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Pressure Differential in heat Exchangers



 
 
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Old July 2nd 03, 06:09 AM
Bruce A. Frank
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Default Pressure Differential in heat Exchangers



Morgans wrote:
Why not use a little electric fan to draw air past the radiator for extended
ground operations, like cars do?


It has been done. Bayard DuPont did it on the rear engine in his Defiant
and it worked well. Others who tried it found problems with ram air in
flight spinning the fans and wearing out the bearings.

I'll get into this a bit more. A primary consideration to get enough air
flow is to locate the radiator exhaust air opening in a low pressure
area. It has proven virtually impossible to push air through a radiator.
When there is no low pressure area into which the radiator exhaust air
can flow, regardless of the size of the intake opening, the engine
doesn't cool.

An advantage to the radiator in the cowling is that prop wash will
provide enough air movement to cool the engine during extended holds.
Bayard found that he never had cooling problems with the Defiant's front
engine once he had created a lip on the bottom firewall edge of the
cowl. The lip on the trailing edge of the cowl creating the opening
through which the radiator air exhausted dropped the pressure enough to
"suck" the air through the radiator. Bayard has sat for as long as 30
minutes with no over heating.

A little bit about drag through the radiator. The air going through the
radiator has to slow down a lot in the duct from the cowl opening to the
radiator. This requires some consideration of the divergence of the duct
from the intake opening to the radiator. In a perfect world proper
divergence of the walls of the duct should be about 7 degrees. In
practical application up to 15 degrees works well. The air expands and
slows and the air pressure differential from the front side to the back
side of the radiator is what gets the air through. The duct should then
converge to re-accelerate the air before it dumps into the slipstream
again.

To create a mental image, too large an intake opening sort of tries to
gulp too big a chunk of air. The plenum created by the divergent duct
can't flow that much and the radiator acts like a closed window because
it cannot pass that high speed air. The air spills back out of the
intake opening creating swirls and burbles like a cup under a wide open
faucet...or like trying to drink out of a garden hose shot straight from
the nozzle into your mouth (you know, you try to pucker you lips to slow
the flow to keep it from squirting out of your nose). This is where the
high drag is created.

The route through the radiator is a relatively easy one, even making a
right angle turn through the fins, because it is a pressure thing rather
than an air speed thing easily navigated by the air that has traded its
velocity for pressure through the correctly divergent plenum/duct.

Hanging a radiator out in the slip stream works poorly except on the
slowest planes. The air just piles up in front of it and spills around
it. Even a short straight wall duct leading into and out of such an air
dam will improve the efficiency of the radiator.

Bruce A. Frank, Editor "Ford 3.8/4.2L Engine and V-6 STOL
Homebuilt Aircraft Newsletter"
| Publishing interesting material|
| on all aspects of alternative |
| engines and homebuilt aircraft.|
*------------------------------**----*
\(-o-)/ AIRCRAFT PROJECTS CO.
\___/ Manufacturing parts & pieces
/ \ for homebuilt aircraft,
0 0 TIG welding

While trying to find the time to finish mine.

 




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