Enhancement of Radiator Efficiency using CFD Analysis

The experimental testing for the determination of the thermal characteristics of fin-and-tube automobile radiators is very common, but these experimental testing are not preferable considering the cost and the time. One substitute to the experimental testing is the utilization of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to guess the thermal features of these types of radiators. However, CFD models are also not suitable to be used as a design tool since the considerably amount of computational power and the computational time required due to the complex geometric structures of the fins. This issue becomes difficult when the heavy-duty radiators are considered. A simplified model can be used to analyze and predict the thermal behavior of the radiator. This paper presents the thermal CFD analysis of a simplified radiator tube using ansys fluent. Tetrahedral elements were used to model the fluid medium while shell tria elements were used to model the tubes. Cases based on variable cross section of the tube were simulated. The cooling effect of the fluid from the outlet of the tube were measured and compared. Based on the simulation results, it was found that the variable cross section showed more cooling than the plain tube.