Simulation of heat transfer in automotive radiator
Arian GIDWANI, Saisha MASTAKAR, Abhishek PRIYAM
Abstract. The radiator is a crucial component of the cooling system in an automobile. Its liquid cooling system can be more precisely controlled and offers greater cooling capacity than air-cooling systems such as those found in motorbikes or small aircrafts. As about 1/3rd of the total heat energy from the fuel is dissipated through the engine cooling system, it is necessary to design a robust and effective cooling system. In this study a basic radiator system has been modelled in SolidWorks and conjugate heat transfer simulations have been carried out in ANSYS Fluent. By using commonly used materials such as aluminum for the radiator and water as a coolant the results of this study may be of relevance to a wider audience and be easily compared with other data. This study focuses on four test cases with variations in coolant inlet temperature, namely 373K and 353K as well as coolant and air flow rates of 4m/s or 0.5m/s for water and 2m/s or 0.2m/s for air respectively. The air inlet temperature was fixed at 300K for all readings and the effectiveness of the radiator was found out in all cases. The use of simulation for testing the efficiency and effectiveness of cooling systems helps reduce costs by testing before investing time and money on physical prototypes and helps to develop better systems faster.
Keywords
CFD, Cooling Systems, Conjugate Heat Transfer, Automotive Radiator, ANSYS Fluent
Published online 3/1/2025, 11 pages
Copyright © 2025 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Arian GIDWANI, Saisha MASTAKAR, Abhishek PRIYAM, Simulation of heat transfer in automotive radiator, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 49, pp 152-162, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644903438-16
The article was published as article 16 of the book Mechanical Engineering for Sustainable Development
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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