Design evaluation and thermal calculations of the developed automotive radiators for student formula SAE vehicle "bimasakti"

Abstract

Bimasakti is a single-seater formula vehicle manufactured by UGM students which compete annually in the Japan Student Formula SAE Competition. To prevent the engine overheating, a proper design of the radiator should be considered. The developed radiator is expected to control heat dissipated produced by the engine and maintain the optimal engine temperature. In this study, the technical evaluations towards 2 radiator designs (namely as BM-R1 and BM-R2) were conducted in the viewpoint of thermal calculations. Here, water was used as a coolant liquid inside the radiator. The vehicle used a KTM 450 SX-F engine (450 cc) as the prime mover with maximum power of 44 kW. As the design requirements, we assumed that: 7.33 kW of heat (from the engine) should be exchanged by the radiator, the coolant temperature from the engine was assumed to be 95°C, and the effectiveness is 0.25. As a result, the BM-R2 with the total heat transfer area of 2.86 m2 could dissipate the heat of 9.16 kW which was better than BM-R1. Furthermore, result of this analytical study is expected to be an engineering input towards the simulation study of the radiator performance.