The heat transfer characteristics of a spiral type EGR cooler for a diesel engine are numerically analyzed to investigate the performance of EGR cooler. The commercial code FLUENT is utilized to simulate a single spiral tube with constant wall temperature conditions. The numerical analysis is performed with the variation of exhaust gas flow rate. The results show that as mass flow rate increases, temperature difference between inlet and outlet and efficiency become lower, while heat flux gets higher. The empirical correlation is derived in forms of Nusslet number and Reynolds number based on the numerical results.

The gas flow and heat transfer inside an EGR cooler for a diesel engine are numerically analyzed to investigate the performance of EGR cooler. The commercial code FLUENT is utilized to simulate a single spiral tube with constant wall temperature condition. The numerical analysis is performed with the variation of exhaust gas flow rates according to engine speed. The computational results agree well with the experimental results published before. The results show that the maximum error rate is about 0.6% for all operating conditions. Thus a single tube model with constant wall temperature condition is appropriate for simulating EGR cooler.