REVIEW ARTICLE


Vehicle Radiators’ Performance Calculation and Improvement Based on the Coupling of Multi-scale Models Simulations



Liu Shui-Chang1, 2, Li Li-Fu1, Zhang Yong*, 2
1 School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou 412007, China


© 2014 Shui-Chang et al

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Vehicle Engineering Institute, Hunan University of Technology, No.88, Taishan West Road, Zhu-Zhou, Hunan, 412007, China; Tel: +8615292200781; E-mail: zhangyong7051678@163.com


Abstract

In simulation of the heat transfer between radiator and air flow field, the adoption of the radiator full-size model containing its core body structure with small feature sizes would require huge storage space and not be economical. In view of this question, based on the coupling of multi-scale models simulations, a calculation method of radiator performance is proposed in this paper the reliability of which is verified by an experiment test. Subsequently, the influence on the radiators’ thermal performance of the layout of the parts in front of the radiators is analyzed. Lastly, the layout of the front parts is modified to enhance the radiators’ thermal performance. The investigation results indicate that: the radiators’ thermal performance calculation method based on simulations coupling of radiator multi-scale models considers the influences of air-side flow field distribution and the core body structure details; the error of the calculating values from the method is less than 5%, and the method is reliable; when the heat source parts in front of the radiators are situated right in front of the rear fan channel, the radiators thermal performance is better; the radiators cooling power increases 19.3kW after layout modification of the front heat resource parts.

Keywords: Multi-scale models, parts layout, radiator performance calculation.