The demand for more powerful engines in smaller hood spaces has created a problem of insufficient rates of heat dissipation in automotive radiators. To minimize the stress on the engine as a result of heat generation, automotive radiators must be redesigned to be more compact while maintaining the specified performance. Many factors influence heat dissipation including coolant specific heat capacity, mass flow rate, fin design and construction material, and surface area of the radiator. Given a set of operating conditions, Maple, the powerful computation tool from Maplesoft, can be used to design a more compact radiator assembly while maintaining the same performance as the original design.
In this example, Maple is used to modify the factors that influence cooling power to achieve the desired specifications. Through Maple’s CAD connectivity package, the dimensional parameters of the radiator are extracted directly from the CAD drawing. Using the parameterized model, the radiator design is optimized to ensure it achieves the desired heat dissipation required by adjusting various parameters to determine their effect on the system performance.
Using the fully parameterized values such as the length of the radiator, number of tubes, number of fins and the specific heat capacity of the coolant liquid, the equations for the rate of heat dissipation are derived. Since units are attached to each parameter and maintained throughout the document, results are easily validated. The surface area of the radiator is increased by increasing the number of fins. By plotting the heat transfer performance versus the number of fins, an appropriate value that provides the desired performance with the optimal design parameters is chosen.
With the new design criteria for the radiator, Maple can be used to update the CAD design automatically, eliminating the need for a technician to calculate and update all dimensions in the CAD drawing manually. Using Maple’s unit management, the designer can be confident there are no conversion or consistency errors. After the necessary changes have been identified through the use of the model, a prototype can be built, with a high degree of confidence that the new radiator will deliver the desired results.
Contact Maplesoft to learn how Maple can be used in your projects.
