Engineering Developments of Elliptical Tube Mechanically Assembled Aluminum Radiator

The paper presents the design, development, heat transfer performance and durability characteristics of a new Mechanically Assembled Aluminum Radiator (MAAR) with elliptical shaped tubes for coolant passages. This unique ET-MAAR represents significant product improvements in performance, weight and cost, when compared to a conventional round tube mechanically assembled aluminum radiator. The use of computer modeling techniques to assist in design optimization, and the development of a finite element model to analyze a unique tube-to-fin expansion joint is also discussed.