Analysis of a Heat Exchanger for the Cooling Systems of a Vehicular Prototype 2017-36-0347

This work aims to study the selection of a heat exchanger available in the market with the objective of implementing it in a vehicle. The vehicle used for the tests was a prototype, developed by Formula UFMG team. It was made an experimental and a theoretical study in order to calculate the power of the CB600F engine to compare with the experimental study of heat dissipation of the selected heat exchanger. This comparison was made to check whether the heat exchanger reaches the vehicle’s requirements, and it has shown good convergence. The engine technical features were used in the theoretical studies, and thus the power was calculated. The experimental data were obtained by assembling the car in a roller dynamometer with the necessary instrumentation for these tests being performed. In these tests, the critical operation conditions of the vehicle were simulated, once the engine operates at a temperature of 95°C. For the experimental calculation of the dissipated heat by the radiator, experiments were carried out to obtain the water pump flow curve and the difference of the water inlet and outlet temperatures in the heat exchanger. It was concluded in the present work that this heat exchanger obtained satisfactory performance in the tests, proving that the radiator was correctly selected, since the vehicle was subjected to extreme conditions of use and did not overheat.