Case Studies in Thermal Engineering 12 (2018) 390–395

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Case Studies in Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/csite

CFD-Based research on control strategy of the opening of Active

T
Grille Shutter on automobile
⁎
JiaCheng Lia,b, YaDong Denga, YiPing Wanga, Chuqi Sua, Xun Liua,b,
a
Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070 Wuhan, China
b
Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Automotive Components Technology, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070 Wuhan, China

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: Active Grille Shutter is a very promising technology to improve the performance and fuel
Active Grille Shutter economy of automotive engines. The engine room temperature and the automobile aerodynamic
Engine room resistance should both been considered when controlling the opening of the Active Grille Shutter.
Aerodynamic drag coefficient A very complete geometric model was built for exterior of an automobile and interior of its
Temperature
engine room at a scale of 1:1 with different openings of the Active Grille Shutter. An aerodynamic
drag coefficient variation curve at different grille openings was obtained through simulation
analysis, which coincided with the actual aerodynamic drag coefficient. Research was made on
the Active Grille Shutter opening control strategy based on computational fluid dynamics method
and with radiator's heat dissipating capacity and the automobile aerodynamic drag coefficient as
the evaluation parameters. The Active Grille Shutter opening control strategy was obtained,
which guarantees that the automobile aerodynamic resistance is the lowest at different travel
speeds, and the engine room temperature is within the optimal range.

1. Introduction

Around the world, petroleum consumed by automobiles accounts for more than 1/2 in the total petroleum consumption, making
the energy supply increasingly tense. Meanwhile, air pollution from petroleum-consuming automobiles and the CO2 emission have
been brought to the forefront. To lower the automobile energy consumption and reduce the emission, minimizing the aerodynamic
resistance of automobiles will become a very important research subject [1]. Besides, one of the important ways of reducing fuel
consumption and emission and improving automobile reliability is to ensure that the engine works within appropriate temperature
range as much as possible.
The front-end module has a great influence on the aerodynamic characteristics of the automobile. Jack Williams analyzed the
aerodynamic drag of the car under different motion conditions. The drag in the front of the car was divided into several parts, and the
greater impact factors on the resistance of each part were analyzed. In addition, the pressure loss coefficient brought by the air blast
was described, the influence of nonuniformity of entrance flow, module integration degree to the resistance was analyzed [2]. In
2008, Juan Tim evaluated the main factors affecting the engine compartment cooling airflow, including the bonnet, bumper, radiator,
grille, and the size, shape, leaf thickness, the position of the fan [3]. Active Grille Shutter is a new technology emerging in recent
years. It controls opening of the grille based on different driving cycles of the automobile. By this it can change the amount of cooling
air flowing into the engine room, making the engine room temperature within the appropriate range and reducing the aerodynamic
resistance of the automobile [4]. Bouilly J et al. evaluated the benefits of an Active Grille Shutter on fuel economy on the European

⁎
Corresponding author at: Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070 Wuhan, China.
E-mail address: liuxun@whut.edu.cn (X. Liu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csite.2018.05.009
Received 10 April 2017; Received in revised form 14 May 2018; Accepted 22 May 2018
Available online 23 May 2018
2214-157X/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
J. Li et al. Case Studies in Thermal Engineering 12 (2018) 390–395

homologation cycle (NEDC) at − 7 °C and + 25 °C. The results showed that fuel economy can be increased by 1.7% − 2.4% [5]. Arai
M et al. improved the aerodynamics of the new Nissan Murano. The final rear end shape was tuned and a large front spoiler was
adopted to make the new Nissan obtain the maximum aerodynamic benefit when the grille shutter was closed [6]. Rhyu S H et al.
developed an improved micro-step voltage-fed actuator for the Active Grille Shutter. A novel structured stepper motor, which
contains both the main and auxiliary teeth in the stator, is proposed for the actuator [7]. El-Sharkawy et al. from Chrysler Corporation
carried out a series of experiments to evaluate the influence of grille's opening and closing on cooling performance of the air
conditioning system, the powertrain and the temperature variation of the main parts. In the evaluation, they analyzed the power
consumption variation of the air conditioning compressor and the electric fan. The results of the experiments provided important
basis for related research on variable air-inlet grille and the generation of the grille angle control strategy [8]. Markowitz, from
Germany made research in terms of energy consumption, who pointed out that, variable air-inlet grille would reduce the aero-
dynamic resistance and also affect flowing within the condenser and its refrigerating efficiency, increasing the compressor's energy
consumption. He also gave experimental data and derived a grille opening and closing control strategy that lowers the total energy
consumption [9]. There is not much in-depth research on the control strategy of the Active Grille Shutter at present. Therefore, the
theoretical analysis of this aspect is very necessary. This paper establishes an overall calculation model for an automobile and
considers the automobile aerodynamic resistance and the engine room temperature. The model uses CFD-based method to get the
optimal openings of the Active Grille Shutter at different travel speeds.

2. Modeling

2.1. Automobile geometric model and computational domain

The geometric model reflects the true flowing status of flow fields inside and outside of the automobile to the greatest extent. And
for some geometrical characteristics with little influence on the flowing status, such as external door handles, windscreen wipers,
antenna, and some pipelines and electric wires inside the engine room, appropriate simplification treatment was made by the model.
Geometric model for interior of the engine room consists of engine, transmission, banked radiator, fan, frame, bumper, internal
surface and other parts; and parts like suspensions and fuel tank at the rear of the automobile were also retained in the model.
Fig. 1(a) is automobile geometric model, and (b) is internal structure of the engine room.
To make the computed results more close to the real situation, the flow fields affected by the automobile should be fully included
in the computational domain, and boundaries of the computational domain should not interfere with the flow fields. The entire
computational domain is a cuboid enclosing the automobile geometric model. The bottom surface contacting the tyre simulates the
ground [10,11].

Fig. 1. Calculation model: (a) Automobile; (b) Engine room's internal geometric construction; (c) radiator, condenser and intercooler; (d) Fan.

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Fig. 2. Model of Active Grille Shutter with different openings: (a) Grille opening of 0°; (b) Grille opening of 18°; (c) Grille opening of 54°; (d) Grille
opening of 90°.

2.2. Several calculation models for interior of the engine room

Radiator, condenser and intercooler inside the engine room can all be regarded as ventilation parts with damping, which can be
simulated by a porous medium model. Porous medium model is a simplified model with homogenized pressure variation replacing
complex structural volumes like plate-fin heat exchanger [12]. Geometric model for radiator, condenser and intercooler is shown in
Fig. 1(c). The portion in the middle with air flow passing through was set as porous medium model area.
For CFD numerical simulation of rotary fluid field of the fan, two main methods were used: the Multiple Reference Frame (MRF)
method and the Sliding Mesh method [13–15]. In this research, the difference between results of the two simulation methods is not
big, so the MRF method was used to save the computation time and resources. The fan model is shown in Fig. 1(d).

2.3. Model for Active Grille Shutter

To investigate the influence of different openings of Active Grille Shutter on the engine cooling system's heat dispersion and
automobile aerodynamic resistance, a model was built with six grille opening angles of 0°, 18°, 36°, 54°, 72° and 90°. In which, 0° is
full-close of the grille and 90° is full-open. Four grille models with different openings is shown in Fig. 2.

3. Grids and boundary

All computational grids were generated in the ANSA. In order to simulate the near wall flow accurately, prismatic grids were
generated on the body surface to calculate the vehicle body boundary layer. To improve the accuracy of calculation, two density
boxes were set on exterior of the vehicle body to densify the grids. The size of the density boxes were 5.5 m × 2.4 m × 1.7 m and
11 m × 6 m × 3 m. The total number of computational grids was about 11.6 million, and the Equisize Skew and EquiAngle Skew
were both smaller than 0.9.
To research the regularity of openings of the Active Grille Shutter at different travel speeds, the inflow velocity was set as 1 km/h
(idle speed), 30 km/h, 60 km/h, 90 km/h and 120mk/h, respectively.
To use the porous medium model to simulate the radiator, condenser and intercooler, three parameters of the porous medium
model area need to be determined, namely, the viscous resistance coefficient, inertia resistance coefficient and porosity. Based on

Table 1
Parameters of the porous medium model.
Porous medium model Viscous resistance coefficient Inertia resistance coefficient Porosity

7
Radiator 4.3772 × 10 184.03 0.83
Condenser 2.1119 × 107 199.26 0.89
Intercooler 1.7122 × 107 260.47 0.91

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Fig. 3. Automobile aerodynamic drag coefficient at different grille openings.

original data provided by the experiment, the setup parameters calculated for the radiator, condenser and intercooler were indicated
in Table 1.

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Automobile aerodynamic resistance

The incoming flow velocity at entrance of the computational domain was set as 33.333 m/s and calculation was made for the
model with six grille openings of 0°, 18°, 36°, 54°, 72° and 90°. An aerodynamic drag coefficient variation curve at different grille
openings was obtained, as shown in Fig. 3.
The computed results indicated that, when the grille opening was 0°, that is, when totally closed, the aerodynamic drag coefficient
was the lowest; when the grille opening was 90°, the aerodynamic drag coefficient was the highest，which was 0.344. The actual
aerodynamic drag coefficient of the automobile is 0.346, so the simulation results were very close to the actual situation. When the
grille opening was between 0° and 18°, the aerodynamic drag coefficient increased substantially; when the grille opening changed
from 36° to 90°, the aerodynamic drag coefficient variation was not obvious. During high-speed travel of the automobile, full-close of
the grille could lower the aerodynamic drag coefficient by 2.91%.

4.2. Active Grille Shutter opening control strategy

With decrease of the grille opening, the automobile aerodynamic drag coefficient would decrease, but temperature in the engine
room needs to be controlled by the grille's opening. When the engine's coolant temperature is around 90 °C, the engine would have
the best performance and the longest useful life [16].
The thermal balance test of the engine provides related data and a curve of variation of the radiator heat dissipating capacity with
the engine speed was obtained, when the engine coolant temperature is within the appropriate range. According to the relation
between engine speed and the automobile travel speed, a curve of variation of the optimal radiator heat dissipating capacity with the
travel speed can be obtained, as shown in Fig. 4(a).
After the calculation, the average temperatures of air at entrance and exit of the radiator at different travel speeds were indicated
in Table 2, and air flow at the radiator entrance were indicated in Table 3.
Based on the classical theory of heat exchange, the heat dissipating capacity of the automobile radiator can be calculated with the
following equation [17]:
Q = mc(tout − tin )

where, Q is the radiator's heat dissipating capacity (kw); m is the air mass flow through the radiator (kg/s); c is specific heat capacity
of air (kJ/(kg*k)); tout is average temperature of the radiator's outlet air; tin is average temperature of the radiator's inlet air.
After the calculation, heat dissipating capacities of the radiator at different operating conditions and different grille openings were
obtained, and a curved surface of heat dissipating capacity is generated as shown in Fig. 4(b).
At cold start, the Active Grille Shutter should be closed to reduce the heat loss to make the engine reach the appropriate operating
temperature as soon as possible. After the engine water temperature was within the appropriate temperature range, the grille opening
should be adjusted based on the operating condition.
When the automobile was idling, the grille was fully closed to lower the rate of water temperature reduction. The radiator's heat
dissipating capacity obtained from calculation in Fig. 4(b) was compared with the radiator's heat dissipating capacity required by the
automobile as shown in Fig. 4(a), and considering that the automobile aerodynamic drag coefficient rises with increase of the grille
opening, an Active Grille Shutter opening control curve was obtained, as shown in Fig. 5.

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Fig. 4. (a) Curve for the radiator's optimal heat dissipating capacity. (b) Radiator heat dissipating capacity.

Table 2
Average air temperature at the radiator entrance and exit.
Temperature (°C) Travel speed (km/h)

1 30 60 90 120

Entrance Exit Entrance Exit Entrance Exit Entrance Exit Entrance Exit

Grille opening 0° 68.38 79.33 56.04 74.54 47.12 74.48 46.84 76.26 45.44 77.82
18° 43.63 67.46 44.23 68.57 44.85 70.97 44.32 73.73 45.90 74.58
36° 44.55 65.88 44.74 66.48 44.82 72.67 45.96 75.46 45.54 76.50
54° 44.41 61.35 43.98 62.18 44.63 74.28 44.01 75.57 45.35 77.39
72° 43.90 61.19 44.05 62.03 43.78 73.49 44.14 75.55 46.64 76.92
90° 44.82 61.47 44.34 62.87 44.13 73.71 44.09 76.75 45.17 78.76

Table 3
Air flow at the radiator entrance.
Air flow (kg/s) Travel speed (km/h)

1 30 60 90 120

Grille opening 0° 0.326 0.482 0.715 0.98 1.102

18° 0.459 0.554 0.832 1.057 1.277
36° 0.631 0.726 0.981 1.214 1.456
54° 0.718 0.883 1.109 1.463 1.606
72° 0.753 0.89 1.145 1.489 1.618
90° 0.756 0.901 1.154 1.491 1.62

5. Conclusion

By building the automobile models for Active Grille Shutter at different openings, key parts within the engine room were si-
mulated, aerodynamic drag coefficient of the automobile at different openings of the Active Grille Shutter was obtained. The results
showed that, with decrease of the Active Grille Shutter opening, the automobile aerodynamic drag coefficient would be lowered.
Therefore, the Active Grille Shutter can reduce fuel consumption of an automobile to a certain degree.
By calculating the radiator's air flow and the air temperature at its entrance and exit, the heat dissipating capacity of the radiator
was obtained, which was then compared with the its optimal heat dissipating capacity generated from the experiment, and by
considering the automobile aerodynamic drag coefficient, the Active Grille Shutter's optimal opening control curve was obtained.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, Grant No. 2013CB632505), the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WUT: 2017IVA032), the 111 Project (B17034), and the Excellent

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Fig. 5. Active Grille Shutter opening control curve.

Dissertation Cultivation Funds of Wuhan University of Technology (Grant No. 2016-YS-054).

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