Experimental Analysis of Air Flow in a Channel for Unconventional Radiator

The automotive industry is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide with millions of vehicle productions and sales every year globally. Some of the vehicles have their engines in rear end, which means there is no incoming airflow from the front and the engine cannot cool down efficiently. The main aim of the research is to study the flow behavior for a duct that can detour the incoming air to the radiator for vehicles those have their engines located at the back. The duct collects the incoming air from the front of the vehicle and detour it to the engine located at the back. This helps in cooling down the engine in order to protect it from being overheated. The research is conducted to understand the detailed parameters to be accounted for while designing such a prototype. It is important to understand the essence of a cooling effect as the efficiency of the vehicle engine can only be maintained under a stable temperature. The research is important as it can be applied to diverse engineering problems. There are three cases for the experiment, each with different lengths. However, the inlet and outlet have identical dimensions for all three cases. There is a certain scale factor used to scale down the dimensions from a previously studied CAD model. These scaled down dimensions are then utilized to fabricate the prototype. Once the model has been constructed, a mesh is located at the outlet, which helps recording velocity magnitude and direction at each of the respective node of the mesh. One of the key elements of the research is to extensively understand the type of flow at different points of the duct and how they affect the efficiency of the design. For example, the curved parts where channels are installed along the length of the duct experience turbulent air flow. Hence, it is important to understand the influence of these flows on the efficiency of the design.