Flow diagnosis in a domestic radiator

In UK, domestic heating contributes to about 40% of annual energy consumption. Effective and efficient heating systems are essential to drive the cost of heating down. Although there are several types of heating systems, radiators are the most popular heat emitters. Head loss in a radiator depends on various design parameters based on fluid flow path conditions and design of the radiator.
In the present study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code has been used to analyse flow distribution within a domestic radiator. For this study a radiator with dimensions of 300mm by 600mm with 18 columns has been considered. The study has been carried out on a radiator with BBOE and BTOE configuration at various flow rates. In this paper results are presented from a series of analysis in which flow structure within the radiator has been diagnosed.