When a vehicle cuts through the air, the story doesn’t end at the bodywork. Air pushes through grilles, snakes past engine mounts, swirls around radiators, and finds its way out through hidden vents, carrying heat with it.
For engineers, understanding that journey in full has always been the challenge. Now, with PowerFLOW and PowerCOOL co-simulation capabilities, it’s possible to follow that story from start to finish in a single, unified workflow.
How Co-Simulation Helps Drive Designs
By connecting external aerodynamics and under-hood thermal performance in a single workflow, engineers can trace the full convective story. Convective heat transfer is deeply sensitive to geometry and flow conditions, so something as simple as a duct being routed differently or a fan spinning at a different speed can alter how effectively heat is removed from a surface.
Under-hood cooling results plot on a plane
Getting that right requires seeing the full picture, not a series of isolated snapshots. Co-simulation provides exactly that: a coupled view of external flow and internal thermal behavior, solved together because convection connects them.
With co-simulation workflows, we can answer:
- How air approaches and enters the vehicle
- How it accelerates through heat exchangers like radiators, charge-air coolers, and condensers
- How convective heat transfer draws thermal energy away from heat exchangers, engines, batteries, transmissions, and electronics.
Why This Matters
With co-simulation, the physics of the outside world and the inside world are solved together, because in reality, they’re the same problem. Engineers can identify hotspots early to locate high-temperature areas that jeopardize long-term durability and reliability.
The system components, such as radiators, fans, vents, and ducts, can be right-sized from the start, reducing weight, saving space, and cutting energy consumption without leaving cooling margin on the table. Even cabin comfort improves, as engineers can reduce the noise generated by cooling airflow and fans.
Engineering teams can optimize for aerodynamic efficiency and cooling performance simultaneously, resolving the tension between the two rather than trading one off against the other. The result is a vehicle design that is balanced, efficient, and thermally robust long before a physical prototype exists.
One Model for Every Simulation Scenario
Getting to that final simulation, however, has traditionally involved a great deal of manual, time-consuming preparation. Geometry has to be cleaned, meshes have to be built, boundary conditions have to be configured, and if the simulation scenario changes, the process often has to start again.
The Advanced Common Model
The Advanced Common Model (ACM) workflow was built to change that. At its core is a single mech model that works across all PowerFLOW applications, with no scenario dependency. Engineers no longer need to modify geometry to reuse it for a different purpose because the model adapts.
Velocity streamlines of fluid over a vehicle
CAD assemblies are organized into predefined module directories, which the system uses to drive automatic meshing by applying the right tessellation density, gap-filling settings, and other parameters based on the module name alone. Boundary conditions, resolution levels, and vehicle configuration are all set automatically as well.
ACM Precise Wrap
A key part of that preparation is ACM Precise Wrap, which readies geometry for external flow simulation by removing internals and sealing holes and gaps. The work that once took hours of careful manual effort is now handled without user intervention.
Post-Processing Results
Post-processing of results is generated automatically as well. The cumulative effect is a dramatic reduction in both the time engineers spend on setup and the level of expertise required to run simulations confidently.
Since the templates are configurable, organizations can adapt the workflow to their own specific requirements or swap in templates as processes evolve.
Optimal Under-Hood Cooling with Co-Simulation
The goal of co-simulation is to put more time back in the hands of engineers for the work that matters most: understanding what the results mean and using that understanding to build better vehicles.
Temperature results from a vehicle with radiator fans
By combining PowerFLOW and PowerCOOL, you can ensure your under-hood cooling is as efficient as possible through co-simulation and accurate system modeling. When performance is paramount, it makes sense to ensure accurate results with the most powerful tool for the job.
