An Innovative Approach for Liquid Fluid Flow Simulations

Michael Ehlen

Qpunkt Deutschland GmbH

Markus Ihmsen
FIFTY2 Technology GmbH

To protect electric components or other critical parts like air intakes from water or to guide water inside given structures is a challenging task within the automotive industry. Therefore many different test scenarios like driving cars through a water channel or rainfall chambers are developed. In the early development stage these kind of measurements are impossible or quite expensive and time consuming due to missing prototypes as well as complex measurement equipment’s. For this reason a reliable and stable way to simulate these processes will help to prove a developed concept and save time and money.

This paper introduces a new and innovative method to simulate many typical water management problems, which can be applied to calculate all kind of liquid flows in a very fast, accurate and robust way. This state-of-the-art technique solves the Navier-Stokes-Equations based on particles and is developed by the Computer Science Department of the University of Freiburg. Based on this new CFD-solver, qpunkt developed a failsafe and easy workflow for various automotive water management applications. A lot of these new approaches and workflows are already in use, for example at different projects for an OEM.

This paper first explains the advanced technology to simulate liquid flows. Afterwards typical application examples are demonstrated e.g. water drive through simulations with complete moving vehicles, sprinkling simulations with wiper movement or water path predictions. Finally a short summary and outlook to future developments and applications will be given.

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