Cooling Performance of Fresh and Aged Automatic Transmission Fluids for Hybrid Electric Vehicles

The cooling performance of automatic transmission fluids (ATFs) plays an important role in hybrid electrical vehicles, in which the electric motor (EM) is placed inside the transmission housing due to their mission of cooling the EM. The cooling performance of the ATFs depends on their thermophysica...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inApplied sciences Vol. 12; no. 17; p. 8911
Main Authors Rivera, Noelia, Viesca, José Luis, García, Alberto, Prado, Jose I., Lugo, Luis, Battez, Antolin Hernández
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2022
Subjects
Aging
automatic transmission fluids
Automatic transmissions
Automobiles
Conductivity
Cooling
density
Efficiency
Electric motors
Electric vehicles
Fluids
heat capacity
Heat conductivity
Heat transfer
hybrid electric vehicles
Lubricants & lubrication
Mineral oils
Molecular structure
Oxidation
Powertrain
Temperature
Thermal conductivity
Thermophysical properties
Transmission fluids
Viscosity
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Summary:The cooling performance of automatic transmission fluids (ATFs) plays an important role in hybrid electrical vehicles, in which the electric motor (EM) is placed inside the transmission housing due to their mission of cooling the EM. The cooling performance of the ATFs depends on their thermophysical properties, but these properties change with the oxidation of the ATFs. This work studies the influence of the oxidation of three ATFs (A, B, C) on their thermophysical properties, as well as on some figures-of-merit (FOMs) which are relevant for evaluating the cooling performance. The results indicated that the influence of the molecular structure on thermal conductivity and heat capacity is stronger than on density and viscosity, whereas the molecular structure hardly affects the FOMs of the fresh ATFs; ATFs B and C, formulated with base oils from API Group III, indicated better cooling performance than ATF A which was formulated with base oils from API Group I; the sensitivity to temperature of the variation with oxidation of the studied properties, including the FOMs, was almost null, except for ATF A; therefore, FOMs should be used to compare the cooling performance of ATFs for electric drivetrains instead of a single property, such as thermal conductivity.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app12178911