Quote:
Originally posted by unregistered
I have asked Cathar to post/link to the threads where he had tons of info related to the physical differences (tubes, fins, spacing), but other than some rough empirical 'results', nothing so detailed
feel free to correct me Cathar
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Been out all day - just got back.
Yeah, I had some stats on about 4 to 6 different radiators over at OCAU.
I was trying to draw some sort of correlation between facial surface area, thickness, and total fin surface area, the latter which is dependent upon the density of the fin folds.
I can't say that I really tried that hard though. I'll try and dig up some of the information posted, although Bill's own radiator review does give a fair indication.
One thing that did seem to come forward that thickness is highly over-rated. After some investigation on the heater-core style design I was unable to find any real benefit for going with a 3-core radiator (typically about 2" thick) over most 2-core rads (typically about 1.3" thick). The thicker the core, the lower the air-flow (higher resistance), the slower the water-flow (more total parallel tubes) resulting in a lower Reynold's number, and the third row is achieving poor efficiency due to the low air flow due to the weak fans (by industrial standards) that people use as the first 2 rows have already heated the air to a fair extent.
Seemed to me that the best sorts of radiators for computer cooling were large with lots of frontal area, 2-row-core, not too thick (no more than say 35mm deep fin area) with brazed-on fins and a high fin fold density (16+).
Of course, none of the above discussion answers the question of how to simulate a core, but it is intended to highlight the complexity and unobviousness (sic) of radiator performance.