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Thermo-Mechanical Simulations of Rear Lamps 2011-01-0109

Published
with CFD 04/12/2011

Flavio Cimolin and Michele Rabito

AMET S.R.L.

Andrea Menotti
OLSA S.P.A.

Copyright © 2011 SAE International

doi:10.4271/2011-01-0109

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION
Designing a rear lamp for the automotive industry is getting
A complete methodology for the thermo-mechanical analysis
more and more challenging: the best compromise between
of optical devices for the automotive industry is presented.
lightness and resistance to heat loads needs to be achieved, in
The objective is to predict the thermal field all over the lamp,
order to let it become an actual style component of the
highlighting the zones with risk of melting, and the
vehicle. Strong heat loads could be responsible of severe
deformations and stresses associated with it. The proposed
plastic deformations of both the body and the external lens,
approach is based on a Computational Fluid-Dynamic (CFD)
resulting in a global damage for the whole optical component.
simulation capable of capturing all the heat transfer
While the use of thinner and lighter materials allows the
phenomena occurring inside and outside the lamp:
designers to reach really innovative configurations in terms of
conduction between different components of the device,
elegance and style, on the other hand the problem of
natural convection associated with density changes in air
highlighting the thermally most critical zones becomes
(buoyancy effects), and radiation heat transfer. The latter
everyday tougher.
requires a fairly complex modeling strategy in order to
provide a satisfactory (and conservative) treatment for the
Prior to accept a newly developed rear lamp, it must come
source of power, i.e. the filament, which can be obtained by
through a series of tests representing its behavior in the worst
means of a proper inclusion of transparency. The radiation
environmental conditions (heat, rain, wind or moisture loads).
model is verified according to a theoretical-numerical
The test could even schedule a sequence of power on and
comparison on a schematic test case; the whole methodology
power off events for different bulbs associated to different
is then validated on a simple prototype of lamp with the aid
services inside the same lamp, leading to the necessity of
of experimental investigations. For a more accurate
following a time-dependent process instead of a steady-state
description of the boundary conditions for the lamp, it is
one. As an example, consider the case of switching on and off
possible to include the external environment, on which
a lightbulb at cycles of 5 minutes, while keeping another one
natural convection arises too. The treatment of unsteady
always on, leaving the lamp inside a ventilated oven set at a
simulations is discussed, with the description of a suitable
working temperature of 55°C for 90 minutes.
adaptive timestep algorithm capable of reducing the
computational costs and thus keeping the simulation feasible.
The whole methodology is finally tested on a complex
industrial lamp.
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Figure 1. Example geometry of a complex rear lamp (foglamp and backup light).
Figure 2. Example thermo-fluid-dynamic results
(temperature field on the lamp and velocity field on
vertical sections).
Thermal simulations represent an interesting approach to
obtain at an early development stage of the optical device a
prediction of its thermo-mechanical field in working and
testing conditions, highlighting the most critical zones on
which there is concrete risk of melting. Moreover, a clever
analysis of the results can usually provide suggestions for the
resolution of those criticalities, such as for example the
introduction of interior lens or other conductive objects to
improve the heat transfer, or the cutting of holes on its body
in order to optimize the recirculation of the air.
Many studies have been already accomplished in order to
enhance such predictive capabilities, starting from the
experimental investigations of [1, 2] and going towards the
numerical simulations of radiation heat transfer [3, 4] as well
as natural convection [5,6,7]. Experimental-numerical
comparisons indicate that the prediction of peak temperatures
due to buoyancy can be obtained with quite good accuracy
[8,9,10]. Interesting results have been obtained in [11, 12] for
“open” lamps too, that is for lamps in which the internal air is
in direct communication with the external one. Dealing with
radiation modeling, the analyses of [13, 14] showed the
importance of handling specular reflection in order to
accurately track the incident rays on the internal parabolic
surfaces. Moreover, many works can be found in literature
for what concerns the problem of condensation formation on
the lens, due to unsufficient moisture removal by vents
openings (see e.g. [15,16,17,18,19,20]), usually more relevant
for front lights.
Our work, which follows the lines of [21], aims at reviewing
the whole numerical resolution of the problem in order to set
a robust and reliable methodology for the simulation of the
thermo-mechanical behavior of a rear lamp. Focusing on the
modeling of the filament-bulb interaction, that is reproducing
accurately the source of power inside the lightbulb without
any rough simplification, our approach turns out to reproduce
reality with fairly good agreement as well as perfect energy
balance on the whole system under analysis. This is achieved
by means of a detailed description of the radiation heat
transfer, obtained by employing a surface-to-surface model
capable of including transparency effects and specular
reflection. Moreover, by means of a CFD simulation it is
possible to describe the airflow associated with natural
convection, which are responsible for the most critical
temperatures directly above the bulbs. For a more accurate
description of the boundary conditions for the lamp, it is
possible to include the external environment too, which can
be still air as well as a ventilated oven, often used in testing
conditions.
A detailed verification and validation of the approach will be
presented and discussed, which has been assessed by means
of both theoretical considerations and experimental
investigations. The numerical-experimental comparison turns
out to show a pretty good agreement and perfect energy
balance, assessing the reliability and robustness of the
methodology. For what concerns the treatment of unsteady
simulations, we will provide a suitable algorithm that has
been devised in order to keep the computational cost above
feasibility. Indeed, it is necessary to find a compromise
between the planned timestep and the desired accuracy: the
best choice is to adapt the timestep as the solution advances,
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in such a way that at each time advancing iteration the
maximum gain is achieved under suitable controlling
conditions.
The whole methodology is finally tested on a real complex
lamp, namely the backup light and foglamp represented in
Fig. 1.
PHYSICAL ASPECTS
It is well-known that the three fundamental heat transfer
phenomena are conduction, convection and radiation [22].
The structure of a lamp is so complex that all of them need to
be taken into account if one aims at fully reproducing
numerically the thermal field of all the components. The main
heat transfer phenomenon is radiation, since the source of
heat is the filament of the light bulb, which at first
approximation does not touch any other component.
Moreover, because of high temperature differences between
the bulb, the body of the lamp and the surrounding air,
natural convection arises both inside and outside the lamp,
which is responsible for the most critical observed
temperatures, usually located just above the bulb.
CONDUCTION
Conduction is the simplest among the heat transfer
mechanisms: it represents the diffusion of heat inside a body
from the region where the temperature is higher towards
those where it is lower. The reference mathematical model
for its description is obtained starting from the balance
equation for the energy, to which it is necessary to associate
the Fourier's constitutive law
(1)
which establishes the direction of the heat flux to be
proportional to the gradient of the temperature T, k being the
thermal conductivity coefficient and q the heat flux vector.
The resulting heat equation is therefore the following one:
(2)
where ρ is the density of the medium, cp the specific heat and
Δ stands for the Laplacian operator. The above linear
equation is suitable to represent the temperature distribution
for solids, liquids and gases under the hypothesis that no
movements or phase transitions occur inside.
CONVECTION
Convection is a heat transfer mechanism characterized by a
mass flow: it is the fluid itself that with its movement carries
around the heat from different places of the medium. It can be
extremely efficient with respect to conduction as the fluid
velocity increases. Natural convection occurs because of the
movement induced by the different densities of the fluid
associated to different pre-existing temperatures, thus is
ultimately caused by the influence of gravity [23].
The adimensional parameter that better characterizes natural
convection is the Rayleigh number:
(3)
g being the gravity acceleration, α the volumetric expansion
coefficient of the fluid medium, µ the dynamic viscosity
coefficient, ΔT the temperature difference between the hot
and the cold zone, and L the distance among them. For values
of Ra less than 103 no movement occurs, since the buoyancy
forces have not sufficient strength. For values of Ra between
103 and 106 a primarily ordered and laminar movement is
observed, structured according to the so-called Bénard
convective cells. For higher values of Ra turbulence occurs,
leading to more chaotic and unstructured movements of the
fluid.
Dealing with a rear lamp, assuming the fluid to be the air and
as temperature difference and potential vertical distance
between hot and cold zones ΔT=200 K and L=10 mm
respectively (with respect to the flow inside the lamp), one
obtains as indicative value Ra=105, therefore expecting
natural convection to arise in a structured way with laminar
flow.
The mathematical model capable of describing the evolution
of natural convection consists in the Navier-Stokes equations
for incompressible fluids [24]:
(4)
where v and p are the velocity and pressure field respectively,
and f the term associated to the volumetric forces, i.e. gravity
in our application. In order to model natural convection it is
necessary to provide a constitutive state equation ρ=ρ(p,T),
like for example the ideal gas law, and to couple Eq. (4) with
the following modified version of Eq. (2), which takes into
account the advection of the temperature:
(5)
The simplest way to include buoyancy effects into the
Navier-Stokes equations consists in following the so-called
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Boussinesq approach: the density is considered variable only
for what concerns its action as forcing term in the momentum
equation (4), where even small differences can be responsible
for the triggering of the convective motion.
RADIATION
Radiation is a heat transfer phenomenon completely different
from the previous two, since it occurs between two surfaces
at different temperature (even located distant from one
another) almost independently with respect to the interposed
medium, which could eventually be vacuum. The classical
theory of radiation [22, 25] rests upon the balance between
the fraction a of total incident energy absorbed by a body, the
fraction r of energy reflected and the fraction t of energy
transmitted (that is which passes through), which simply
writes (as functions of the different wavelengths λ):
(6)
Moreover, for simple equilibrium considerations, it turns out
that the total amount of absorbed energy must be equal to the
total amount of emitted energy ε, which often goes under the
name of Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation. This can be
read in Eq. (6) as a balance between the emitted, reflected
and transmitted energy translating in the common fact that
poor reflectors are good emitters and vice versa. Under the
“black body hypothesis” α = ε = 1, the distribution function
e(λ,T) of radiant energy emitted at thermodynamic
equilibrium at the temperature T can be computed according
to quantum mechanics by means of Planck's law:
(7)
where h is Planck's constant, c0 is the speed of light and kb is
Boltzmann's constant. Integrating over all the wavelengths
the radiation spectrum one obtains that the total power
emitted by a black body of area A at temperature T is
expressed by Stefan-Boltzmann's law:
(8)
where σb=5.67·10−8 W/(m2K4) is the Stefan-Boltzmann
constant. However, this relation, which is true only for a
theoretical black body, needs to be corrected by weighting the
integral with the emissivity coefficients ε(λ)≠1. The “gray
body” hypothesis simplifies the computation assuming no
dependence of ε on λ, which leads to our final formula for the
radiant power output emitted by a surface of
(9)
A final remark needs to be discussed for what concerns
reflection, which can be specular or diffuse (or both, in
different percentages). Depending on the type of surface on
which an incident ray collides, it could be reflected into a
single outgoing mirror direction (specular reflection) or
equally distributed in all the possible directions (diffuse
reflection). Since we are dealing with lamps with really
marked optical properties, expecially for what concerns the
parabolic internal surface of the body, specular reflection
turns out to be really important to adequately describe the
reflection of the rays going from the bulb towards the lens.
STRESSES INDUCED BY HEAT LOADS
The influence of the temperature field, which can be
computed according to the previously described heat transfer
mechanisms, on the body of the lamp can be discussed on
two different levels. First of all, according to the type of
material of which the lamp is made of, there will be a
maximum threshold temperature Tmax above which melting
will occur. This can be assessed by analyzing the thermal
field alone, looking for the maximum temperature in the
critical zones, which should not exceed Tmax.
On the other hand, by the structural viewpoint, the thermal
field can be seen as a heat load which gets into the whole set
of constraints that keep tied the component and connect it to
the rest of the vehicle, generating deformations that could
potentially lead to damages of the lamp. In a linear isotropic
elastic material the constitutive relation between the tensorial
stress field σ and the tensorial strain field ε is given by [26]:
(10)
E and v being the Young modulus and Poisson coefficient
respectively, α the coefficient of thermal expansion, Tref the
expansion reference temperature (namely the temperature at
which the thermal strain vanishes), tr(·) the trace operator and
δ the identity matrix. The first term of the right hand side of
Eq. (10) represents the elastic stress (due to mechanical
loads), while the second one represents the thermal stress
(due to heat loads). Recalling that by definition
(11)
u being the displacement vector, the constitutive equation
(10) can then be employed in order to evaluate u from the
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Figure 3. Polyhedral mesh of the lamp and of the surrounding air.
solid momentum equation of the classical linear elasticity
theory
(12)
where ρ is the solid density and F is the body force vector.
METHODOLOGY OF ANALYSIS
STEADY-STATE THERMO-
MECHANICAL SIMULATION SETUP
The numerical solution of the equations detailed in the above
section has been carried out with a finite volume approach by
means of the commercial CFD package Star-CCM+ [27],
capable of handling conjugate heat transfer phenomena
between different bodies as well as radiation and solid stress.
For the sake of simplicity, we assume the mechanical analysis
to be decoupled from the thermo-fluid dynamic one: the
thermal field obtained as output of the latter is given as input
to the former.
The finite volume discretization takes advantage of the
possibility to employ generic polyhedral cells, which
represent the most flexible and cost-effective type of cells.
Moreover, in order to guarantee a proper accuracy to the
solution, it is recommended to leave at least 3-4 cells across
the thickness of the thin solid components of which the lamp
is made of, which can be achieved by defining there a so-
called “thin mesh” made of a predominantly structured
prismatic mesh together with a circumscribed unstructured
one that has the scope of linking the former in the most tough
areas. Following such a strategy, it is possible to bound the
total number of cells even keeping a size of 2-4 mm on the
“flat” direction of components with a thickness of less then 1
mm (i.e. the bulb). Finally, for what concerns the mesh of the
air, we define a suitable prism layer in proximity of all the
no-slip walls (see Fig. 3).
The Navier-Stokes equations are solved with the SIMPLE
algorithm following a segregated approach [28], as well as
for the thermal energy one. Natural convection is
contemplated by activating the ideal gas model (or the
Boussinesq one), which links the fluid-dynamic solution to
the thermal one. If the lamp is closed and only inner air needs
to be modeled, turbulence effects are quite irrelevant and
laminar flow is sufficient. On the other hand, if external air is
included, the flow can be suitably described in a RANS
fashion by means of the Realizable k-ε turbulence model with
“all y+” wall treatment.
For what concerns radiation heat transfer, it is fundamental to
identify the boundaries and interfaces involved in the process.
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Their faces are grouped into “patches”, thus setting up the

discretization of radiation. Following the “gray body
assumption”, on each boundary it is required to define the
proper coefficients of emissivity, reflectivity and
transmissivity. Moreover, for this kind of application it is
fairly important to take advantage of the specular reflection
model, according to which the view factors are calculated by
ray-tracing.

The boundary conditions of the problem are quite

straightforward to define, at least for what concerns the
outside of the lamp: if the external air is modeled, we simply Figure 4. Scheme of the filament-bulb radiation
impose the temperature on its boundary, while in absence of interactions.
external air it is possible to set a Robin convection condition
with a fixed heat transfer coefficient. It is also possible to
extend it to the case of more complex situations, like for The above scheme can be easily solved by taking into
example putting the lamp inside a ventilated oven. The account the definition of emissivity and transmissivity of the
modeling of the source of power on the filament(s) and inner surface of the bulb
bulb(s) is less trivial and will be explained in the next section.
A steady-state simulation for a model of about 1-2 millions
cells can be carried out in a few hours taking advantage of (13)
parallel computation.
the balance of fluxes on the bulb at steady state
FILAMENT-BULB RADIATION
Let us now deal with the heat transfer phenomena occurring
inside a light bulb, in order to provide a methodology to (14)
accurately model the source of power. The goal is to follow a
the balanced subdivision of the emitted radiation flux
conservative approach imposing on the pair “filament/bulb”
between the external and the internal side of the bulb (that
exactly the total power P desired, without setting any
should be true for a thin glass)
Dirichlet boundary condition on the temperature. In the
following we present a theoretical-numerical comparison that
stands for both a validation of the method and a verification
(15)
of the software.
and the definition of emissivity and transmissivity of the bulb
Referring to Fig. 4, we consider a filament (F), supposed to inner surface applied to the radiation emitted by the bulb
be a point source of power, a thin partially transparent bulb towards itself
(B) and an external ambient environment (A) that absorbs all
the radiation that arrives. Note that between the filament and
the bulb there is nothing (vacuum). Let us neglect for the
moment the reflectivity of the bulb, and consider only its (16)
emissivity ε and its transmissivity t, such that ε + t = 1.
Eq. (13), (14), (15), (16) are 6 equations in 5 unknowns,
The radiation emitted by the filament, corresponding to the which show to be consistent with respect to the connection
whole power dissipated on it, gets partly absorbed by the bulb between ε and t given by ε + t=1. The physically most
(Pfb), while the remaining part pass through it towards the relevant quantity associated with this scheme is the net
ambient (Pfa). The bulb emits both in direction of the ambient radiation heat flux Qrad absorbed by the bulb, which turns out
(Pba) and in the opposite one (inside): this latter portion of to be (as a function of the transparency t):
radiation is again split into two parts, one being re-absorbed
by the bulb (Pbb) and the other one going across it (Pbba).

(17)

The schematic configuration described above has been

implemented on a numerical model (of course without
satisfying exactly the assumptions of pointwise filament and
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infinitely thin bulb) and solved for the steady-state • Variable timestep: a full implicit unsteady simulation is
configuration in Star-CCM+. The results are displayed in Fig. performed, in which the timestep is not kept fixed but instead
5, which shows really good agreement between the adapted in order to have a fast advance when allowed by the
theoretical values and the numerically-obtained ones. temperature variations.

Let us give a brief description of how it is possible to set up a

variable timestep unsteady simulation by suitably scripting
the time advancing algorithm. For an example of application
of this technique on the industrial rear lamp described in this
paper, we demand to the Results section later on. Let us call
t0,t1,t2,…,tn,… the discretized time instants, at which the
solution in terms of temperature and velocity is (T0, v0), (T1,
v1), (T2, v2),…, (Tn, vn),…, the timestep at time tn being Δtn
= tn − tn−1.

The key idea of the advancing scheme is to use the computed

Figure 5. Behavior of the radiation heat flux on the bulb solution up to the time tn in order to update the timestep Δtn
Qrad as a function of the transparency t, for the +1, the objective being to perform the “longest” possible step

theoretically-computed values (solid line) and the values which guarantees a certain fixed accuracy. To this aim we
obtained by numerical simulation (dots). define the two monitors

TRANSIENT ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

As already discussed in the introduction, transient analyses (18)
are really useful when trying to reproduce complex testing
conditions with different lights turning on and off at
scheduled times (eventually of the order of dozens of
minutes). Most commercial CFD packages allow to
(19)
numerically reproduce a transient by means of an implicit
unsteady simulation in which at each timestep the new that can be interpreted as the “average temperature variation”
solution is computed with several “inner iterations” at the and the “maximum velocity variation” occurred during the
same manner as for a steady state computation. In order to previous timestep n. Then it is possible to set reasonable
accurately solve the whole transient, the timestep must be values for the desired average temperature variation δT* as
taken small enough to be able to capture the rapid variations well as for the desired maximum velocity variation δv*, thus
of the temperature field on the bulb in the power on and using the functions
power off instants (eventually of the order of fractions of
seconds). Unfortunately, for grids of several millions cells
this results in a fairly huge computational cost, often leading
to unfeasible simulations.
(20)
To overcome the problem it is possible to employ one of the
following strategies, ordered by increasing complexity (and to update the timestep, according to the simple rule that if ηn
accuracy): > 1 and ζn > 1 than the timestep can be increased (since the
variation of the solution is less than the maximum one
• Scaled power: the unsteady computation is replaced by a accepted), otherwise it must be reduced. If the above
standard steady-state one in which the power provided on the condition is satisfied, then dealing with the thermal field the
filament(s) is replaced by the weighted averaged according to
the lighting and standby times. ideal timestep would be , while dealing with
• Freeze velocity: the transient simulation is performed the velocity field it would be Hence we set
solving only the thermal equation and keeping fixed (i.e. n n n
ζ = min{η , ζ } and update the timestep with the formula
“freezing”) the velocity field previously computed for an
equivalent scaled power steady-state solution. This allows to
take into account buoyancy-related effects in an
approximated way, but without fully computing the whole (21)
fluid-dynamic solution.
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Figure 6. Experimental apparatus and its numerical reproduction. The distance between the bulb and the body of the box has
been deliberately taken high, in order to highlight buoyancy effects.
β being a suitable under-relaxation factor. If instead of
increasing the timestep, one establishes it to be reduced, we
set µn = max{ηn,ζn} and replace (21) with
(22)
As a final remark in view of a cheap simulation, we observe
that wherever possible the external air should be removed
from the simulation, leaving as heat transfer coefficient
exactly the one computed by an equivalent steady-state
solution.
VALIDATION OF THE
METHODOLOGY
In view of a numerical/experimental comparison for the
validation of the complex thermo-fluid-dynamic
methodology described above, we have considered a really
simple prototype of lamp, consisting of a cubic box of 86 mm
with thickness 3 mm made of Lexan, and of a W16 lightbulb
sealed up inside the box (see Fig. 6). The same geometry has
been reproduced for the numerical simulation, leading to a
model of about 300 000 polyhedral cells (including internal
and external air).
A Flir ThermaCAM T360 thermo camera has been employed
to investigate the temperature contours at steady state
(namely after 30′) when the bulb is powered with 16W. The
measured ambient temperature (that in the numerical
simulation has been imposed on the boundaries of the
external air) was Tenv = 298 K.
The quantitative comparison of the maximum temperatures
on the four significant faces of the cube is detailed in Tab. 1,
showing good agreement except that on the lateral face
(although not exceeding 5 K difference). The reason could be
associated to a non correct modeling of the filament
geometry: the toroidal surface employed in this case could be
responsible of an uncorrect directioning of the radiation
towards the lateral faces.
By means of the numerical simulation it is also possible to
carry out a detailed heat flux analysis, showing perfect
conservation of energy:
• Power dissipated on the filament: 16.00 W
• Heat flux absorbed by the internal surface of the bulb: 3.08
W
• Heat flux on the external surface of the bulb towards the air:
2.83 W
• …of which by radiation: 0.68 W
• Heat flux exiting from the box towards the environment:
15.97 W
• …of which by radiation: 8.48 W
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Figure 7. Numerical/experimental comparison of the steady state temperature field on the top face.
Table 1. Numerical/experimental comparison.
RESULTS FOR AN INDUSTRIAL
TEST CASE
Let us now consider as industrial test case for the application
of the complete methodology the rear lamp of Fig. 8. It
consists in a multiple service rear lamp with a foglamp
service in the center position and two lateral bulbs employed
as backup lights. The housing is made up of polycarbonate
while the lens is in polymethacrylate. The circuit holder in
polypropylene supports the three lamp sockers in poliammide
PA66, each of them holding a W16 lightbulb. Moreover, a
grid in PC+ABS has been set just behind the lens for
aesthetic purposes (see Fig. 8 for an exploded view of the real
lamp). The geometry analyzed in this study, which consists in
an early step of the design of the lamp, suffers of several
criticalities on the internal part of the body near the central
bulb and on the portion of the lens just in front of the backup
lights, which melts if all the lights are set full power for more
than 15′.
Figure 8. Exploded view of the analyzed industrial lamp.
The original CAD geometry has been suitably simplified and
arranged in order to correctly define all the interfaces
between the different components (see Fig. 1). The final 3D
mesh generated by Star-CCM+ (see Fig. 3) consists of about
700,000 polyhedral cells, which has been employed to carry
out the simulation on a 4-cores 64 bit Windows workstation.
One of the most severe tests through which the lamp comes
consists in providing full power on the foglamp (16 W) for an
hour, while turning on the backup lights for 5 minutes and
then off with period 20 minutes, at ambient conditions.
Let us first of all consider a “scaled power” steady-state
simulation, in which the foglamp is powered with 16 W and
the two backup lights each with 4 W. The temperature field
on the lamp is shown in Fig. 9, highlighting the peaks on the
top of the body associated with buoyancy effects. The motion
of the air (both internal and external) can be visualized by
means of vectors or streamlines, as illustrated in Fig. 10,
which allows to better understand the importance of natural
convection on the overall heat transfer. Fig. 11 provides an
interesting comparison between the temperatures on the lens
measured with the aid of the thermo camera and the ones
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Figure 9. Contour plot of the temperature of the lamp.

Figure 10. Visualization of the internal and external air motion associated with natural convection.

coming from the simulation. The agreement if fairly good

both qualitatively and quantitatively, with just a slight
difference in the form of the peak associated with the
foglamp, which actually depends on a little misalignment of
the parabola carried out on the real geometries for optical
reasons that causes a duplication of its geometrical focus and
that for the sake of simplicity has not been reproduced in the
numerical model.
Figure 11. Comparison of the measured and simulated
temperatures of the lens.

As an example of result for the stress analysis, consider the

displacement magnitude contour plot of Fig. 12, obtained by
constraining the back portion of the circuit holder and
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Figure 12. Displacement magnitude contour plot.

applying the thermal load computed by the steady-state off event raises, till another of such events occurs. With the
analysis. adaptive timestep algorithm the total number of advancing
time iterations carried out is about 700, which is less than
Without any doubt the steady-state analysis provides really 10% of the number of the same that would have been
useful results, already showing the local criticalities to which required by keeping it fixed to its minimum value.
the lamp is subject. However, for a most accurate analysis it
is necessary to follow the whole transient of the power on and
power off events, which has been carried out by means of the
adaptive timestep algorithm described previously. The plot of
Fig. 13 gives the evolution of the temperatures on three
points of the lens, showing that the most sensible zone turns
out to be that located just above the backup lights (blue curve
in the plot), which actually reaches the melting temperature
of the material after about 15′ (note that this test is rather
severe and that the lamp we are dealing with is not the final
design).

Figure 14. Evolution of the timestep in the adaptive

algorithm for the unsteady simulation.

Figure 13. Evolution of the temperature on three sample
points on the lens for the unsteady simulation (red line:
in front of the foglamp, blue line: in front of one of the
backup lights, green line: halfway between the previous
two).
Focusing on the numerical point of view, the evolution of the
timestep is reported in Fig. 14, clearly showing how it
increases as the temporal distance between the last switch on/
SUMMARY
A comprehensive CFD-based methodology for the numerical
simulation of the thermo-mechanical behaviour of rear lamps
has been developed and discussed. It embraces in a fairly
accurate way all the three fundamental heat transfer
mechanisms: conduction between solids, natural convection
associated with buoyancy effects, and radiation. The latter
includes a suitable treatment of specular reflection and
transparency effects, which are fundamental issues that need
to be taken into account for an accurate reproduction of the
behavior of lamps.
A particular attention has been directed to the description of
the source of power, that is to the filament-bulb interaction. A
simple schematic configuration allowed us to verify the code
by comparing the output with analytical results. A major
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validation has been then carried out on a simple prototype of
a lamp, showing good agreement between simulation and
reality.
Dealing with unsteady simulation, a peculiar algorithm has
been devised, capable of adapting the timestep in order to set
it to the highest possible gain at each instant, actually
optimizing the computational costs. Both the steady-state and
the unsteady simulation has been finally tested on a real
complex industrial lamp.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Corresponding author:

Flavio Cimolin
AMET S.r.l.
Environment Park, Via Livorno 60, 10144 Torino, Italy.
flavio.cimolin@amet.it

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank the support of CD-adapco in the
names of Anthony Massobrio and Lucia Sclafani, for their
fundamental aid in understanding even the most subtle
peculiarities of the software STAR-CCM+ in order to
conveniently reproduce the complex heat transfer phenomena
occurring inside a lamp.

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