Refractive Index Matching Measurements in an Automotive Heat Exchanger

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With the introduction of hybrid and electric vehicles, larger demands have been placed on the cooling systems in place within the current generation of consumer vehicles. As a result, there is less time and budget available for the design and testing of new heat transfer enhancement surfaces in these compact heat exchangers. The development process relies heavily on the ability to numerically model their performance using tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Dana Canada Corporation is currently seeking to validate the results of their numerical analysis on a new heat exchanger design with experimental velocity measurements. However, due to the small scale nature of the flow in the device, coupled with the complexity of the resulting flow field, there exists no experimental data to validate the numerical results with. Therefore, the main objective of the proposed research is to use Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements to provide validation data and insight into the physics of a compact heat-exchanger flow field.