Heat Transfer Increase by Flow Structures Modifications
This paper makes use of a new methodology for heat transfer increase through flow structures modifications. Intended to help railway designers in handling cooling issues, it is applied to improve the roof-mounted equipment design of a modern railway coach, namely the CORADIA TER 2N NG produced by the ALSTOM Transport company. The brake resistor, a key equipment in charge of dissipating the train kinetic energy as heat into the surrounding air during braking phases, has been particularly considered. To do so, a simple model including a heated obstacle inside a three-sided lead-driven cavity is used, and simple geometry variations are suggested. Their impact on heat transfer is then estimated through numerical simulations while experimental tests validate the results obtained.