Tie Wang

This paper involves an exhaust gas waste heat recovery system for vehicles, which uses thermoelectric modules and a heat exchanger to produce electric power. Based on summarizing the latest research of vehicle exhaust thermo-electric generator (TEG), it presents two new fin structures for the cylindrical heat exchanger in a TEG system. It mainly studies the thermal performance of two kinds of three-dimensional cylindrical heat exchanger models including spiral-fin heat exchanger with variable pitch in a computational fluid dynamics simulation environment. In terms of interface temperature and thermal uniformity and based on an evaluation method of the temperature uniformity for the heat exchangers, the thermal characteristics of heat exchangers with different pitch angle of the twisted fins, pitch of spiral fin, fin thickness and fin height are discussed. Two new fin structures are feasible to enhance the heat transfer performance of heat exchanger.

In this article, the most important part of the automotive front bumper system, namely, the bumper beam, is studied by changing the material and thickness to improve the crashworthiness performance in low-velocity impact. According to the low-speed standard of automotives stated in E.C.E. United Nations Agreement, Regulation no. 42, the low-velocity impact simulation based on finite element analysis is carried out. Lightweight is the main purpose of this article. First, the bumper beam analysis is accomplished for carbon fiber composite and steel material to analyze their deformation, weight, impact force, energy absorption, and the acceleration of the impactor. As a consequence, the bumper beam made by carbon fiber composite achieves better impact behavior. Second, on the purpose of lightweight, the bumper beams of different thickness including 5.4, 6, 6.6, and 7.2 mm are investigated. The results show that the 5.4 mm bumper beam is the best selection without sacrificing the impact performance. Third, according to the stress distribution, the thickness distribution of the bumper beam is changed to get better lightweight results. It is indicated that the weight of the improved bumper beam is further reduced and the impact performance is not weakened.