Quote:
Originally Posted by elhigh
One wonders what you could achieve, packaging-wise, by splitting up radiator duty. I understand the Bugatti Veyron, with its enormous heat load from that multiply-turbocharged engine, has 10 separate radiators - three of them are for the engine.
I think the reason there is that in order to keep the aero reasonable and not have a gigantic Volvo barn door nose, they have to be made smaller to tuck into less-frontal positions, hopefully ones that are something close to aerodynamically neutral in their effect on the vehicle's total drag.
So, is that an option? Could you break up the rig's radiator duties between several smaller units, pull cooling air in around the front wheels and dump it through the gap in front of the trailer? No testing, I just have a hunch that would be the most advantageous place to do it. Of course this would require a gigantic amount of high-volume ducting.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ECONORAM
elhigh, I was literally thinking the same thing. Smaller units could make packing the whole front end easier.
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Gentlemen, great minds think alike. We actually had a split radiator system design in one of our first incarnations of the BulletTruck cooling system over 4 years ago.
We initially obtained
two brand new Kenworth T300 (I believe that was the model) radiators from one of our sponsors. These radiators were physically smaller, and were wider than they were taller. The exact opposite configuration of the OEM radiator, which is taller than wider. We were going to mount the two smaller radiators in a side-by-side shallow "V" configuration. Cummins had previously confirmed that the OEM water pump would work perfectly in a split system.
But we felt that the mounting brackets and the shroud ducting system for two radiators in this configuration would have been a nightmare. So we just built custom brackets and supports for the OEM radiator and mounted a new one of those below and in front of the frame. This is opposed to the traditional "radiator on top of the most-forward frame crossmember" configuration that has been used on trucks for the past 100 years or more. This was the very first instance of mounting the cooling system package forward of the frame and lower, AFAIK.
10 months ago, Daimler AG/Freightliner debuted their Freightliner Revolution to the public and I was there in person at that event. They use somewhat of a split cooling system, segregating the A/C condenser from the radiator and charge air cooler, claiming this configuration "increases airflow and reduces pre-heating of the charge air cooler and radiator." They also use a smaller custom radiator than their marquee OTR truck. And quite coincidentally, or not, they mount it forward of the frame and lower than the traditional location. Gee, I guess they could have learned
something, after visiting my web site so many times in the past 4 years.....
