Reynolds Effects in Cooling Airflow

Paper in proceeding, 2007

Cooling airflow is one of the flow fields of the normal road car that experience the largest influence of varying velocities. As it has to operate equally well at urban driving, as at steady highway cruising, it is of extreme importance that the flow field is kept independent of Reynolds effects. In this study an investigation of the Reynolds effects in the cooling air inlet of a normal road going sedan has been investigated by the use of CFD. The study has been conducted on a baseline air inlet. With the results focusing at the normalized mass flow through the cooling package it is shown that it is of importance how the air inlet has been designed. As such it is recommended that care and attention should be paid to achieve a well performing air inlet over the span of velocities at which road cars operate.