DELHI TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

PROJECT REPORT
HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER

TOPIC – HEAT TRANSFER ANALYSIS OF LIQUID

COOLED RADIATOR

SUBMITTED TO – PROF.RS. MISHRA

SUBMITTED BY – SOHIL KHAN(2K19/ME/246)

SUBHASH SHARMA (2K19/ME/247)
YASH KUMAR(2K19/ME/276)
CONTENTS
 Introduction
 Advantages and Disadvantages of Liquid cooled Radiator
 Literature Review
 Solid Modelling of radiator
 Heat transfer analysis using Ansys

Introduction to Radiator
The radiator transfers the heat from the fluid inside to the air outside, thereby cooling
the fluid, which in turn cools the engine. Radiators are also often used to cool
automatic transmission fluids, air conditioner refrigerant, intake air, and sometimes to
cool motor oil or power steering fluid. Radiators are typically mounted in a position
where they receive airflow from the forward movement of the vehicle, such as behind
a front grill. Where engines are mid- or rear-mounted, it is common to mount the
radiator behind a front grill to achieve sufficient airflow, even though this requires
long coolant pipes.

Advantages of Liquid cooled Radiator

 As internal combustion engines generate mechanical power and waste heat
energy at the same time, they need cooling to prevent them from overheating
and break down. There are two types of engines i.e., air cooled and liquid
cooled engines. Liquid cooled engines use a mixture of water and other
chemicals like anti-freeze and rust inhibitors.

 An automobile with liquid cooled engines is smoother and more resistant to

breakdown than air-cooled.

 A liquid cooled engine produces more power/torque than an air-cooled one.

 A liquid cooled engine, since cooled by liquids, maintains a better control

temperature.

 Air-cooled engines are fuel efficient, affordable and require lesser engine space
than that of liquid cooled engines.
Disadvantages of Liquid cooled Radiator

 The Maintenance costs of liquid cooled ones are higher than air-cooled engines.

 Liquid cooled ones are easy to operate (better riding experience) but certainty
of liquid spilling out is high.

 Air-cooled engines are nosier and somewhat harsh than liquid cooled engines.

 Although liquid cooled engines are quite good as regards cooling, power and
efficiency air-cooled engines are preferred because of their cost efficiency, fuel
efficiency and low cost of maintenance. However, when more power and torque
is desired, liquid cooled engines are considered.
LITERATURE REVIEW
(1) Bharat Raj Singh (2015) conducted a study on performance evaluation of
automotive radiator. 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.

(2) Ramesh. T, Karthik. E, Venkatesan. T, Brightson George (2018) conducted

research on performance evaluation of automotive radiator. This study aims on
studying and analyzing the thermal behavior of automobile radiators. Both LMTD and
ε – NTU methods are widely used for design and performance analysis of radiators.
The flow behavior of coolant fluids in radiator tubes is of great importance to the
design of radiators. In addition to the concentration on flow behavior of coolants in
radiators this work also focuses on the geometrical aspects which are used in the core
of radiators. Finally, case studies of radiator prototypes are proposed which provides
the thermal behavior of radiator for the various mass flow rates of coolant and air and
surface area parameters. Finally, this work provides an overall behavior report of
automobile radiators working at usual range of conclusions have also been reported
with the presence of case studies.
(3)Dustin Ray and Debendra K. Das (2014) conducted a study on superior
performance of nano fluids in automotive radiators. This study compares the
performance of three different nanofluids containing aluminum oxide, copper oxide,
and silicon dioxide nanoparticles dispersed in the same base fluid, 60:40 ethylene
glycol and water by mass, as coolant in automobile radiators. The computational
scheme adopted here is the effectiveness-number of transfer unit (eNTU) method
encoded in MATLAB. Appropriate correlations of thermophysical properties for these
nanofluids developed from measurements are summarized in this paper. The
computational scheme has been validated by comparing the results of pumping
power, convective heat transfer coefficients on the air and coolant side, overall heat
transfer coefficient, effectiveness and NTU, reported by other researchers. Then the
scheme was adopted to compute the performance of nanofluids. Results show that a
dilute 1% volumetric concentration of nanoparticles performs better than higher
concentration. It is proven that at optimal conditions of operation of the radiator,
under the same heat transfer basis, a reduction of 35.3% in pumping power or 7.4%
of the surface area can be achieved by using the Al2O3 nanofluid. The CuO nanofluid
showed slightly lower magnitudes than the Al2O3 nanofluid, with 33.1% and 7.2%
reduction for pumping power or surface area respectively. The SiO2 nanofluid showed
the least performance gain of the three nanofluids, but still could reduce the pumping
power or area by 26.2% or 5.2%. The analysis presented in this paper was used for
an automotive radiator but can be extended to any liquid to gas heat exchanger.

(4) Palani Subbiah, Rangarajan, Sagunthala (2016) conducted a research on

I.C. Engine Cooling Systems. This project work proposed a simple piping design with
less number of connecting hoses and also to reduce coolant leakage. It is also
proposed to change the piping material from aluminum alloy to mild steel which
reduces the overall cost of the engine cooling system. Findings: The proposed design
addresses the coolant leakage problem and reduces the number of parts used in
coolant pipe connections hence leading to cost reduction and simplified design.
Application/Improvements: The proposed design would benefit with coolant leakage
elimination by reduction in hose defects, reduced head loss, cost reduction and
improved life of piping system in automobiles heavy vehicles.
(5) Arunpandiyan (2016) did a review of automotive radiator performance. This
review focused on the various research papers to improve automobile radiator
efficiency. Different research papers have applied different method. Has been studied
and finalized that the various coolants (nanofluids), tubes, fan and core, change
efficiency of radiator at different mass flow rate. From the literature study, it has
been seen that the efficiency of the radiator has been increased through a variety of
methods, out of which radiator fan is the most used one to improving the efficiency of
radiator by modification of radiator fan and radiator tube.

(6) Changting li1, fan bai, fanghuai gou of vehicle application department,
army academy of armored forces, China (2020)

Authored a research paper titled ‘analysis of heat exchange performance of heat

exchange tubes of evaporative heat exchanger based on fluent’. In this paper, in
order to study the influence of the heat exchange tubes length of the evaporative
heat exchanger on the heat exchange performance of the organic rankine cycle
technology (ORC) in automobile exhaust heat recovery, four kinds of three-layer tube
heat exchange tube models with the length of 500mm, 800mm, 1100mm and
1400mm are designed by DM modeling software, and they are simplified into a
quarter calculation domain model. The simulation calculations of the coupling heat
exchange of four different lengths of heat exchange tubes are performed by using the
couple algorithm of fluent fluid simulation software and the κ-ε model. Through the
simulation calculation of the heat exchange of the four three-layer heat exchange
tubes, it can be seen that the temperature in the three-layer heat exchange tubes
changes along the Z axis direction. The heat exchange performance of different
lengths of heat exchange tubes can be obtained by analyzing the temperature cloud
diagrams of the XY plane at both ends of the heat exchange tubes and the
temperature change curve along the z axis direction. The heat exchange simulation
analysis results of the four three-layer heat exchange tubes show that under the set
parameter model, only the inlet and outlet boundary temperature is considered, and
the three-layer heat exchange tube with a length of 1400mm has better heat
exchange performance.
SOLID Modelling of Radiator
 HEAT TRANSFER ANALYSIS
MODELLING

MESHING

RESULTS - Temperature drop for different material

CFD RESULTS – VELOCITY DISTRIBUTION

TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

The heat transfer analysis of an automotive radiator is successfully carried out using
practical simulation built in commercial software ANSYS 18.3.1.

Above Results Shows that heat transfer rate as well as efficiency is increased as the
air mass flow rate increases. With the computational time and resources available.

In this experimental study of the heat transfer ANALYSIS of a liquid cooling radiator
for vehicles is carried out by using an experimental optimization design technique on
a radiator. The regression equations of heat dissipation rate, coolant pressure drop
and air pressure drop are developed. The influences of the air velocity, inlet coolant
temperature and volume flowrate of coolant on heat dissipation rate, coolant pressure
drop and air pressure drop are discussed in detail by means of the numerical
analyses. Also, the research results provide a basis for the theoretical and
experimental analysis of heat performances and structural refinement of the tube-
and-fin radiator.
REFERENCES

[1].A.Witry M.H. Al-Hajeri and Ali A. Bondac, “CFD analysis of fluid flow and heat
transfer in patterned roll bonded aluminium radiator”, 3rdInternational conference on
CFD, CSIRO, Melborne, Australia, pp. 12-19, 2003.

[2].Hilde Van Der Vyer, Jaco Dirker and Jousoa P Meyer, “Validation of a CFD model
of a three-dimensional tube-in-tube heat exchanger”, Third International Conference
on CFD in the Mineralsand Process Industry, CSIRO, Melborne, Australia. pp. 25-32,
2003.

[3].J A Chen, D F Wang and L Z Zheng, “Experimental study of operating

performance of a tube-and-fin radiator for vehicles”, Proceedings of Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, Republic of China, 215: pp. 2-8, 2001.

[4].Changhua Lin and Jeffrey Saunders, “The Effect of Changes in Ambient and
Coolant Radiator Inlet Temperatures and Coolant Flowrate on Specific Dissipation”,
SAE Technical Papers, 2000.

[5].Sridhar Maddipatla, “Coupling of CFD and shape optimization for radiator design”,
Oakland University. Ph.D. thesis,2001

[6].J.P.Holman, Heat transfer, Tata-McGraw-Hill Publications, 2000.

[7].Seth Daniel Oduro, “Assessing the effect of dirt on the performance of an engine
cooling system”, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, PG thesis,
2000.

[8].Beard, R. A. and Smith,G. J., "A Method of Calculating the Heat Dissipation from
Radiators to Cool Vehicle Engines", SAE Technical Paper 710208, 1971.

[9].Salvio Chacko,“Numerical Simulation for Improving RadiatorEfficiency by Air Flow

Optimization” Engineering Automation Group, Tata Technologies Limited, Pune, India,
Technical paper, 2003.

[10].S.N Sridhara, S.R. Shankapal and V Umesh Babu, (2005) “CFD analysis of Fluid
Flow & Heat Transfer in a Single Tube-Fin Arrangement of an Automotive Radiator”
International Conference on Mechanical Engineering 2005,Dhaka, Bangladesh,
Conference Paper, 2005.

[11].Yiding Cao and Khokiat Kengskool, “An Automotive Radiator Employing Wickless
Heat Pipes” Florida International University, Miami,Conference Paper,199.