning and engine cooling
Geometry of the FEM cooling fans and shroud
systems. The acoustic performance of the cooling
fan is important as well, when considering
human sensitivity to noise.
The component that was expected to be the
main noise source in the FEM consists of a radia-
radiator HX
tor fan and a cooling fan, both enclosed in a
condenser HX
fan & shroud
shroud. The present work considered only the
radiator fan operating with the condenser fan
fixed. Condenser and radiator heat exchangers
were included in the simulation, although the
radiator heat exchanger tank was not. Three-
dimensional laser scanning equipment was used
to obtain a digital model of the radiator fan. From
the laser scanner, a cloud of points with the coor-
dinates of the external surface of the fan blade
wall wall was generated. The resulting geometry was used
to build a hybrid mesh of about 2 million cells.
Close-up view of the cooling module The rotation speed of the fan was set at 1875
rpm. This speed was chosen so that the period of
one blade passing would be about 4ms for con-
venience of checking the simulation results. A
s6 Fluent News · Summer 2005
porous media was used to represent the heat
exchanger. Using characteristic curves for the
pressure drop vs. velocity, viscous and inertial loss
coefficients were calculated and then used in the
numerical simulation as boundary conditions.
The computational domain consisted of a rota-
tional zone containing the radiator fan, and large
stationary zones elsewhere. For steady-state sim-
ulations, the multiple reference frames (MRF)
model was used, and for unsteady simulations,
the sliding mesh model was used. Two partition
walls at the front and rear faces of the radiator
were used so that air is drawn into the radiator
fan through the heat exchanger. Beyond the fan
and shroud region, the computational domain
was extended upstream and downstream to min-
imize edge effects. A pressure boundary condi-
tion was applied to both the inlet and outlet
boundaries. A gauge pressure of zero was applied
at the outlet, and a suitable value was determined
for the inlet. Stationary side walls were used with
a no-slip condition to minimize the wall interfer-
ence effect. The turbulent nature of the flow was
incorporated through the standard k-¡ model.
Since the first objective of the study was to set up
a process for aeroacoustic simulations of FEM
cooling fans, the more costly large eddy simula-
tion (LES) or detached eddy simulation (DES)
models were not used. These models will be con-
sidered separately in the future, however.
© ANSYS, Inc. 2005 - 2009. All rights reserved.
www.ansys.com
 Article from Fluent News • SACOUSTICS
ummer 2005

The CFD simulation process began with a steady
flow analysis using MRF. Using the preliminary
results, an unsteady calculation was then per-
formed using a sliding mesh. During the
unsteady calculation, oscillating values of pres-
sure and velocity at several monitoring points
launched. During this stage, the oscillations in
the monitored variables had a period of about 4
ms, which is equal to that of blade passing in the
radiator fan.
Starting 40 ms after the start of the unsteady cal-
EACC 2005
pressure level (SPL) suggests that the dominant
mode occurs at 250 Hz, which corresponds to
the blade passing frequency. Other peaks in the
spectrum are due to interference between the
rotating blades and shroud. The overall SPL value
calculated from the CFD simulation is 60.0 dB.

located behind the rotating fan were checked.
Because of passing fan blades, the periodic time
histories of pressure and velocity values were
used to indicate when the unsteady flow calcula-
tion was fully-developed. Only after this stage
had been reached was an unsteady acoustic
analysis performed.
The unsteady flow results were found to be simi-
lar to actual flow through the fan, with a predict-
ed flow rate of approximately 1200 m3/hr. A peri-
odic steady-state condition was reached about
10 ms after the unsteady calculation was
References:
culation, the aeroacoustic calculation was begun.
The fan and shroud were treated as the main
noise source and a point 1 m upstream from the 1 Henner, M.; Levasseur, A.; Moreau, S. Detailed CFD
center of the radiator fan hub was specified as the Modeling of Engine Cooling Fan Systems Airflow;
SAE 2003-01-0615, March 2003.
receiver. This is a common location for micro-
2 Nashimoto, A.; Akuto, T.; Nagase, Y.; Fujisawa, N.
phones in a test setup. Data acquired from this
Aerodynamic Noise Reduction by Use of a Cooling
receiver point was used to compute sound pres- Fan with Winglets; SAE 2003-01-0531, March 2003.
sure fluctuations. These fluctuations, with a mag-
nitude of about 0.07 Pa, were found to be peri-
odic, with a primary period of about 4 ms. This
result indicates that the blade of the radiator fan
is the main contribution to the aeroacoustic char-
acteristics of the flow field. A graph of the sound

11.0

10.5
V (m/s)

10.0

9.5

9.0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
t (ms)

Time history of velocity fluctuations at the monitoring point

0.05
0.04
0.03
0.02
P (Pa)

0.01
0.00
-0.01

Flow pathlines through the radiator fan

-0.02
-0.03
-0.40
40 50 60 70 80 90
t (ms)

Time history of sound pressure fluctuations calculated at the receiver position

60
55
50
45
SPL (dB)

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
Frequency (Hz)

Sound Pressure Level (SPL) prediction graph

Fluent News · Summer 2005 s7

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www.ansys.com