Thermal analysis of automotive lamps using the ADINA-F coupled specular radiation and natural convection model

Abstract

ADINA R&D Inc. has developed a code which has the capability to perform coupled specular radiation and fluid flow analysis using a ray tracing method. The code has been applied to automotive lamp thermal analysis to accurately predict lamp surface temperatures resulting from radiation and natural convection heating. The results have been successfully correlated with empirical data using an infrared thermal imaging camera. The code predictions were consistently within ±10% of measurements. The code can be applied to large FEA models of unstructured three-dimensional meshes with four-node tetrahedral elements. The ADINA-F Computational Fluid Dynamics code can now be used to perform thermal validation of automotive lamps for a wide variety of large and complex lamp designs. This capability can significantly reduce design costs and expensive prototyping.