Study on Performance Evaluation of Automotive Radiator

Abstract

A complete set of numerical parametric studies on automotive radiator has been presented in detail in this study. The modeling of radiator has been described by two methods, one is finite difference method and the other is thermal resistance concept. In the performance evaluation, a radiator is installed into a test-setup and the various parameters including mass flow rate of coolant, inlet coolant temperature; etc. are varied. A comparative analysis between different coolants is also shown. One coolant as water and other as mixture of water in propylene glycol in a ratio of 40:60 is used. It is observed that that the water is still the best coolant but its limitation is that it is corrosive and contains dissolved salts that degrade the coolant flow passage.