As part of my Thermal Systems Design course at Cal Poly, my teammate and I evaluated the cooling performance of an automotive radiator under a severe operating condition involving high ambient temperature and an extended uphill climb.
We used Engineering Equation Solver, or EES, to calculate the required heat rejection, coolant and air flow rates, fluid temperatures, thermal resistances, and overall heat exchanger conductance.
Our first model predicted significantly more heat transfer capacity than expected, so we checked our assumptions and compared the analytical model with empirical heat transfer correlations. The refined model showed that the existing radiator was close to the required performance but would benefit from a slight increase in size.
This project reinforced the importance of checking whether simulation results make physical sense rather than accepting an answer simply because the software produced it.
Skills: EES, heat transfer, fluid flow, heat exchanger analysis, thermal resistance networks, engineering assumptions