Development of CAD Models for Large Silencer Platforms Using Design Automation

Abstract: Scania is known as a front-runner in the development of power trains for heavy vehicles, marine, and general industrial applications. As the regulations on emissions for combustion engine vehicles are getting tougher with increasing awareness on sustainable solutions and reducing environmental impact, the goal at Scania is to develop combustion engines to achieve low-pollutant emissions whilst achieving higher efficiency. Consequently, the exhaust after-treatment systems must continuously evolve to meet changing legislative requirements and customer demands.  To achieve this goal in this competitive market, Scania must adapt to these changes within a short period of time. The purpose of this thesis is to explore and improve the existing development process for the exhaust after-treatment system particularly for Large silencer platform by introducing design automation intended for computational fluid dynamics simulations. The objective was to introduce a method to reduce development time and allow designers to generate CFD models as effectively as possible. Two new methods were developed and proposed to create geometries intended for CFD simulation. The first method focuses on the extraction and splitting of internal volume/fluid region and these models will be utilized in the simulation solvers to perform CFD simulation. The second method was to standardize the naming of extracted surfaces specific to CFD simulation since every surface is treated differently in the simulation solvers. A simple user-friendly graphical user interface was created for easy operation and faster adaptability. Finally, the developed methods were evaluated and it was shown that it has the potential to save a significant amount of time during the pre-processing of the development phase and thus allow the engineers to focus on other value-adding and important task.