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Research Papers

# Performance Analysis of a Countercurrent Flow Heat Exchanger Placed on the Truck Compartment Roof

[+] Author and Article Information
Bengt Sundén

e-mail: bengt.sunden@energy.lth.se
Department of Energy Sciences, Lund University,
P. O. Box 118,
S-221 00 Lund, Sweden

1Corresponding author.

Manuscript received January 17, 2012; final manuscript received June 22, 2012; published online October 12, 2012. Assoc. Editor: Arun Muley.

J. Thermal Sci. Eng. Appl 4(4), 041004 (Oct 12, 2012) (7 pages) doi:10.1115/1.4007438 History: Received January 17, 2012; Revised June 22, 2012

## Abstract

Due to the increasing power requirement and the limited available space in vehicles, placing the heat exchanger at the roof or the underbody of vehicles might increase the possibility to handle the cooling requirement. A new configuration of the heat exchanger has to be developed to accommodate with the position change. In this paper, a countercurrent heat exchanger is developed for position on the roof of the vehicle compartment. In order to find an appropriate configuration of fins with high thermal performance on the air side, the computational fluid dynamics approach is applied for a comparative study among louver fin, wavy fin, and pin fin by using ANSYS FLUENT software. It is found that the louver fin performs high thermal performance and low pressure drop. Thus, the louver fin is chosen to be the configuration of the countercurrent flow heat exchanger. It is also found that the countercurrent flow heat exchanger presents higher heat transfer coefficient than the cross flow heat exchanger. Furthermore, the overall size and the air pumping power of the countercurrent flow heat exchanger are lower than those in the cross flow heat exchanger. Several suggestions and recommendations are highlighted.

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## Figures

Fig. 1

Schematics of the positions of a radiator in trucks

Fig. 2

(a) Schematics of the countercurrent flow HEX, with (b) louver, (c) wavy, and (d) pin fin core

Fig. 3

Computational domain

Fig. 4

Heat transfer coefficient versus frontal velocity

Fig. 5

Nusselt number versus Reynolds number

Fig. 6

Pressure drop versus frontal velocity

Fig. 7

Friction factor versus Reynolds number

Fig. 8

Heat transfer coefficient in cross flow HEX and in countercurrent flow HEX

Fig. 9

Countercurrent flow HEX and cross flow HEX in a heavy duty truck

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