Investigation of the Effect of a Coolant Inlet Duct on the Thermal Performance of Car Radiators

Electric and conventional combustion engine cars require a device, the radiator or air cooler, to ensure operation. Although, it is used to cool a completely different part of the vehicle, an indirect heat exchange takes place by flowing coolant through this radiator. Heat transfer conditions are a function of flow, geometry, and temperature characteristics. A common feature of the finned tube heat exchangers is that the flow cross-sections are relatively small and are constructed parallel to each other. This implies that the geometry is the same in these radiators regardless of which part of the device is considered. Therefore, the local in-homogeneities are dependent on the other two factors. The coolant flows in these parallel tubes, transferring the heat from the equipment to be cooled to the ambient air temperature. The present paper deals with the effect of the inlet duct on the flow conditions and indirectly investigates the heat transfer conditions which are investigated by this numerical simulation.