Ram-Recovery Coefficient Correlations for Automotive Cooling Airflows

The design of more efficient automotive cooling systems requires better understanding of the losses in fluid mechanical energy through conversion to thermal energy for the air flow through the front end cooling openings. A wind tunnel study with simplified models has been conducted to investigate the factors affecting the cooling opening mechanical energy losses. The data from this study have been sucessfully correlated using newly defined dimensionless parameters. The influence of the controlled geometrical factors are clearly identifiable with the data presented in dimensionless form. An algorithm has been devised which accurately correlates the behavior of a combination of cooling openings given the behavior of each of the openings operating individually.