Refractive Index Matching Measurements in an Automotive Heat Exchanger

随着混合动力和电动汽车的推出，对冷却系统的要求越来越高 在当前的消费者汽车中。因此，可用的时间和预算较少 用于设计和测试这些紧凑型热交换器中的新传热增强表面。的 开发过程在很大程度上依赖于使用以下工具对其性能进行数字建模的能力， 计算流体动力学（CFD）。达纳加拿大公司目前正在寻求验证的结果， 他们对一种新的热交换器设计的数值分析与实验速度测量。然而，在这方面， 由于装置中流动的小规模性质，加上所得到的流场的复杂性， 没有实验数据来验证数值结果。因此， 建议的研究是使用粒子图像测速（PIV）测量提供验证数据， 深入了解紧凑型热交换器流场的物理特性。

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.