Design and development of automotive radiator for better cooling efficiency

Abstract

Today’s Automobiles are getting equipped with high powered engines. Out of total energy produced by combustion nearly 30–35% is generally used for cooling engine hot water. In such engines, heat dissipation is observed to be improper due to many reasons which cause overheating of the engine, which further leads to damage to lubricating oil film, engine parts and also wear and tear between engine parts. This excess heat can be removed with the help of the effective use of cooling water. The present work aims to identify different ways that need to be used for improving the cooling efficiency of the radiator. LMTD and NTU methods are used for the design of the heat exchanger. The cross-flow heat exchanger is completely designed for the augmentation of heat transferred from the radiator. Different tube arrangements and fin materials are used in this work which gave the effective solution to the problem stated above. The newly developed cross-flow heat exchanger is used in automobile vehicle radiators on a stationary engine in the laboratory which has further helped for reducing the fuel consumption and increasing heat transfer. The comparison is also made for cooling efficiency from the newly fabricated cross-flow heat exchanger with the previous one. The major outcome of the research work is a reduction in fuel consumption by 8.78% with the use of a designed heat exchanger and an increase in brake thermal efficiency by 23.16%. It is also seen that with the change in the tube arrangement, tube shape and fin material, the heat transfer rate is also improved by 24.37% for various dynamometer loading conditions.