Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

www.springerlink.com/content/1738-494x

DOI 10.1007/s12206-013-0951-8

An efficient method to predict the heat transfer performance

of a louver fin radiator in an automotive power system
Sang Hyuk Lee1,2, Nahmkeon Hur1,3,* and Seongwon Kang1,3
1

Multi-phenomena CFD Engineering Research Center (ERC), Sogang University, Sinsoo 1, Mapo, Seoul, 121-742, Korea
Department of Nuclear Equipment and Machinery Research, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials, Yuseong, Daejeon, 305-343, Korea
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Sinsoo 1, Mapo, Seoul, 121-742, Korea

(Manuscript Received February 7, 2013; Revised July 23, 2013; Accepted August 6, 2013)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract
A numerical method to efficiently predict heat transfer phenomena of a louver fin radiator was presented multi-scale semimicroscopic heat exchange (SHE) method. This method consists of microscopic analysis and semimicroscopic analysis. To predict heat transfer characteristics of a louver fin element, the microscopic analysis employs modeling of the detailed geometry of a fin element. Numerical models for the heat transfer rate and flow friction derived from the microscopic analysis are then used for simulations of the full radiator model in semimicroscopic analysis. In the semimicroscopic analysis, conjugate heat transfer is analyzed for the domain with the radiator whose louver fin area is replaced by a porous media. The results with the proposed method show a good agreement with the experimental data. The proposed method can be used to predict flow and heat transfer characteristics of a realistic louver fin radiator with a
reduced cost and sufficient accuracy.
Keywords: Automotive radiator; Louver fin; Porous medium; Conjugate heat transfer; CFD
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction
Automotive cooling devices, such as radiators, condensers
and evaporators, have a significant effect on a vehicles efficiency. Especially, a radiator exhausting heat from the engine
is closely related to the engine performance and mechanical
failure. To enhance efficiency of a radiator, various studies
have been done on the additional devices such as a rectangular
fin [1], a plate [2, 3], a circular tube [4, 5], a flat tube [6], an
elliptic tube [7] and a louver fin [8]. Among various types of
radiators, louver fin radiators are often used in commercial
vehicles. A louver fin radiator provides a high heat transfer
rate but results in a significant friction loss due to the complex
coolant passage. So far, significant efforts have been made to
predict the characteristics of heat transfer and flow friction in a
louver fin radiator.
The louver fin radiator is characterized by two geometric
features: complex flow passages to enhance heat transfer and a
very large difference in geometric scales between the radiator
and a fin element. Because these geometric features from louvers, fins and tubes pose a great difficulty in a numerical analysis, many previous studies were done with experiments.
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 705 8637, Fax.: +82 2 713 8637
E-mail address: nhur@sogang.ac.kr

Recommended by Editor Dongshin Shin

KSME & Springer 2014

Webb and Jung [9] reported that the heat exchanger using a
louver fin has a better performance compared to a plate fin.
Davenport [10] performed an experimental study on the heat
transfer and flow characteristics of a louver fin radiator. In this
study, empirical relationships for the heat transfer rate and
flow friction were derived from the experimental data of 32
different louver fin models with a triangular shaped channel.
Kays and London [11] documented the empirical formulas for
the heat transfer rate and flow friction for various louver fin
radiators. Chang and Wang [12] and Chang et al. [13] analyzed 91 and 45 different louver fin radiators and derived correlations for the heat transfer rate and flow friction, respectively. These studies provided the overall heat transfer and
flow friction characteristics of louver fin radiators. However,
they have limitations in terms of investigating detailed flow
features. Also, these experimental studies must be expensive
because of many cases from several design parameters for the
louver, fin and tube.
In literature, there are also several theoretical and numerical
analyses for a louver fin radiator. Song et al. [14] simulated a
louver fin radiator by modeling the louver fin region by a porous medium. Perrotin and Clodic [15] and Vorayos and Kiatsiriroat [16] did simulations of heat transfer in a detailed louver fin geometry resolved by the mesh. Hsien and Jang [17]
performed 3D simulations of a flow over a radiator and engine

146

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

room. Jung and Assanis [18] analyzed a heat transfer problem

in a louver fin radiator with correlations suggested by Chang
and Wang [12]. Hur et al. [19] developed a semimicroscopic
heat exchange (SHE) method for a heat transfer problem in an
automotive radiator. With the SHE method, a simulation with
the air, coolant, louver fin and tube regions resolved in detail
is possible with a reduced computational cost, and the results
from test cases with conjugated heat transfer showed a good
agreement with various experimental data. However, the SHE
method requires correlations for the heat transfer rate and flow
friction from an experiment, which is not practical for a new
louver fin design. The numerical studies mentioned so far
focused on either very small or large geometric scales in a
louver fin radiator. The studies on the microscopic geometries
investigated very small louver fin elements and can provide
the data for a group of combined louver fins. However, they
have a limitation in extending their methods to an entire louver fin radiator. In contrast, the previous studies on large geometric scales considered the entire cooling system in an automobile. However, they require either experimental or empirical correlations for the heat transfer rate and flow friction to
model the louver fin region with very small geometric features.
We present a numerical method with a reduced cost and
sufficient accuracy to analyze a full-scale louver fin radiator
for underhood thermal management in an automobile. This
method is based on the SHE method of Hur et al. [19], but we
eliminated the need for the experimental correlations that limit
its usefulness. As a result, the modified method is easily applied to new design of a louver fin radiator while retaining the
advantage of the original method that the full-scale radiator
with high geometric complexity is efficiently handled.
In the next section, the louver fin radiator considered in the
present study is presented, and the non-dimensional parameters generally used in the previous studies for heat transfer and
flow characteristics are introduced. In Sec. 3, the SHE method
and the modification based on multi-scale simulations are
presented. In Secs. 4 and 5, the results from the microscopic
and semimicroscopic analyses including a simulation of a fullscale louver fin radiator for underhood thermal management
in an automobile are provided, followed by the conclusions.

2. Louver fin heat exchanger

In the present study, flow and heat transfer phenomena in a
louver fin radiator shown in Fig. 1(a) were numerically analyzed using a commercial CFD software, STAR-CD V4.14
[20]. In Fig. 1(a), the coolant heated by the engine enters the
radiator from the upper pipe and is distributed to tube passages.
Then, the temperature of the coolant is reduced by heat transfer to the ambient air. In a louver fin radiator, two techniques
are used to enhance heat transfer in the passages: (i) fins to
increase the surface area, and (ii) louvers around the tubes to
increase flow instability. Among various types of louver fin
radiator, the present study is focused in the corrugated louver
fin model with the rectangular channel. For an element of the

Table 1. Geometric parameters of the louver fin radiator.

Louver angle q

28 degree

Louver pitch L p

1.42 mm

Louver length Ll

17.18 mm

Fin thickness d f

0.16 mm

Fin pitch Fp

1.8 mm

Fin length Fl

19 mm

Fin depth Fd

22 mm

Hydraulic diameter Dh

3.041 mm

Tube pitch Tp

24 mm

Tube depth Td

22 mm

(a) Geometry of the louver fin radiator

(b) Geometric parameters of the louver fin radiator

Fig. 1. 3-D models of the louver fin radiator.

corrugated louver fin radiator in Fig. 1(b), the sizes of the heat
transfer rate and flow friction depend on several geometric
parameters as shown in the figure. The corrugated fin with the
pitch Fp , length Fl , depth Fd and thickness d f was located between tubes with the pitch Tp and depth Td . In the
planar fin, the specific region with the pitch L p and length
Ll was twisted with the angle q to form the inclined louver.
The values of the geometric parameters are listed in Table 1.
The selected radiator is one of the models used in the parametric study by Chang and Wang [12].
The performance of the louver fin radiator is affected also
by the operating conditions, the most important of which is the
Reynolds number based on the louver pitch:
Re Lp =

r aVin L p
.
ma

(1)

Many previous studies on heat exchangers used nondimensionalized parameters to quantify performance in terms
of the heat transfer rate and pressure drop. We use the Colburn
j-factor as a measure for the heat transfer rate and the Fanning
f-factor for the pressure drop. To define the Colburn j-factor,

147

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

following relationships for the heat transfer rate are necessary:

& p (Ta , out - Ta ,in )
Q = hAs (Tc - Ta , m ) = mc

(2)

Ta , m = (Ta , out + Ta ,in ) / 2 .

(3)

With these relationships, the heat transfer coefficient h can

be computed from the temperature values at the inlet, outlet
and wall of the tubes. Then, the Colburn j-factor is defined as:
j = St Pr 2 / 3 =

c p, a ma

r aVmax c p , a k
h

2/3

(4)

In several previous studies on louver fin radiators, various

empirical formulas for the j-factor have been proposed.
Among them, the j-factor (for 100< Re Lp <3000) suggested by
Chang and Wang [12] is:

j = Re

-0.49
Lp

Ll

Lp

q
90

0.68

Tp

Lp

0.27

Fp

Lp

-0.28

-0.14

df

Lp

Fl

Lp

-0.29

Td

Lp

r U D

t + U D U D
e

p meff 2
m
rC
=+
U D - U D - 1/E2 U D U D + r f i .
K
K
xi
e

(11)

-0.23

-0.05

(5)

The empirical correlation of j-factor based on the 91 samples of louver fin radiator shows that the experimental data are
correlated within 15%.
As a measure for performance in terms of the pressure drop,
the Fanning f-factor is defined as follows:
f =

fer analysis for the domain composed of the coolant in a tube,

tube wall, region where air passes through the louver fins and
ambient air. The louver fin region where heat transfer occurs
was modeled by a porous media occupied by the air and solid.
In the literature, the numerical technique for the porous media
is widely used for not only the complex pore structure of arbitrary shapes but also the complex spatial structure of periodic
patterns [21-23]. For the louver fin radiator, the porous media
is also useful to model the complex periodic structure [19]. By
modeling the louver fin region with the porous media, the
flow and pressure in the porous media region were predicted
using the Darcy equation. In the present study, the Darcy
equation modified by Brinkman-Forchheimer was used:

2Dp Ac
.
2
As
r aVmax

(6)

For the flow friction through the porous media in the semimicroscopic analysis, the f-factor in Eq. (6) from a previous
study can be used to model the third and fourth terms in the
RHS.
There are two methods to predict the temperature in the porous media: one-medium and two-media model. The onemedium model does not consider the effect of local heat transfer between air and the louver fin because they use only one
porous medium with a prescribed heat source. In the two media model, however, the heat source/sink is computed from
the local temperature difference between the fluid and solid
porous media. The energy equation for the two-media model
is written as:
Fluid phase:

Among several empirical correlations in literature, the ffactor (for 150< Re Lp <5000) proposed by Chang et al. [13] is
as follows:
(7)

f = f 1 f 2 f 3

((

-1.064 / q 2
f 1 = 4.97 Re0.6049
log e d f / Fp
Lp

-2.966

f2=

(( D / L ) log ( 0.3Re )) (
h

f 3 = Tp / Dm

-0.0446

Lp

log 1.2 + L / F
e
p
p

-0.527

+ 0.9

-0.7931(T p / Th )
Fp / Fl

0.5

1.4

T f

+ U D T f
t
k

ha
f , eff
=
+ D d 2T f +
e rcp
e r c p f

Ts - T f

(12)

(8)
Solid phase:
(9)

-3.553

q -0.477 . (10)

The empirical correlation of f-factor based on the 45 samples shows that 89.91% of experimental data are correlated
within 15%.

3. SHE (semimicroscopic heat exchange) method and

an extension to multi-scale simulation
The SHE method is characterized by a conjugate heat trans-

k s , eff
Ts
=

t
(1 - e ) r c p

ha
2Ts +

(1 - e ) r c p

(T - T ) .
s

(13)

The size of heat transfer between the fluid and solid media
was calculated by the heat transfer coefficient h and the temperature difference between two porous media. The j-factor in
Eq. (4) from a previous experimental or numerical study can
be used to compute the heat transfer coefficient.
In Eqs. (12) and (13), k f , eff and k s , eff are the effective
thermal conductivities of the fluid and solid porous media,
respectively. In the present study, the effective thermal conductivity proposed by Song et al. [14] was used. The effective

148

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

Fig. 3. Geometry and boundary conditions for the microscopic analysis

of the louver fin radiator.

Fig. 2. Comparison between the SHE and modified multi-scale SHE

method.

thermal conductivity is assumed as a function of the geometry

of the louver fin:
Air thermal conductivity: k f , eff = e k f = (1 - Ft / Fp ) k f

(14)

Fin thermal conductivity: k s , eff = (1 - e ) k s = ( Ft / Fp ) k s .

Fig. 4. Mesh sensitivity test for the microscopic analysis of the fin
radiator (ReLp = 95).

(15)
As mentioned before, a disadvantage of the SHE method is
that it depends on the previous study for correlations such as jand f-factors. Although these values are available for certain
types of louver fins such as those considered in Davenport
[10] and Chang and Wang [12], a method that does not require
the data from the previous studies may be desirable for a new
louver fin design or time-varying operational condition. A
modification to the SHE method to resolve this issue is presented in Fig. 2. The modified method is a combination of
microscopic and semimicroscopic analyses. In the microscopic analysis, simulations with the detailed geometry of a
louver fin element are carried out and correlations for the heat
transfer rate and flow friction are derived from the results. In
the semimicroscopic analysis, the louver fin region is modeled
using the correlations from the microscopic analysis, and details of all parts except for the louver fins are resolved in the
mesh. The effect of a specific geometry in the louver fin region is considered in the microscopic analysis. By employing
the correlations in the louver fin region, the number of mesh
points required for an accurate semimicroscopic analysis can
be significantly reduced. Accuracy of this multi-scale simulation is improved by exchanging the operational and boundary
conditions between two analyses with different length scales.
In the present study, the flow fields in both analyses are steady,
partly because of turbulence modeling (RANS) used in the
present study. The steady state and the use of the nondimensional parameters (j- and f-factors) greatly simplify the
process of data exchange in the example of the present study.

4. Microscopic analysis
In the present numerical method, correlations for the heat
transfer rate and flow friction are obtained in the microscopic
analysis in which simulations for a louver fin element are carried out. The computational domain for the microscopic analysis is shown in Fig. 3. The symmetric and cyclic boundary
conditions are used in the lateral sides of the computational
domain. A constant temperature is assumed at the regions with
the wall boundary condition. Heat is transferred to the air
through the louver fin. To obtain the correlations, several simulations were done with the air inlet velocities varying from 1
m/s (ReLp = 95) to 30 m/s (ReLp = 2,836) and the tube wall
temperatures varying from 343 K to 373 K. By examining
sensitivity to the mesh density as shown in Fig. 4, the computational models with the tetrahedral meshes of 4,500,000
among which 4,100,000 cells are in the fluid region and
400,000 cells in the solid region were adopted throughout the
present microscopic analysis. It took about 10 hours per case
using 1 CPU of a Linux server with a 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron
64 bit processor.
Figs. 5 and 6 and Table 2 show the simulation results with
the air inlet velocity set to 1 m/s and the tube wall temperature
varying from 343 K to 373 K. Different tube wall temperatures lead to different temperature fields of the air and louver
fin regions (Fig. 6). However, the velocity and pressure fields
are only marginally affected by the difference in the wall temperature (Fig. 5). From the parametric study with varying
temperature, the Colburn j-factor defined in Eqs. (2)-(4) was
obtained and listed in Table 2. It is observed the value of the j-

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

Table 2. Heat transfer and friction characteristics with various wall

temperature.
Twall

343.0 K

358.0 K

373.0 K

Tin

298.0 K

298.0 K

298.0 K

Tout

338.8 K

352.5 K

366.1 K

j-factor

0.0528

0.0530

0.0530

dp

10.03 Pa

10.03 Pa

10.03 Pa

f-factor

0.319

0.319

0.319

louver fin geometry. Since these correlations are functions of

the Reynolds number for a fixed louver fin geometry, j- and ffactor can be expressed as:
j = C1 ReCLp2 , f = C3 ReCLp4 .

f = 1.1112 Re

(b) Pressure

Fig. 5. Contours of the velocity magnitude and pressure from the microscopic analysis (ReLp = 95).

(a) Twall = 343 K

(b) Twall = 358 K

(16)

The coefficients of these correlations were obtained by a

curve fitting method:
j = 0.9461Re -Lp0.603

(a) Velocity magnitude

149

-0.388
Lp

(17)
.

(18)

These numerical correlations were compared with the empirical correlations of the j-factor (Eq. (5)) proposed by Chang
and Wang [12] and the f-factor (Eqs. (7)-(10)) proposed by
Chang et al. [13]. In Fig. 8, the correlations of the present
study are similar to the empirical correlations of the present
study. As the Reynolds number increases, the values of j- and
f-factor decrease. These values become independent of the
Reynolds number at a sufficiently high Reynolds number. The
numerical result of the j-factor shows a better agreement with
the empirical correlation than the f-factor. Since the empirical
correlations were obtained by experiments with 91 and 45
different louver fin models, a difference between the numerical and empirical correlations may exist. Another reason for
the difference in the f-factor between the present study and
Chang et al. [13] is a possible discrepancy in the velocity
boundary conditions.

5. Semimicroscopic analysis

(c) Twall = 373 K

Fig. 6. Contours of the temperature with various wall temperature
(ReLp = 95).

To analyze the entire louver fin radiator, the SHE method

employs numerical or the empirical correlations for the j- and
f-factor. In the present study, louver fin radiators in a previous
wind tunnel test and a full automotive vehicle were considered
in the semimicroscopic analysis.
5.1 Validation of SHE method

factor is almost constant for different wall temperatures. The

same trend is found also for the f-factor.
To see the effect of the inlet velocity, simulations with the
inlet velocities varying from 1 m/s to 30 m/s were performed
with the tube wall temperature set to 358 K. The temperature
and pressure fields with different inlet velocities are shown in
Fig. 7. The outlet temperature of air with a higher inlet velocity is lower than the temperature with a lower inlet velocity
because of a larger velocity and temperature gradient near the
louver fin. A large velocity has a positive effect on heat transfer but can increase the flow friction and pressure drop. The
pressure fields show that the pressure drop increases rapidly as
the inlet velocity increases.
The values of Colburn j-factor and the Fanning f-factor
from the varying inlet velocity are shown in Fig. 8. The jfactor and f-factor are influenced by the inlet velocity and

To validate the SHE method, the results from the SHE

method were compared with the results from the microscopic
analysis. The computational domain and boundary condition
for the SHE method are shown in Fig. 9. The computational
domains for the fluid and solid regions are separately modeled
because of the two-media model mentioned in the previous
section. The computational model was generated with the
hexahedral meshes of 520,000 among which 450,000 cells are
in the fluid region and 70,000 cells in the solid region. It took
about 1 hour per case using 1 CPU of a Linux server with a
2.4 GHz AMD Opteron 64 bit processor.
Fig. 10 shows the contours of the temperature using the
SHE method for different Reynolds numbers. The small figure
above each figure shows the result from the microscopic analysis. The temperature in the downstream of the louver fin
decreases as the Reynolds number increases, because the in-

150

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

(a) ReLp = 95

(b) ReLp = 378

(d) ReLp = 1,607

(c) ReLp = 945

(e) ReLp = 2,269

(f) ReLp = 2,836

Fig. 7. Contours of the temperature and pressure with various Reynolds numbers.

(a) Colbum f-factor

(b) Fanning f-factor

Fig. 8. Comparison of the j-factor and f-factor from the microscopic analysis with the empirical correlations.

crease in the mass rate of the fluid is relatively larger than the
increase in the amount of heat transfer between the fluid and
solid. The temperature fields from the SHE method and the
corresponding microscopic analysis are qualitatively similar.
To further validate the SHE method, the j-factor and f-factor
were calculated from the results of the SHE method and com-

pared with the results from the microscopic analysis. Fig. 11

shows a comparison of the j-factor and f-factor from two analyses. The j-factor from the SHE method agrees well with the
correlation from the microscopic analysis, which makes sense
considering that the SHE method uses the correlation. Both
methods produce similar results also in the f-factor. However,

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

151

Fig. 9. Geometry and boundary conditions for the semimicroscopic analysis.

(a) ReLp = 95

(b) ReLp = 378

(d) ReLp = 1,607

(c) ReLp = 945

(e) ReLp = 2,269

(f) ReLp = 2,836

Fig. 10. Contours of the temperature from the microscopic and semimicroscopic analyses.

(a) Colbum j-factor

(b) Fanning f-factor

Fig. 11. Comparison of the j-factor and f-factor from the semimicroscopic analysis with the numerical correlation.

a larger difference was observed as the Reynolds number decreases. The difference seems to originate from the Darcy
equation, which models the complex geometry as a porous
media, especially from the quadratic flow resistance term in
Eq. (11).

As shown in Table 3, an advantage of the SHE method is

the reduced computational cost compared to the microscopic
analysis. In the examples of this section, the SHE method
requires about 1/10-th of the computational meshes and time
for the microscopic analysis and produces similar results. Us-

152

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

Table 3. Comparison of computational costs for the microscopic and

semimicroscopic analyses.
Microscopic analysis
Computational meshes
Total
Fluid region
Solid region
Computational time*
Average

Semimicroscopic
analysis

4.46 x 106 cells

4.10 x 106 cells
0.36 x 106 cells

0.52 x 106 cells

0.45 x 106 cells
0.07 x 106 cells

39,294 sec

3,647 sec

* By using 1 CPU of a Linux server with a 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron 64 bit
processor.

Fig. 12. Computational domain and mesh for the application of the
SHE method to underhood thermal management.

ing accurate correlations either from experiments or microscopic analyses, the SHE method can be applied efficiently to
a louver fin radiator for underhood thermal management in an
automobile.
5.2 Application to underhood thermal management
In this section, the SHE method is used to analyze a louver
fin radiator in a realistic vehicle model. Using the correlations
from the microscopic analysis in the previous sections, we
analyzed the flow and temperature fields in the domain including the full vehicle model as well as the radiator with the SHE
method.
Fig. 12 shows the computational domain and meshes used
for the SHE method. The geometric parameters of the louver

Table 4. Heat transfer characteristics of the louver fin radiator for

underhood thermal management.
Vvehicle

10 m/s

20 m/s

30 m/s

Tair,in

313.0 K

313.0 K

313.0 K

Tcoolant,in

380.0 K

380.0 K

380.0 K

Tcoolant,out

372.0 K

371.3 K

370.9 K

18.26 kW

20.31 kW

21.42 kW

fin radiator inside the vehicle are listed in Table 1. The total
number of the coolant passages is 67. The computational
model was generated with the trimmed meshes of 7,000,000.
The computational domain is divided into two regions: the
louver fin radiator and the ambient air. The region of the louver fin radiator consists of the louver fins, tubes and coolant
passages. The region of the ambient air consists of the air
passing through the louver fins and the ambient air. Using the
two-media method, the regions of the air passing through the
louver fins and the solid louver fins were modeled as porous
media. In these regions, the temperature field was modeled
using Eqs. (12) and (13) with the thermal conductivities in Eqs.
(14) and (15), and the flow field was modeled using the Darcy
equation (Eq. (11)). The employed temperature model includes the effect from conjugate heat transfer by considering
the temperature difference between two porous media occupying the same space. In the computational domain except for
two porous regions, the regular momentum and energy equations were used to simulate the velocity and temperature fields.
It took about one day per case by using 4 CPU of a Linux
server with a 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron 64 bit processor.
We analyzed the performance of the louver fin radiator with
the vehicle speeds varying from 10 m/s to 30 m/s. The vehicle
speed significantly affects the velocity of the air passing through
the louver fin radiator and the heat transfer rate to the air.
Fig. 13 shows the contours of the temperature in several
parts of the computational domain with various vehicle speeds.
The heat transfer rate is proportional to the temperature difference between two porous regions of the fluid and solid (Figs.
13(a) and (b)). The temperatures in two porous regions are
strongly affected by the temperature fields of the coolant and
ambient air (Figs. 13 (c) and (d)). The temperatures at all parts
of the radiator and at the exit of the coolant decrease as the
vehicle speed increases. Therefore, the heat generated from
the engine can be easily exhausted at a high vehicle speed.
Table 4 shows the temperature values of the air at the inlet
and the coolant at the inlet and outlet with the heat transfer
rate for different vehicle speeds. The exit temperature of the
coolant decreases and the heat transfer rate increases as the
vehicle speed increases.
To summarize, the present numerical approach can be used
efficiently to design a louver fin radiator for underhood thermal management. Most previous numerical studies on the full
model of a louver fin radiator employed some empirical correlations for the heat transfer rate and flow friction. In the pre-

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

153

(a) Fluid in the porous region

(b) Solid in the porous region

(c) Coolant

(d) Cooling fan

(e) Side view of the engine room

Fig. 13. Contours of the temperature of automotive underhood model with various vehicle speeds.

sent method, a microscopic analysis uses a louver fin element

with identical dimensions to that of the full model for obtaining the correlations, which can result in more accurate and
consistent results in the simulations of the full model. The
present method can be also used for various types of heat exchanger having a complex geometry. Although the corrugated
and complex geometry generally leads to disturbed flow, the
previous models for the porous media seem to damp out the
disturbance. Therefore, the present method appears to be more
effective for a heat exchanger with the structure of smaller

geometric scales.

6. Conclusions
A numerical approach was introduced to analyze a louver
fin radiator for underhood thermal management accurately
and efficiently. The present method consists of microscopic
and semimicroscopic analyses. In the microscopic analysis,
the heat transfer rate and flow friction of a louver fin element
were predicted and correlations for the non-dimensionalized j-

154

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

factor and f-factor were obtained. Using the correlations from

the microscopic analysis, the conjugate heat transfer problem
in the full radiator model was simulated in the semimicroscopic analysis referred to as the SHE method. The proposed
multi-scale SHE method becomes very efficient because complex microscopic structures in the louver fin region are modeled as porous media to reduce the computational costs. An
accurate simulation of the full model is possible by modeling
properties of the porous media such as the heat transfer rate
and flow friction using the correlations from the microscopic
analysis. The present method is useful for the accurate and
efficient prediction of flow and heat transfer for the design of
a louver fin radiator in a realistic vehicle model for underhood
thermal management. Furthermore, the present method can be
applied to various types of heat exchanger with the complex
structures of small geometric scales.

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant No. 2009-0083510 funded by the
Korea Government (MEST) through Multi-phenomena CFD
Engineering Research Center.

Nomenclature-----------------------------------------------------------------------Ac
As
a
cp
Dh
f
Fd
Fl
Fp
h
j
k
Lh
Ll
Lp
Pr
Re Lp
St
T
Td
Tp
Q
V
UD
Dp

r
m
e
q

: Cross-sectional area [m2]

: Surface area [m2]
: Ratio of surface area to volume [m-1]
: Specific heat capacity [J/K]
: Hydraulic diameter of fin array [mm]
: Fanning f-factor
: Fin depth [mm]
: Fin length [mm]
: Fin pitch [mm]
: Heat transfer coefficient [W/m2K]
: Colburn j-factor
: Thermal conductivity [W/mK]
: Louver height [mm]
: Louver length [mm]
: Louver pitch [mm]
: Prandtl number
: Reynolds number based on louver pitch
: Stanton number
: Temperature [K]
: Tube depth [mm]
: Tube pitch [mm]
: Heat transfer rate [W]
: Velocity [m/s]
: Darcian velocity [m/s]
: Pressure drop [Pa]
: Density [kg/m3]
: Viscosity [kg/ms]
: Porosity
: Louver angle [degree]

df

: Fin thickness [mm]

Subscript
a
c
eff
f
in
max
out
s

: Air
: Coolant
: Effective
: Fluid
: Inlet
: Maximum
: Outlet
: Solid

References
[1] H. S. Kang, Optimum performance and design of a rectangular fin, International Journal of Automotive Technology, 8
(6) (2007) 705-711.
[2] A. Witry, Thermal performance of automotive aluminium
plate radiator, Applied Thermal Engineering, 25 (2005)
1207-1218.
[3] J. G. Paeng, K. H. Kim and Y. H. Yoon, Experimental
measurement and numerical computation of the air side convective heat transfer coefficients in a plate fin-tube heat exchanger, Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, 23
(2009) 536-543.
[4] C. Lpez del Pr, F. J. S. Velasco and L. E. Herranz, Aerodynamics of a gas jet entering the secondary side of a vertical shell-and-tube exchanger: Numerical analysis of anticipated severe accident SGTR conditions, Engineering Application of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 4 (1) (2010) 91105.
[5] K. Bremhorst and M. Brennan, Investigation of shell and
tube heat exchanger tube inlet wear by computational fluid
dynamics, Engineering Application of Computational Fluid
Mechanics, 5 (4) (2011) 566-578.
[6] N.-H. Kim and S.-H. Kim, Dry and wet air-side performance
of a louver-finned heat exchanger having flat tubes, Journal
of Mechanical Science and Technology, 24 (7) (2010) 15531561.
[7] K. Yakinthos, D. Missirlis, A. Sideridis, Z. Vlahostergios, O.
Seite and A. Goulas, Modelling operation of system of recuperative heat exchangers for aero engine with combined use
of porosity model and thermo-mechanical model, Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 6 (4)
(2012) 608-621.
[8] C.-T. Hsieh and J.-Y. Jang, 3-D thermal-hydraulic analysis
for louver fin heat exchangers with variable louver angle,
Applied Thermal Engineering, 26 (2006) 1629-1639.
[9] R. L. Webb and S.-H. Jung, Air-side performance of enhanced brazed aluminium heat exchangers, ASHRAE Winter
Meeting, (2002) 391-401.
[10] C. V. Davenport, Correlation for heat transfer and flow
friction characteristic of louvered fin, AICHE Symp., 79
(1983) 19-27.

S. H. Lee et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 28 (1) (2014) 145~155

[11] W. M. Kays and A. L. Londom, Compact heat exchanger,

3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York (1984).
[12] Y.-J. Chang and C.-C. Wang, A generalized heat transfer
correlation for louver fin geometry, International Journal of
Heat and Mass Transfer, 40 (3) (1997) 533-544.
[13] Y.-J. Chang, K.-J. Chang, M.-C. Li and C.-C. Wang, An
amendment of the generalized friction correlation for louver
fin geometry, International Journal of Heat and Mass
Transfer, 49 (2006) 4250-4253.
[14] C. H. Song, D.-Y. Lee and T. R. Sung, Cooling enhancement in an air-cooled finned heat exchanger by thin water
film evaporation, International Journal of Heat and Mass
Transfer, 46 (7) (2003) 1241-1249.
[15] T. Perrotin and D. Clodic, Thermal-hydraulic CFD study in
louvered fin-and-flat-tube heat exchanger, International
Journal of Refrigeration, 27 (2004) 422-432.
[16] N. Vorayos and T. Kiatsiriroat, Thermal characteristics of
louvered fins with a low-Reynolds number flow, Journal of
Mechanical Science and Technology, 24 (4) (2010) 845-850.
[17] C.-T. Hsien and J.-Y. Jang, 3-D thermal-hydraulic analysis
for airflow over a radiator and engine room, International
Journal of Automotive Technology, 8 (5) (2007) 659-666.
[18] D. Jung and D. N. Assanis, Numerical modelling of cross
flow compact heat exchanger with louvered fins using thermal resistance concept, SAE, 2006-01-0726 (2006).
[19] N. Hur, J.-T. Park, S. H. Lee, B. Choi and B.-J. Ahn, Development of a semimicroscopic heat exchange (SHE)
method for a vehicle underhood thermal management, Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, 9 (3/4/5) (2009)
141-149.
[20] STAR-CD V4.14, STAR-CD V4.14 User Guide, CDadapco Group, London (2010).
[21] M. M. A. Bhutta, N. Hayat, M. H. Bashir, A. R. Khan, K. N.
Ahmad and S. Khan, CFD applications in various heat exchanger design: A review, Applied Thermal Engineering, 32
(2012) 1-12.
[22] K. Kritikos, C. Albanakis, D. Missirlis, Z. Vlahostergios, A.
Goulas and P. Strom, Investigation of the thermal efficiency

155

of a staggered elliptic-tube heat exchanger for aeroengine applications, Applied Thermal Engineering, 30 (2010) 134-142.
[23] A. M. Hayes, J. A. Khan, A. H. Shaaban and I. G. Spearing,
The thermal modeling of a matrix heat exchanger using a porous medium and the thermal non-equilibrium model, International Journal of Thermal Science, 47 (2008) 1306-1315.

Sang Hyuk Lee is a Senior Researcher

in the Department of Nuclear Equipment
and Machinery Research at Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials. He received his Ph.D. from Sogang University in 2012, and worked as a PostDoctoral Researcher in Multi-phenomena CFD Engineering Research Center
(ERC). Currently, his research interests include multiphysics
computational fluid dynamics.
Nahmkeon Hur is a Professor in the
Department of Mechanical Engineering
of Sogang University in Seoul, Korea
and a director of Multi-phenomena CFD
Engineering Research Center (ERC)
funded by National Research Foundation of Korea. He received his Ph.D.
from Stevens Institute of Technology in
1988. His research interests include multiphysics and multidynamics CFD and its application.
Seongwon Kang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering at Sogang University. He
received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2008 and joined Sogang University in 2010. His research interests
include numerical methods for a complex geometry and turbulent flows with
combustion.