Josh Holder Discusses Thermal Management and Other Engineering Considerations with the Corvette Z06

Making room for those two golf bags or the removable roof panel led to perhaps the biggest challenge for engineers who developed the 2023 Corvette Z06.

That’s the word from Corvette Chief Engineer Josh Holder in a recent trackside interview at Pittsburgh International Race Complex with Design News Senior Editor Dan Carney for an episode of their “Engineering Solutions by Design” podcast.

“We knew we were gonna put a trunk in the Corvette, and in most mid-engine executions, it’s much easier to manage heat without that obstruction of a trunk,” Holder explains, noting in those cars you can better route the exhaust, less heat shielding is required, and hot air can be evacuated in a more efficient way .

“So we were super concerned with thermal management” in a car like the C8 Z06 that cranks out 670 horsepower, Holder says. “That heat’s going somewhere, and how would it be handled and managed in a car with a giant trunk behind that hot-air compartment.”

The solution for the Z06 was “thoughtful air flow” management, according to the engineer.

The immense heat is dissipated through air vents around the hatch glass on the coupe and a vent above the engine on the hardtop convertible, along with vents in the rear fascia and “plenty” of heat shields.

“The challenge with heat shielding,” Holder points out, “is you want to do it in a lightweight way, so we’re using multi-layer shields that are often aluminized to help with radiant heat. But that doesn’t mean they have to be heavy so we use materials that are lightweight, that are very insulative, that can help protect the components in the compartment the best we can. And then the ones that we can’t protect as much as we would like, we design them to be robust, so things like wiring harnesses, for example, are rated for high heat, high temperatures.”

Sometimes meeting the challenge meant spending a little more. “We weren’t concerned with saving a penny,” Holder says. “If it cost more and was better and mitigated our risk for thermal management, especially in a high-output vehicle like a Z06, we chose to do it.”

Another engineering challenge for the team, he says, was noise control – “not the noise you want to hear, [but] the noise you don’t want to hear.”

“If you think about it,” he says, “you’ve got this loud engine behind you that’s got valvetrain noises, accessory-drive noises, some cool induction and exhaust noise, but the bad parts of the engine, the noisy parts you don’t want to hear are now right behind your ear.”

That meant a little experimentation in this case.

“We played for a time removing some of that acoustic material for weight savings,” Holder says, “because we thought we were conservative on the Stingray, appropriately and efficiently conservative, and we made the car quiet. But we heard from customers that said, hey, this car’s kinda too quiet in some cases.”

So for the Z06, since drivers want the visceral experience of the flat-plane crank engine, “we thought this could be a good way to take some weight out and so we tried” thinning the mid glass and removing some acoustic material to let more noise inside the cabin.

“We got in the car, and yeah, it was lighter, but it validated what we were worried about,” Holder says. “You could start to hear some of the stuff you don’t want to hear, not just from the engine, but you’ve got a big wide tire at the rear. Yeah, it’s further away from you, which helps, but at some point, that road noise, that sewing machine noise we call it from accessory drive parts you don’t want to hear was making its way into the car.”

Luckily, they could just revert back to the way they had done in the Stingray. “There’s an example of ways we take some risks – we’ve always taken risks on Corvettes. We can mitigate it in ways that allow us to change back if we have to, but it’s an example of finding the limit by crossing it. Acoustics was one of those areas we did that.”

Source:
Design News

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