Numerical Simulation of Water and Air Flow in Automotive Aluminum Radiator with Louvered Fins and Comparing with Wind Tunnel Results

In this article, aerodynamic and heat transfer efficiency of an Automotive Aluminum radiator with louvered fins is investigated by numerical simulation and the obtained results are compared with tunnel results. To find out the behavior of the fins, symmetric conditions is used for a fin with two halves of tubes on its top and bottom. To estimate the mass flow rate of each tube in a 40 tube radiator, a simple 2D model is constructed and the real geometry of the inlet and outlet reservoirs are considered in it. At the end, water flow inside a tube with different mass flow rates is considered that for convection heat transfer of the air side in it, a user defined function is used. The results show that this method has small error with respect to tunnel test results that is caused by neglecting the end effects of the radiator geometry.