There is increased concern about the noise emission from cooling systems. This is mainly due to an increased need for cooling needs due to turbo-charging and EGR systems, which tend to increase the fan power and thereby the noise. An important issue in this context is the behavior of the heat-exchanger and its acoustic transmission and absorption properties. In this paper an acoustic model to evaluate such data for a common type of heat exchanger, the parallel plate type, is presented.
The basic configuration is assumed to be a matrix of parallel, narrow channels. The developed model is based on a so called equivalent fluid for an anisotropic medium. It is mainly dependent on the heat exchanger geometry combined with the Kirchhoff model for thermo-viscous wave propagation in narrow tubes.
The proposed model can be used to predict the sound transmission and absorption for an entire heat exchanger for incident plane waves. This model is validated by comparison with measurement results for seven different heat exchangers used in vehicle and train cooling units at different flow speeds