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Article history: A thermal/structural coupling approach is applied to analyze thermal performance and predict the
Received 13 December 2009 thermal stress of a radiator for heavy-duty transportation cooling systems. Bench test and field test data
Accepted 4 March 2010 show that non-uniform temperature gradient and dynamic pressure loads may induce large thermal
Available online 16 March 2010
stress on the radiator. A finite element analysis (FEA) tool is used to predict the strains and displacement
of radiator based on the solid wall temperature, wall-based fluid film heat transfer coefficient and
Keywords:
pressure drop. These are obtained from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. A 3D simu-
Dual porous zone (DPZ)
lation of turbulent flow and coupled heat transfer between the working fluids poses a major difficulty
Cooling system
Radiator
because the range of length scales involved in heavy-duty radiators varies from few millimeters of the fin
Thermal stresses pitch and/or tube cross-section to several meters for the overall size of the radiator. It is very compu-
tational expensive, if not impossible, to directly simulate the turbulent heat transfer between fins and the
thermal boundary layer in each tube. In order to overcome the computational difficulties, a dual porous
zone (DPZ) method is applied, in which fins in the air side and turbulators in the water side are treated as
porous region. The parameters involved in the DPZ method are tuned based on experimental data
in prior. A distinguished advantage of the porous medium method is its effectiveness of modeling
wide-range characteristic scale problems. A parametric study of the impact of flow rate on the heat
transfer coefficient is presented. The FEA results predict the maximum value of stress/strain and target
locations for possible structural failure and the results obtained are consistent with experimental
observations. The results demonstrate that the coupling thermal/structural analysis is a powerful tool
applied to heavy-duty cooling product design to improve the radiator thermal performance, durability
and reliability under rigid working environment.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1359-4311/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2010.03.003
S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446 1439
vr v
þ ðrui Þ ¼ 0 (1)
vt vxi
!!
v v vp v vui vuj 2 vui
ðrui Þ þ rui uj ¼ þ m þ d
vt vxj vxi vxj vxj vxi 3 ij vxi
v
þ ru0i u0j ð2Þ
vxj
!!
v v v vT v
rcp T þ rcp uj T ¼ k þ rT 0 u0j þ mF
vt vxj vxj vxj vxj
(3)
Fig. 1. Schematic of heavy-duty radiator (20 module cores are included; top, middle In order to close the system of equations, the RNG kee model has
and bottom tanks are used for coolant to mix and split). been used to model the Reynolds stresses, which is the final term at
1440 S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446
the right hand side of Eq. (2). A similar method has been applied for Table 1
the Reynolds heat flux, the second term at the right hand side of Boundary conditions for cross-flow water-to-air radiator module (operating
conditions).
Eq. (3). The last term mF in Eq. (3) is the viscous dissipation term
[3,13], which is computationally very expensive to calculate. The Air side Water side
main reason for this is the range of length scales involved in the (cold fluid) (hot fluid)
analysis of a heavy-duty radiator module, which vary from few Inlet mass flow rate (kg/s) 5.0 4.8
Inlet flow temperature ( C) 40 92
millimeters of the fin pitch and the tube cross sections to the
Outlet flow temperature ( C) 73 82
several meters of the overall size of the modular core. There are Inlet pressure (kPa) 101 287
more than 130 tubes in a single module and if each tube cross- Outlet pressure (kPa) 235
section is resolved by 20e24 grid nodes, the total volume meshes
could easily reach 10 million cells by using a tetrahedral mesh. Even
in this case of using 10 million cells, a computational method still
cannot effectively resolve the thermal boundary layer in each where g is the porosity of the porous medium. Similar process is
tube and this poses a big challenge for any 3D numerical used for the equivalent specific heat ceff and density reff in energy
computations. Eq. (3) The porosity is defined as the corresponding volumetric
In order to overcome the computational difficulties encountered fraction of fluid on the air side and the water side of the radiator,
with the wide-range of length scales, the so-called dual porous zone respectively. It is not difficult to compute the porosity as the
(DPZ) method is applied to simulate the complex geometry of such geometry of radiator is given. kf and ks are the thermal conductiv-
a modular radiator. A local thermal equilibrium (LTE) is assumed for ities for the fluid phase and solid medium, respectively. These
the application of DPZ method and the following thermal results values are also given, a priori in the simulation. Thin-wall heat
are only for steady state conditions. According to the porous conduction is used for the thermal resistance calculation in the
medium method [5,9], the fins and side sheets are treated as porous tube. The near-wall formulation, the wall function-based model, is
solid region and the cold fluid (air) in the pores is often be modeled used to calculate the wall shear stresses and heat transfer. The wall
as a continuous phase. A similar method is used to model the hot function-based heat transfer coefficients are given by the following
fluid (water) flow in the tubes, where the porous medium effect is expression [24]:
included in each tube in order to account for the effects of the wall
roughness and the turbulators. The method avoids solving the q_ rcp Cm1=4 k1=2
P
thermal boundary layer directly [7] but includes the effects of this h ¼ ¼ (6)
Tw TP T*
layer in the overall computations. A noteworthy advantage of the
DPZ method is its effectiveness to model a wide-range of charac- where Tw is the wall temperature, TP is the selected fluid temper-
teristic scale problems. ature at point P close to the wall, T* is a non-dimensional parameter,
Instead of following complex time-averaged and volume-aver- characteristic temperature, and was calculated through the
aged turbulent flow governing equations in porous media [4,17,19], Reynolds’ analogy between the momentum and the energy trans-
the porous media incorporates empirically determined flow resis- port by standard wall functions. The turbulent kinetic energy, kP at
tance in the computational domain. It is important to know the point P, is obtained from the turbulent model used. The density r,
limitation and assumptions for the following simple model: First, the specific heat cp and the constant Cm are properties of the fluid
only approximate turbulent effects is considered and we are and the turbulence model and are also known.
interested in macro-effects of fins/tubes on fluid and heat transfer; The significant temperature gradient and the dynamic pressure
Second, the porous media model is nothing but a momentum sink load during the running of the engine result in large, localized
and energy sink to the system; Third, steady state condition is thermal expansions, which are the cause of most thermal stresses.
assumed for thermal analysis. Porous media are modeled by adding The general form of maximum thermal stress on a surface is given
source terms to the right hand side of the RANS model and, hence by [1,14]:
the source terms for the momentum Eq. (2) are [7]:
0 1
X
3 X
3 E
st ¼ aDT (7)
si ¼ @ Dij mvj þ Cij rjvjvj A (4) 1m
j¼1 j¼1
where st is the tensile stress of the cooling system material, E is the
The subscript denotes three spatial directions. The first term on Young’s elastic modulus, a is the coefficient of thermal expansion,
the right hand side of Eq. (4) is a linear term representing the m is Poisson’s ratio and DT is the temperature difference. The
viscous loss when fluid passes porous media. The second term is Young’s modulus E and the Poisson’s ratio m are assumed to be
a non-linear term, the inertial loss of the flow. The determination of constant. The thermal expansion coefficient a is also considered as
the viscous and the inertial loss coefficients is based on experi- a constant and was incorporated into the elastic equations. Thus,
mental data and empirical equations of the volumetric flow rate the classic elastic model can be used for the thermal stress analysis
and pressure drop and the coefficients are prescribed in the [15,23]. Since the cooling system materials are metals and isotropic,
simulation. For example, 0.01e0.05 of Ci,i ¼ 1,2,3, 0.2e0.75 of Di,
i ¼ 1,2,3 for homogenous porous media based on cold air and hot
water flow rates.
Table 2
The equivalent thermal conductivity keff is used to replace the
Geometric and material parameters for the water-to-air radiator module.
parameter k for a single-phase fluid and, therefore, to include the
thermal inertia of the solid region on the fluid flow in the energy Wavy fin Tube
Eq. (3). The equivalent thermal conductivity of the porous medium Material Aluminum Copper
is given by the following appropriate average [20]: Thickness (mm) 0.05 0.17
Pitch 9.2 fin per inch (fpi) 11 mm (lateral direction)
Cross-section (mm2) 1.4 19
keff ¼ gkf þ ð1 gÞks (5) Length (mm) 1100
S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446 1441
1
3x ¼ E sx m sy þ sz þ aT
1
3y ¼ sy mðsz þ sx Þ þ aT
E
1
3z ¼ sz m sx þ sy þ aT
E
2ð1 þ mÞ
gyz ¼ syz
E
2ð1 þ mÞ
gzx ¼ szx
E
2ð1 þ mÞ
gxy ¼ sxy (8)
E
3. Computational method
Two cases were chosen for the CFD simulation, both at steady Fig. 4. Steady state temperature distribution (K) at the results under forced convection
state: The first one involves hot water flow through tubes (the conditions (the first case).
1442 S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446
Fig. 5. Five slices of the flow field of water from CFD analysis.
as incompressible and, in addition, the air is treated as an ideal gas. The CFD results of the first case are shown in Figs. 3e6. The total
The thermal conductivity, specific heat, viscosity, and other prop- computational time for these computations is 3.5 h with parallel
erties of the fluids and the solid materials are standard inputs and computing on a cluster, where 4 nodes used for each case with 4
are given as functions of temperature [7]. Another standard CPUs of 3.2 GHz and 64 GB memory for each node include. Fig. 3
assumption, which is invariably used in heat exchanger analysis, shows the static pressured drop of the water in each tube. It is
was also used that there is no other heat transfer between the observed that the highest pressure drop occurred at the joint
working fluid and the surroundings. between the top header and the tubes and this is due to the sudden
The initial and boundary conditions for the first case (the diesel contraction loss. The pressure drop is a function of the water flow
engine is on) are given in Table 1. Hot water flows in the vertical rate inside each tube and becomes smaller at the bottom header
direction (y direction) and the cooler fluid (air) flows in the hori- where a sudden expansion occurs. The non-uniform pressure drop
zontal direction from left to right side. The only difference in and the pressure load is an important factor that causes displace-
boundary condition for the second case (diesel engine is off) is that ment and strain in the radiator. The influence of the non-uniform
the temperatures at the water inlet and outlet are lower than in the pressure drop is more important for the dynamic operating
hot water case. conditions of the diesel engine. The total pressure drop loss from
The geometric and material parameters of a single module are the inlet area of the top header to the outlet at the bottom header is
summarized in Table 2. Fins at the air side are not included in the 0.56 kPa.
physical model of CFD analysis but included in FEA. Their effect to Fig. 4 shows the solid surface temperature distribution for the
the momentum and energy equations (Eqs. (4) and (5)) is repre- forced flow condition. A maximum value of 92 C occurs at the top
sented by the resistance coefficient and the porosity factor (addi- header inlet and 82 C was obtained at the bottom header outlet on
tional source terms).
Fig. 6. Water mass flow rate (kg/s) in each tube under the operating scenario. The
maximum difference of magnitude is about 0.0035 kg/s. Fig. 7. Heat exchanger performance curve and external restriction curve for the water flow.
S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446 1443
Fig. 8. Comparison between simulation and experimental data for the thermal stress evolution at a given point on a tube of the radiator.
the water side. The minimum value of the temperature at the up Depending on the design and the geometry of the radiator, each
wind air side is 40 C and the averaged temperature at the down- tube may carry a different mass flow rate. From the point of
wind is about 72.9 C. The results are in a good agreement with the structural design, the more uniform the mass flow rate among
bench test data. Both field test and bench test results suggest that tubes the better to reduce strains caused by dynamic pressure
non-uniform temperature gradient on the radiator surface is loads. Hence, part of the design effort of heavy-duty radiators is to
a significant factor for the creation of large strains and displace- uniform flow rate through the tubes.
ment between tubes and fins in the radiators. The numerical results Fig. 6 depicts the distribution of the mass flow rates in each one
demonstrate different surface temperature gradients in both the of the tubes. There are 23 columns in the figure and the six red
vertical direction (water flow direction) and the horizontal direc- marks represent the six rows in every column. The maximum mass
tion (air flow direction). The maximum value of wall temperature flow rate is about 0.0387 kg/s in the middle and the minimum flow
gradient occurs at the one top corner of the module. rate is 0.0352 kg/s at the two ends. The range of variation of the
Fig. 5 shows the water velocity vectors on five planes parallel to mass flow rates is less than 9% of the average mass flow rate, which
the yez plane and perpendicular to the air flow direction. The implies that the flow through the tubes is almost uniform.
central slide represents a section through the center of the water A detailed finite element analysis showed compressive stresses
inlet. The maximum magnitude of the velocity appears at the near the middle and tensile stresses at the two ends. The FEA is
central location of the header. Strong recirculation is generated based on equally distributed mass flow rate in each tube when
before the sudden contraction and the splitting of the flow. considering the total pressure load. Given the results in Fig. 6 and
Fig. 9. Strain change due to the temperature change. The vertical lines separate four phases of operation with different impact of the temperature impact. A cycle is about
20e30 min from the first phase to the last phase.
1444 S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446
the slight non-uniformity of the flow, it has been calculated that peaks. The figure also demonstrates that tensile stresses contribute
this approximation will cause less than 8% difference in the pres- mostly to the leakage of joints between tubes and headers.
sure drop across the tubes. The analysis also shows that more than The strain change at two modules in a thermal cycle in a field
70% of the restriction is due to the tubes. The restriction curve of test is illustrated in Fig. 9. Four phases represent different operating
water flow and the heat exchanger performance curve (water heat stages of a heavy-duty truck. The first phase is a truck shoveling, the
transfer) are shown in Fig. 7. The external restriction consists of the second is the engine idle/truck loading, the third is the traveling
contributions from the radiator, the thermostat and the water uphill and last phase is the traveling downhill of the truck. The
pump. Field tests reported that the highest pressure load is not traces are from field test data. Module 1 and Module 2 were
from the steady state pressure drop, but from the transient pressure subjected to different initial condition. It is apparent that strong
drop such as the starting of the engine or the sudden change of flow thermal pulses (after the engine idle in phase 2, increasing
rate at the inlet. temperature in phase 3 and decreasing temperature in phase 4)
The solid surface temperature, wall-based fluid film heat resulted in large strain levels at the radiator modules (S1 with
transfer coefficients, and steady state pressure in tubes obtained 2100 rpm and S2 with 2000 rpm of engine speeds). Even the same
from CFD simulations are the initial and boundary conditions for engine speed it shows different strain peak and trace for two
the FEA of thermal stresses. Because fins are included in the modules. This figure demonstrates the non-linear thermal expan-
physical modeling of FEA but not in the CFD model, an interpolation sion and resultant strains and displacement that may be predicted
of the temperature at the surface of the tubes is needed to obtain by the numerical simulations.
the surface temperature of the fin sheets during the FEA compu- Fig. 10 demonstrates the maximum principal stress distribution
tations. The structural boundaries for the FEA include a vertically on the radiator module with an initial pressure load of 0.1 MPa
clamped boundary at the water inlet and outlet (the displacements internal pressure. The figure shows only the local area between the
in the vertical direction) with the other sides being unconstrained. radiator header and the tubes. During the diesel engine run, the
First order quad and hex elements and a total of 0.4 million water pressure increase causes higher strain levels. It is generally
elements have been used for the FEA application. The simulation considered that the higher stresses appear at the joint between
has been conducted on the same cluster using 4 nodes and lasted tubes and the header and also at the beginning of the side sheet. The
approximately 3 h of CPU time for each case. FEA results confirmed this prediction and gave quantitative answers
The results for the thermal stress are shown in Figs. 8e11. The FEA for the value of these stresses. The maximum stress value is about
modeling rendered quantitative information about the maximum 155 MPa and is shown by the red color. At these sites the possibility
stress expected and its location. The maximum stress may become of structural failure is highly probable, which will lead to cracking or
the cause for possible structural failure and resultant fluid leakage. leakage. It is found that the location of maximum stress is not at the
Fig. 8 shows the time evolution of the stress at a given point on one bottom of the header but at the beginning of side sheets. The main
tube during a thermal cycle. The prediction of the peak stress value reason for this is the different materials of the tubes and fins and the
from the modeling is in good agreement with the measurement significant difference of the thermal expansion properties, which
data. The fact that the development of thermal stress is toward result in large strains and displacements. A consequence of this
a local maximum at the initial stage of the thermal cycle is of critical observation is that it is advisable to redesign the side sheet, which is
importance. An effort during the design process should be made to close to the joint between tubes and the header using different
reduce the magnitude of these stresses and avoid thermal shock-like materials with matching expansion properties.
Fig. 10. Thermal stresses distribution with pressure load of 0.1 MPa internal pressure. The maximum value appears at the boundary of the side sheets and is shown by the red color.
S. Mao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 1438e1446 1445
Fig. 11. Strain change due to the pressure load (water pressure change during diesel engine run). The four engine speeds are included for comparison.
Fig. 11 shows the field test record for the strain trace changes in save computational time. The only thing to keep in mind is that the
Module 3 due to a pressure load under conditions in which the geometry file that is used to generate meshes should be the same
ambient temperature is very low (10 C) and different engine for CFD and FEA tools.
speeds conditions are tried. The water pump speed is directly The FEM analysis results directly provide weak spots on the heat
related to the engine speed (S1, S2, S3 and S4 denote different exchanger modules and, hence, guidance to redesign and improve
engine speeds of 1900 rpm, 1950 rpm, 2200 rpm, and 1700 rpm, the junction using an alternative thickness option or a different
respectively). The different water pump speeds result in different material options which lead to significant reduction of thermal
water pressure rise in the tubes of the radiator module. It was stresses in radiators. The analysis suggests, for example, to avoid
observed in engines that the strain level reaches a maximum value the thermal shock in the radiator by adding an orifice on the
simultaneously with the water pressure as the internal water thermostat, by: increasing the tube thickness; making the fin
pressure increases and this observation was confirmed by the density coarser; reducing the side sheet in the area close to the
numerical simulation results. Thus, a sudden change in the internal header; or using another method that would make the design more
water pressure load may cause a strain peak at a location and this robust and will avoid joint leakage. Using such a method is
may induce cracks and water leakage. By identifying a priori these expected to help improve the product useful life and durability and
locations the numerical analysis will lead to a reduction of the to increase the product warranty for heavy-duty cooling systems.
design cycle time and significant savings by cutting down the In summary, the procedure of coupling the heat transfer simula-
testing of prototypes and new products. tions with structural analysis provides an economic, robust and
reasonably accurate way for industrial applications.
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
The investigation shows that the dual porous medium method
can effectively simulate fluid flow and heat transfer in the radiator The first author would like to thank Dr. J.-P. Pan for several
of a heavy-duty cooling system, and provide a reliable and useful discussions pertaining to this work. The research of the
economic tool for industrial applications, such as complicated fourth author (EEM) has been partly supported by an NSF grant
turbulent flow-coupling heat transfer problems. This study (HRD-0932339) to the University of Texas at San Antonio.
successfully performed a coupling from CFD thermal-fluid results
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