A study on the performance of different radiator cooling systems in large-scale electric power transformer

Abstract

This study carried out the conjugate heat transfer and fluid flow analysis by numerically simulating the distribution of velocity and temperature fields for the insulating oil inside the radiator as well as ambient cooling air outside the radiator and also the distribution of temperature field in the solid part of the radiator using the porous media model. The present computational results were compared with the measured data obtained from the present experiment for the validation of the present numerical method, showing good agreement between them. The distribution of flow and temperature fields around the radiators were analyzed in detail in order to investigate the fundamental cooling mechanism of radiators for the AN, AF-vertical and AF-horizontal cooling models. The effect of cooling fan location along the bottom and right surfaces of radiators as well as the oil flow rate on the cooling performance of radiators in the AN, AFvertical and AF-horizontal cooling models was also investigated. The cooling performance of radiators in AN, AF-vertical and AFhorizontal cooling models was compared through the Factor of Merit analysis.