MAHLE uses Neural Concept to design a ground-breaking new radial blower for automotive air conditioning systems

MAHLE, a leading international development partner and supplier to the automotive industry with customers in both passenger car and commercial vehicle sectors, recently presented a revolutionary design for its standardized family of radial blowers. This achievement consolidates Mahle’s strategic positioning as a premium equipment manufacturer, ensuring the highest quality levels for their customers.  

Neural Concept’s platform was instrumental in achieving this radically designed radial blower for vehicle air conditioning systems—an innovation inspired by nature and powered by AI.

To achieve this broadly acclaimed result, MAHLE used Engineering AI copilots  to explore over 30 million virtual design iterations in record time, and to provide engineers with AI-generated insights, helping them balance energy efficiency, noise reduction, packaging constraints, and energy efficiency.

The result: a high-performance component that reduces sound output by 4 decibels and improves efficiency by 15%, with a more compact footprint ideal for electric vehicles.

Let’s take a closer look.

The Bottleneck in Modern Engineering Design

In today’s competitive and complex engineering landscape, organizations face immense pressure to deliver high-performing, energy-efficient products at an accelerated pace. Design teams must innovate rapidly, navigating complex trade-offs between performance and cost while simultaneously adhering to manufacturing constraints and stringent timelines. However, traditional design processes often fall short, hindered by lengthy iteration cycles and limited automation.  

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From Biology to Breakthrough

The inspiration came from nature’s own optimizations. By observing the fluid, drag-reducing shape of a penguin’s fin, MAHLE engineers understood that nature’s optimization process had uncovered a unique design pattern and made it perform at its most.

This set out Mahle to rethink how air moves through vehicle air conditioning systems, particularly within the tight packaging constraints of electric vehicles. But turning biological concept inspiration into a high-performance industrial design requires a leap of faith and heavy engineering work. That’s where Neural Concept came in.

Using Neural Concept’s copilots, tailored to MAHLE’s own data and workflows, the team explored over 30 million virtual blower designs in record time. Guided by MAHLE’s engineers, who set the performance goals, domain constraints, and design parameters, the copilot instantly predicted real-world performance and proposed geometries that met or exceeded their specifications.

This workflow allowed the MAHLE team to evaluate aerodynamic performance, noise characteristics, and efficiency across millions of design variations and to access this information through a single AI bot, in a single interface.

With Neural Concept, MAHLE wasn’t just optimizing a typical blower; they were afforded the freedom to reimagine the design and performance of the component: moving from sequential, time-consuming iterations to a continuous, AI-assisted co-design process.

The Result

The final blower design, which sits in front of the evaporator and creates a more symmetrical and compact air conditioning unit, is suitable for all vehicle classes, from passenger cars to heavy-duty commercial vehicles. Its compact footprint is especially valuable in EVs, where space is at a premium. By combining biomimicry with AI-enabled design exploration, MAHLE delivered a component that:

• Reduces sound output by 4 decibels compared to similar systems

• Improves efficiency by 15%, reducing energy demand

With this achievement, Mahle cemented its leadership position for one of its standardized, most widely used components globally.  

Now, Mahle is set to establish processes to use AI powered development consequently across engineering projects.

Engineering for Maximum Efficiency

As the automotive industry continues to focus on reducing energy consumption and maximizing performance, innovations like these play a critical role.  

This collaboration illustrates how Neural Concept is empowering world-class engineering teams to foster innovation by discovering optimal designs through data-driven insights, with the benefit of developing better products faster, for the benefit of industries and customers worldwide.  

Want to see how Engineering AI copilots could work in your team?

Apply for a hands-on exploration of the platform today: https://www.neuralconcept.com/spark