Aerothermal Management of Vehicle Heat Exchangers: Parametric Analysis

This paper presents a numerical analysis focused on the relation between non-uniformities in flow velocity and temperature distributions upstream of heat exchangers and their thermal performance. For this purpose, a two-dimensional computation code is developed to compute thermal performance, knowing the air flow velocity distribution upstream of an air-liquid heat exchanger, the heat exchanger liquid flow rate and the air and liquid inlet temperatures. A parametric analysis is then presented of the relation between the thermal performance of the heat exchanger and the different parameters above. It is found that non-uniformities in air velocity and water flow distributions can decrease the thermal performance of a heat exchanger from 33 to 42%. However, non-uniformity in the air temperature distribution can increase thermal performance by up to 5%.