COOLING AIR CIRCUIT DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

 

Clem Mesa has had a long working relationship with Professor Dr. John Foss, Director of the Turbulent Shear Flows Lab (TSFL) of Michigan State University (MSU). The development work conducted at the Lab led to substantial advances in “speed to market” product creation, cost reduction, improved performance and product quality.

 

Some of the Advanced Cooling Air Circuit Development processes are now offered as development services to OEM and builders of specialty vehicles and stationary powerplants for improved cooling system performance.

 

These are:

 

· The fan and radiator behave as a “prime mover” sensitive to the fan disk distance to the rear face of the radiator.  The fan can be optimized for the prime mover combination, as well as the distance where a “sweet spot” for the system performance can be optimized experimentally.

· Opportunities for reduction of 1st (viscous) and 2nd power (turbulent) contributions to the pressure drop of the cooling airflow can also be identified.

· Characterization of the fan flow fields using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) techniques, whereby a dual pulse laser light sheet provides the information of how a small cluster of particles moves in a time period so small that a local velocity magnitude can be inferred.  The resulting data provides velocity components in the plane of the laser sheet.

· Complete fan characterization services are available, such as the fan curve; shaft loads, power consumption, precession, tip recirculation, optimal FOOS, etc.

 

The high-detail experimental data outputs and PIV fields ideally support the verification, development and evolution of complex CFD models for the grille, front end, heat exchanger/fan system, especially in conjunction with experimental underhood flow visualization work. 

 

ADVANCED COOLING AIR CIRCUIT SEMINAR

 

Dr. Foss offers a 1-day seminar, presenting the experimental processes and methodologies developed. The process makes possible the experimental optimization of the cooling air circuit efficiencies concurrent with the theme, hard point, DMA and vehicle architecture development phases. It produces hard data in time to influence the front end and heat exchanger module and fan system design prior to freeze timing. It also discovers intrinsic airside deficiencies before the tooling is cut and the product test and the verification process is underway.

 

SCHEDULE: The seminar is scheduled on request.

 

PLEASE CONTACT:

Professor John F. Foss

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Research Complex - Engineering

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI  48824

Ph: (517) 355-3337

e-mail: <foss@msu.edu>

Schematic of the MSU - TSFL Fan Test Tunnel Facility

Installed fan performance curves