Multimatic Motorsports has successfully completed a full-distance endurance race with a Conflux Technology 3D printed, configurable transmission oil cooler on board.
The motorsports company chose Conflux, known for developing additively manufactured heat exchangers and thermal solutions, to deliver a race-proven solution without the cost and time constraints of a clean-sheet design.
Multimatic used the Australian company's configurable core platform to adapt the transmission cooler to the programme’s specific boundary conditions. The design incorporates optimised internal channels to increase heat transfer while controlling pressure drop within a compact, lightweight envelope. It was printed in just two weeks.
Julian Sole, Design Manager at Multimatic Motorsports, said, “The Conflux oil cooler, built from their configurable design and packaged efficiently in a very tight space, delivered the reliability we required over a full endurance race distance.”
The oil cooler used engine coolant to manage gearbox oil temperatures within a shared water circuit. For this endurance application, it is said to have delivered approximately 20% higher heat rejection than the incumbent solution within the same envelope. The same configurable oil cooler architecture is now available to other OEMs and race operations, and can be quickly tuned to different geometries.
“Endurance racing is the ultimate test for any cooling system,” said Glenn Rees, Principal Engineer at Conflux Technology. “We’ve shown that our configurable, 3D printed technology can move from design to race car in weeks, deliver significantly improved performance, and still be trusted to reach the finish line in some of the world’s toughest races.”
One of Conflux's earliest products was a high-performance Water Charge Air Cooler (WCAC), designed for use in motorsport and high-end automotive markets. Since then, the company has gone on to additively manufacture water-charge air coolers for the P24 RS Supercar in partnership with Donkervoort and a heat exchanger for the Pagani Utopia hypercar. Its products have also found success in the aerospace sector, with its thermal solutions being deployed across the likes of Airbus’ ZEROe project, and the Honeywell-led TheMa4HERA consortium, which aims to develop advanced thermal management systems for next-generation hybrid-electric aircraft.
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