The effect of duct shape on the heat dissipation performance of ventilated clutch pressure plate

This study presents the effects of duct design on thermo-fluidic characteristics of ventilated clutch pressure plate via validated numerical model. Two different duct designs are considered. Moreover, variation of duct width and airfoil shaped duct designs are investigated. Compared to non-ventilated conventional clutch pressure plate, results show that implementing duct shape enhances the overall cooling performance by up to 154% at idle speed 550 rpm, 137% at 1200 rpm, and 142% at 2000 rpm. Once only the duct shapes are considered, it is found that the variation of inlet and outlet duct width has negligible effect on overall cooling performance. Further, radial airfoil shaped duct design shows the best cooling performance in overall among all duct shapes, and enhances the overall cooling performance by up to 11% at 550 rpm idle speed compared to non-airfoil radial duct design. In addition, implementation of ventilated design results weight reduction up to 25%. Heat transfer enhancement mechanisms clarified in the present study are helpful to motivate further innovative lightweight solutions in order to overcome the challenges related to the recent CO₂ regulation for Heavy Duty Vehicles.