Tuesday 22. 6. 2021 evening was exciting time for Heatlab. After 9 p.m. the Brno Airport runway was closed and the hollow fiber team from Heatlab in cooperation with Dr. Vančura (Institute of Automotive Engineering) continue a research of polymeric hollow fiber automotive radiator there.
The polymeric hollow fiber heat exchanger consists of 12,240 fibers with a length of 480 mm. The polymeric hollow fibers were produced of high viscose polyamide 612. The outer fiber diameter was 0.8 mm, and the inner diameter was 0.64 mm. The area of the heat transfer surface is 12.92 m2. The fibers are distributed in 34 layers of 360 fibers. The frame of the heat transfer core and manifolds was made of plastic reinforced with glass fiber.
The heat exchanger was installed in passenger car Škoda Octavia 3rd generation powered by 1.4l petrol engine with front wheel driven drivetrain and 6 speed manual transmission. Also, several thermometers and flow meters were installed to obtain the thermal power of radiator.
Several rides at different speed were performed on the runway to obtain dependence of the air flow on vehicle speed in real conditions. Starting from 50 km/h speed the test team reached speeds of up to 180 km/h. Now, the measurements at a chassis dynamometer will follow up.
Thanks to Institute of Automotive Engineering for providing the testing vehicle and measuring equipment.
The research has been supported by the programme EPSILON project No. TH04010031, Heat exchangers with polymeric hollow fibres for automotive industry, granted by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic.