• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.947-954
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• 2011

Drive-train friction loss in a vehicle may account for 4% of its total fuel consumption loss. An ATF W/C (auto-transmission fluid warmer/cooler) plate-fin heat exchanger is a type of heat exchanger that uses metal plates to transfer heat between the auto-transmission fluid and coolant. The use of an ATF W/C heat exchanger can result in a fuel economy improvement of about 1% in vehicles. An experimental setup for testing the thermal performance of an ATF W/C plate-fin heat exchanger is developed. In this study, the influence of the ATF and coolant, flow rates, and temperature on the efficiency of an ATF W/C heat exchanger are investigated experimentally. From the experimental data, a simple correlation for predicting the efficiency of an ATF W/C heat exchanger is proposed. On the basis of this correlation, the fuel economy of a vehicle with and without an ATF W/C heat exchanger is compared by using Simulink. Finally, it is shown that the fuel economy is improved by 0.992% when an ATF W/C heat exchanger is installed in the vehicle.