M. GUZEJ, J. HORSKY: EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATIONS AND NUMERICAL THERMAL SIMULATIONS ...
289–293
EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATIONS AND NUMERICAL THERMAL
SIMULATIONS OF AUTOMOBILE LAMPS
EKSPERIMENTALNA PREVERJANJA IN NUMERI^NE TOPLOTNE
SIMULACIJE AVTOMOBILSKIH @AROMETOV
Michal Guzej, Jaroslav Horsky
Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technicka 2, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic
guzej@lptap.fme.vutbr.cz
Prejem rokopisa – received: 2014-07-31; sprejem za objavo – accepted for publication: 2015-05-21
doi:10.17222/mit.2014.149
Over the last decade lamps became a design feature of a car body and to preserve their primary purpose they are much more
complex than in the past. Today’s car lamps contain powerful light sources, which utilize new technologies such as
dot-concentrated light (LED chips or xenon discharge tubes). One of the unfavourable properties of these products is a high
amount of thermal energy produced in a small area, causing a high thermal stress on the components. For this reason, it is
important to know the temperature in critical locations to avoid damaging the lamp body or causing a defect in the light source
itself. This paper presents the results of a numerical simulation of the working conditions of a lamp, the measurement inside the
environmental-simulation chamber with a real lamp, providing the same conditions and the verification of the simulation results
with the measurement, which confirmed the precision of the numerical simulation. The verification procedure was developed at
the Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Laboratory of the BUT in partnership with [koda Auto a.s.
Keywords: automobile lamps, thermocouples, numerical simulation, thermal measurements, verification
Zadnje desetletje so avtomobilski `arometi postali del oblikovanja avtomobilske karoserije in za ohranitev prvotne vloge so, v
primerjavi s preteklostjo, postali bolj kompleksni. Dana{nji avtomobilski `arometi imajo mo~an izvor svetlobe, ki uporablja
nove tehnologije, kot je to~kasto skoncentrirana svetloba (LED ~ip ali ksenonska razelektritvena cev). Ena od ne`eljenih
lastnosti teh proizvodov je velika koli~ina toplotne energije, ki nastane na majhnem podro~ju in zaradi tega pride do ve~je
termi~ne napetosti v komponentah. Zato je pomembno poznati temperature na kriti~nih lokacijah, da se prepre~i po{kodba
ohi{ja `arometa ali da nastane napaka na samem izvoru svetlobe. ^lanek predstavlja rezultate numeri~ne simulacije delovnih
pogojev `arometov, meritve v notranjosti numeri~no simuliranega okolja realnega `arometa z realno `arnico in preverjanje
rezultatov simulacije z meritvami, ki so potrdile natan~nost numeri~ne simulacije. Postopek verifikacije je bil razvit v
Laboratoriju za prenos toplote in tok fluidov na BUT, s sodelovanjem [koda Auto a.s.
Klju~ne besede: avtomobilski `arometi, termoelementi, numeri~na simulacija, toplotne meritve, preverjanje
1 INTRODUCTION
Modern automobile lamps have a complex body
design and contain powerful built-in sources of light.
This can create problems for the materials used for their
construction.1 Manufacturers and consumers, in this case
[koda Auto a.s., need to know the temperature generated
at critical locations and compare it with the temperature
limit for each plastic material. Every material has a
long-term temperature limit and a short-term temperature
limit.2 Electrical losses of dot-concentrated light are
converted into thermal energy. The result of this effect is
a temperature gradient, which produces significant ther-
mal stresses within the structure.3 Solving this problem
with an analytical method is a formidable task. The few
solutions available cover only simple structural shapes.
The only option is to use simulation software such as
ANSYS, COMSOL, etc. Verifying the results of a com-
puter simulation is always necessary when high precision
is required. Experimentation under the same conditions
as in the simulation determines the accuracy of the
results or detects possible errors in the settings of the
simulation model. Wire thermocouples built into control
points are used for the temperature measurement.
Deviations between the simulation and reality are deter-
mined from the heat-settled part of the experiment.
2 EXPERIMENTAL PART
To numerically simulate an automotive lamp (Fig-
ure 1), the ambient temperature during the experiment
must be known. A lamp placed inside an environmental
simulation chamber (type: MK 720 E3.1) manufactured
by Binder was used for this purpose. This device can
maintain the required temperature by forced convection
in a very small range.
2.1 Description of the measurement circuit
Data collection during the experiments consists of
five major parts (Figure 2). First, data is measured
through the thermocouples. Then, information in milli-
volts is transferred into a 7001 switch system manu-
factured by Keithley, an American company. This model
is a half-rack, high-density, two-slot mainframe with a
maximum of 80 signal channels (in this experiment, 12
Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 3, 289–293 289
UDK 621.9.08:620.179.13:656.057.87 ISSN 1580-2949
Original scientific article/Izvirni znanstveni ~lanek MTAEC9, 50(3)289(2016)
wire thermocouples were used). The built-in, non-vola-
tile memory stores up to 100 complete switch patterns.
Then, the signal from the switcher is transferred through
a GPIB cable into a Model 2000 multimeter made by the
same company. Model 2000 is a high-performance digi-
tal multimeter, which can measure DC voltage, AC volt-
age, DC current, AC current, two- and four-wire resist-
ance, and temperature. A thermocouple card is placed at
a built-in cold junction. The final step is to save the data
as a .txt file.
2.2 Assembly of the thermocouples
Measurement points (the locations of the thermo-
couples) were chosen based on the simulation results
from two cross-sections, A and B (Figure 3). At these
points, 1-mm-diameter holes were drilled to a depth of
1 mm. The junction of a wire thermocouple was em-
bedded into to this hole and filled with a high-tempe-
rature-resistant epoxy (Figure 4a). The operational
temperature range of this epoxy is from –55 °C to
180 °C, and its thermal properties are similar to PP
GF30, the plastic material used for the body of the lamp.
If the hole for the thermocouple is made into a trans-
parent material (such as the glass of a lamp), an epoxy
with the same optical properties must be used due to
transmittance (Figure 4b). Using a material with
different properties has a negative effect on the tempe-
rature measurement near the built-in thermocouple. A
K-type thermocouple was used to record the data. This
type is the most common general-purpose thermocouple,
with a sensitivity of approximately 41 μV/°C.4 K-type
thermocouples are recommended for use in oxidizing or
completely inert atmospheres in a temperature range of
–200 °C to 1260 °C. The positive wire consists of 90 %
nickel and 10 % chromium, while the negative wire is
consists of 95 % nickel and 5 % aluminum and silicon.4
290 Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 3, 289–293
M. GUZEJ, J. HORSKY: EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATIONS AND NUMERICAL THERMAL SIMULATIONS ...
Figure 3: Top view of cross-sections A and B. Cross-section A is
situated in the axis of the bulb filament, cross-section B is offset by 30
mm from section A, in the Y-axis direction.
Slika 3: Pogled od zgoraj na preseka A in B. Presek A je v osi `arilne
nitke `arnice, presek B je zamaknjen za 30 mm od preseka A, v smeri
Y-osi
Table 1: Thermal properties of lamp materials
Tabela 1: Toplotne lastnosti materialov `arometa
Materials Density(kg m–3)
Thermal
conductivity
(W m–1 K–1)
Specific heat
(J kg–1· K–1)
Body PP GF30 1066 0.3 1351
Glass PMMA 1194 0.33 1288
Figure 2: Data collection in the measurement circuit: 1) environ-
mental simulation chamber with a lamp, 2) switcher, 3) GPIB cable,
4) multimeter and 5) computer
Slika 2: Zbiranje podatkov v merilnem tokokrogu: 1) simulacijska ko-
mora okolja z `arnico, 2) preklopnik, 3) GPIB-kabel, 4) multimeter in
5) ra~unalnik
Figure 1: Lamp with thermocouples, front view
Slika 1: @aromet s termoelementi, pogled od spredaj
2.3 Calibration
Each thermocouple had to be calibrated before the
first measurement to obtain accurate results. This is due
to the fact that thermocouples do not always have exactly
the same characteristics, even if they meet fairly strict
standards and tolerances. Calibration represents a
deviation between the thermocouple measurement and a
precise etalon. For a K-type thermocouple and a tempe-
rature range from –40 °C to 375 °C, the tolerance is
±1.5 °C (the highest class of accuracy). All the thermo-
couples had a deviation under the tolerance value. The
tolerance of thermoelectric voltage U is determined with
the following Equation (1):5
Δ ΔU T
dU
dTT
T= ⋅
⎛
⎝
⎜ ⎞
⎠
⎟ (1)
where UT is the thermoelectric voltage tolerance, T
is the temperature difference (°C), T is the temperature
(°C), and UT is the thermoelectric voltage (V).
3 LAMP SIMULATION
Predictions of the temperatures of the lamps were
computed with computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
The CFD process consists of three important steps:
pre-processing, solving, and post-processing.
3.1 Pre-processing
The geometry of the lamp was imported from raw
CAD data. The next step was to create a computation
mesh. The CutCell meshing method (Figure 5) in
ANSYS TGrid 14.5 was used for this purpose. This
method was chosen because its preparation time is
shorter than the times needed for conventional
approaches. The size of the mesh was about 13 million
polyhedral cells and the average size of these cells was 1
mm.
3.2 Solving
The resulting mesh was exported into the ANSYS
Fluent 14.5 solver, where appropriate boundary condi-
tions were set up. These boundary conditions included
the type of fluid flow (laminar), the material properties,
the emissivity of the surfaces, the heat source, and,
eventually, the forced convection around the lamp
(simulating an environment as similar as possible to the
climate chamber).
The distribution of temperatures inside the lamp
depended mainly on natural convection (incompressible
ideal gas) and radiation of the heat from the bulb. The
heat absorbed by the surfaces was transported through
the materials by heat conduction. The DO (discrete ordi-
nate) model was used to model the radiation, allowing a
calculation for semi-transparent walls.
The DO model uses a discretization technique, which
solves the radiation-transfer equations for a finite num-
ber of angles or directions. The angular discretization is
controlled by either increasing or decreasing the amount
of theta-phi divisions and pixels.6 The number of divi-
sions and pixels should therefore be kept at a minimum
in order to keep computational costs as low as possible,
but the minimum amount will also give the coarsest
discretization. The settings vary between a minimum of
3 × 3 × 3 × 3, which is the coarsest, to 10 × 10 × 10 × 10,
which is the maximum and gives the highest accuracy
and finest discretization. Since the maximum discretiza-
tion requires a lot of computational time and data
storage, the angular discretization used in the radiation
model was determined to be 6 × 6 × 6 × 6, which was
sufficient. The effect of solar radiation could be specified
but was not used for this case.
The solver solves the mass, momentum, energy and
radiative-transport equations throughout the whole
domain. The equations are discretized along the cells of
the domain and solved until convergence is reached.
M. GUZEJ, J. HORSKY: EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATIONS AND NUMERICAL THERMAL SIMULATIONS ...
Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 3, 289–293 291
Figure 5: Example of the CutCell meshing method
Slika 5: Primer mre`e pri CutCell metodi
Figure 4: Thermocouple attachment: a) a normal surface and b) a
transparent surface
Slika 4: Pritrditev termoelementa: a) je normalna povr{ina, b) pro-
zorna povr{ina
3.3 Post-processing
The results from the solution were visualized with
plotting parameters of interest for every part, in our case
focusing mainly on the temperatures. Post-processing
was performed in ANSYS CFD-Post.
4 MEASURED DATA
The following two diagrams (Figures 6 and 7) show
recorded temperatures of the lamp during the experiment
for an ambient temperature of 70 °C, a bulb supply
voltage of 13.2 V and a sampling frequency of 5 s.
5 DISCUSSION
Figures 8 to 10 show a comparison between the
numerical and experimental results (the temperature
distributions were plotted for two cross-sectional points,
A and B), including a bar graph showing the variation
between the measurement and the simulation.
M. GUZEJ, J. HORSKY: EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATIONS AND NUMERICAL THERMAL SIMULATIONS ...
292 Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 3, 289–293
Figure 6: Results for cross-section A
Slika 6: Rezultati iz preseka A
Figure 9: Temperatures for cross-section B
Slika 9: Temperature na preseku B
Figure 7: Results for cross-section B
Slika 7: Rezultati iz preseka B
Figure 8: Temperatures for cross-section A
Slika 8: Temperature na preseku A
Figure 10: Comparison of the temperatures between the measurement
and simulation
Slika 10: Primerjava izmerjenih in simuliranih temperatur
The numbers at the top of the columns are percent
deviations between the measured and simulated values
for all the positions of the thermocouples.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This paper demonstrated the importance of a compa-
rison between an experiment and a numerical simulation
due to the unknown boundary conditions at the walls of
real lamps. Determining an acceptable accuracy is
necessary to verify the lamp model. The greatest devi-
ations in the data are found for the T5A thermocouples
(the simulated value is 4 % above the measured value)
and the T4B thermocouples (the simulated value is 7.7 %
above the measured value). Possible reasons for these
inaccuracies are slightly different positions of the drilled
holes and the control point from the ones used in the
simulation, and the air flow around the lamp during the
experiment, which had a higher (or lower) speed than the
value calculated with the simulation.
Acknowledgement
This work is an output of the research and scientific
activities of the NETME Centre, regional R&D centre
built with the financial support from the Operational
Programme Research and Development for Innovations,
carried out within a NETME Centre project (New
Technologies for Mechanical Engineering), Reg. No.
CZ.1.05/2.1.00/01.0002 and, in the follow-up sustain-
ability stage, supported through NETME CENTRE
PLUS (LO1202) with the funds from the Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sports under the National Sustain-
ability Programme I.
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