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Study of the Performance of an FSAE Cooling Radiator

Conference Paper · April 2021

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 Proceedings of ICFD14:
Fourteenth International Conference of Fluid Dynamics
2-3 April 2021, Fairmont Nile City Hotel, Cairo, EGYPT

ICFD14-EG-7S05

Study of the Performance of an FSAE Cooling Radiator

Abdelrahman Ahmed Farouk, Amin Ali Amin, Ehab Wael Ali, Abdullah Mohamed Abdullah,
Tariq Gaballah Mohamed, and ZUFS Racing Team
abofarok2000222@gmail.com, medohabib376@gmail.com, ehabkatheer105@gmail.com,
abdullahbonna1552@gmail.com, tariqgaballah@gmail.com

Prof. Dr. Ahmed Farouk AbdelGawad

afaroukgb@gmail.com
Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Egypt

ABSTRACT
Engine produces a high amount of heat while
running, which is about one-third of the total
power. This heat can raise the engine temperature
to a very high level and damage or seize the engine
components. Hence, for the safety of the engine
components, it needs to run at much lower
temperature, which is called engine working
temperature.
Radiator plays a vital role in engine cooling
system. It is important to determine mass flow rate
of the cooling water as a function of the crank shaft
rotational speed. Thus, the present study concerns
many parameters to have a complete overview on
the radiator operation. These parameters include
the heat rejected from the engine to the cooling
water as a function of crank shaft rotational speed,
the mass-flow rate of air through the radiator core
as a function of the car speed, static pressure drop
of the air across the radiator core at varying air
mass-flow rates.
The present work is part of the design and
construction of a Formula Student cart to
participate in the competitions of FSAE.
Interesting findings are presented and discussed.
KEYWORDS:
I.C. Engine, Cooling system, Radiator, CFD
I. INTRODUCTION
Radiators are used in automobiles to transfer heat
from the engine coolant to ambient air. Insufficient heat
dissipation can result in the overheating of the engine,
which leads to the breakdown of lubricating oil, metal
weakening of engine parts, and significant wear
between engine parts. To minimize the stress on the
engine as a result of heat generation, automotive
radiators must be redesigned to be more compact while
still maintaining high levels of heat transfer
performance. Despite the name, most radiators transfer
bulk of their heat via convection. The demand to
enhance the heat transfer rate can be addressed either
by increasing the surface area or by increasing the
convective heat transfer coefficient. With regard to
higher surface area, many types of compact heat
exchangers have been proposed. In order to increase the
convective heat transfer coefficient, innovative heat
transfer fluids are required, for which, conventional
heat transfer fluids have lower thermal conductivity.
Thus, in the present work, some of the radiator
parameters are changed to fit the present application,
Formula Student Car that has an engine CBR600rr
Honda, which has 620cc and produces 75 kW BHP. It is
our objective to reject the heat produced to reach the
working temperature. A complete design and
mathematical calculation for the radiator needed is
introduced for the present application. The design
parameters for this kind of heat exchangers are
developed. Simulation tools, such as ANSYS-Fluent
software, are useful for the investigation and validation

1 Copyright © 2021 by ICFD14

of the design. The techniques, information, and
data of the present work are based on Refs. [1-7].
II. PRESENT RADIATOR MODEL
Generally, the heat-transfer rate and efficiency
of the proposed radiator are high. Thus, the life-
time of engine is also increased.
For the present proposed radiator (FSAE car
radiator), two flat plates are inside the tube, which
act as the nozzle, Fig. 1. The present radiator is part
of the design for the Formula Student Car to
participate in the competitions of Formula Society
of Automotive Engineers (FSAE).
Hence, nozzle velocity increases, and pressure
decreases. Pressure is directly proportional to the
temperature. Thereby, when pressure decreases,
temperature decreases. As a result, the efficiency
of the proposed radiator is increased by 5.37%
when comparing with the existing methods as will
be seen in the following sections.
Fig.1 Present proposed (FSAE) car radiator.
III. MATHEMATICAL CALCULATIONS
The present FSAE radiator is designed to
achieve the required heat transfer for the hot water
to obtain the working temperature.
III.1. Coolant
The amount of the heat that get out of FSAE
car engine can be calculated as it is considered one-
third of total power produced by the used engine.
As mentioned before, CBR 600rr is used, which
can produce 75 kW BHP. This heat transfers to the
coolant by conduction and convection. Then, heat
is removed to the ambient air by radiation and
convection methods.
Thus, the resulted heat (q) from the present
engine can be calculated as follows:
q = (1/3)  engine BHP = (1/3)  75 = 25 kW (1)
2 Copyright © 2021 by ICFD14
This amount of heat is transferred to the coolant.
Knowing the inlet (Ti) and outlet (To) temperatures of
the coolant, the required mass-flow rate (m′) of this
coolant, needed to transfer all of the amount of heat, can
be found as follows:
q = m′  Cp  (To-Ti) (2)
From Eq. 2, considering Cp of water equals
4,200 J/kg.k, and assuming that To = 85ᵒC and Ti = 55ᵒC
with q = 25,000 W, the mass-flow rate (m′) equals
0.2 kg/s.
Then, from this mass-flow of the coolant, we get
the needed flow velocity with the standard dimensions
of radiator tubes. This velocity influences the value of
heat transfer coefficient. This velocity of coolant
changes during the running of the engine because of the
speed variation due to the change in pump speed.
However, we take the value of a mean velocity based
on the obtained mass-flow rate.
Considering the passage dimensions, the final
cross-sectional area (Ap) for the coolant flow is
calculated as:
Ap=1.69  18.35=31.0115 mm2=0.0000310115 m2 (3)
Finally, the mean velocity is found as:
Vp = m′/( A)
= 0.2/(1000  0.0000310115) = 6.45 m/s (4)
III.1. Air
On the second part of the application, the air
system of heat transfer, which occurs largely by
convection. The high speed of the race car positively
affects the coefficient of heat transfer from the radiator
to the ambient air.
As there is a constant rate of heat transfer to be
removed to the ambient air, the required area (Ar) that
interfaces with the medium can be calculated as
follows:
Inlet air temperature: Tai = 20ᵒC
Outlet air temperature: Tao = 85ᵒC
Convection heat transfer coefficient (h): 800 W/(m2.K)
q = h A (Tao - Tai) (5)
Thus, 25,000 = 800  A  (85-20)
A = 0.48 m2
Based on this needed area, the length (L) of each of
the radiator tubes can be found from the following
relation:
A = (2  1.8 L2/0.75) + (2  0.169  L2/0.75)
A = 5.25 L2
Thus, L = 35 cm
The number of tubes is assumed to be 40, with the
width of the radiator (W) = 30 cm.
IV. COMPUTATOINAL SIMULATION - Temperature of the fins.
The radiator is drawn by Solidworks software - Water velocity in the tubes.
to be used in the computational simulation by the - Outlet atmospheric pressure.
ANSYS-Fluent software. Figure 2 shows the
Solidworks drawing (CAD model) of the radiator,
which is based on the radiator dimensions obtained
in the previous section.

Fig.5 Fluid zone.

Then, the solution is carried out for a suitable

number of iterations that corresponds to a specified
limit of accuracy. Figures 6, and 7 show the temperature
distribution for the tubes and heads, and fins,
respectively.
Fig.2 CAD model of car radiator.

Then, the CAD model is transported to

ANSYS-Fluent software. The first step, after
reading the geometry, is to create the suitable
computational mesh that affects the accuracy of the
solution. Thus, very careful consideration is paid to
generate a high-quality mesh to give accurate
results. Figures 3 and 4 show the mesh construction
for the head and inlet pipe, and tubes and fins,
respectively.

Fig.6 Temperature distribution for tubes and heads

(Red is the hottest and Blue is the coldest).

Fig.3 Mesh of head and inlet pipe.

Fig.4 Mesh of tubes and fins.

After defining the fluid zone, Fig. 5, the Fig.7 Temperature distribution for fins
boundary conditions are defined, which include: (Red is the hottest and Blue is the coldest).

3 Copyright © 2021 by ICFD14

 CONCLUSIONS
Generally, the contribution of the radiator to an
engine is considered when the efficiency of a
radiator is good. Currently, the temperature
distribution is dependent on the tubes used in the
radiator. So, the modification of the tubes in the
radiator contributes to the engine cooling through
efficient radiator action.
The nozzle effect of the present work provides
additional cooling to the engine because it
decreases the pressure and increases the velocity,
thereby decreasing the temperature, which is
directly proportional to the pressure. Therefore,
engine cooling and radiator efficiency is increased.
Thus, the life time of the engine is also increased.
Through this project, we get a validation of our
application. So, we finally calculate the required
size of radiator needed for this amount of heat
generated by CBR66rr Honda engine we use in a
FSAE racing car for London competition.
NOMENCLATURE
Cp : Specific heat capacity (kJ/kg K)
Dh : Hydraulic diameter (m)
h : Convection coefficient (W/m2 K)
k : Thermal conductivity (W/m K)
L : Length (m)
m′ : Mass flow rate (kg/s)
Q : Heat transfer rate (W)
T : Temperature (ᵒC)
V : Velocity (m/s)
W : Width of the radiator (m)
4 Copyright © 2021 by ICFD14
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank all of our university’s staff
who teach us the fundamentals of heat transfer and how
to calculate the heat losses in a heat exchanger such as
the radiator and how to improve the performance by
changing some parameters. Moreover, we would like to
thank Prof. Dr. Ahmed Farouk AbdelGawad for his
great supervision in our FSAE competition and his
efforts to finish our project. We received a lot of care
from them during our study period.
REFERENCES
[1] S.U.S. Choi, J.A. Eastman, Enhancing thermal
conductivity of fluids with nanoparticles in
developments and applications of non-Newtonian
flows, ASME FED 231/MD 66 (1995) 99–103.
[2] V. Trisaksri, S. Wongwises, Critical review of heat
transfer characteristics of nanofluids, Renew.
Sustain. Energy Rev. 11 (2007) 512–523.
[3] LaMarre, J., “FSAE Electric Vehicle Cooling
System Design”, University of Akron, Ohio, 2015.
[4] Korczak P. E., Cost Effective Method for The
Evaluation of a Formula SAE Engine Cooling
System (University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, Illunois, 2009).
[5] Crouse W., Automotive Mechanics 8thed (McGraw-
Hill Book Company, New York, 1980).
[6] Majid, A.I., Arijuddin, A. G., Santosa, B., Dharma,
I. G. B., Perancangan dan Pengujian Piranti
Keselamatan Berkendara “Impact Attenuator” pada
Mobil Student Formula 600 cc “Bimasakti-UGM”,
(Seminar Nasional Teknoin, 2012), pp. 4.
[7] Fauzun and Kurniawan, A., Ricardo WAVE
Simulation on the Effect of Exhaust Header
Geometry to the Power and Torque of the UGM’s
FSAE Engine, (International Journal of Engineering
and Technology (IJET), (2017), Vol. 9.