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

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.