Effect of inlet manifold structure on the performance of the heater core in the automobile air-conditioning systems

Brazed aluminum flat tube and louver fin heat exchanger is widely used as the heater core in automotive heat, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) module. It was found that the temperature distribution in heater core surface is not equivalent, and it was considered that the flow maldistribution in the tubes responses for this phenomenon. The purpose of this work was to enhance the performance of the heater through optimizing the inlet manifold structure. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was adopting for investigating this phenomenon and finding some optimization schemes. In addition, the experiments were carried out for this optimization. In these experiments, two samples of heater core, before and after optimizing, were tested in an experimental facility, and the experimental results showed that the performance had improved by 1.03–3.98% through adding a deflector in the inlet manifold. The IR pictures also showed that the temperature distribution on the heater core surface was more homogeneous.