Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Normal
Yeah, I am tending to agree with Zoom that you are over selling the natural convection bit. There are / were some engine designs that relied on natural convection; but, those designs are pretty far south of the 21st century. I would also observe that there are a number of modern cars that use cross flow radiators where convection inside the heat transfer tubes has absolutely no effect. Heat transfer in modern engines relies on nucleate boiling in the engine and a strong flow of coolant to scrub those bubbles off the cooling passage surfaces. I expect that strong forced flow pretty much negates any convection effect in the radiator. If the NSX radiator is internally symmetrical on the inlet and outlet sides you can have at it if you feel the need to express yourself. However, you might want to make sure that there is nothing in the radiator internals that would impair the operation of the radiator if you reverse the direction of flow. The only down side is that it may look odd and you have complicated getting hoses in the future. I expect that the radiator inlet and outlet in a forced flow system is more a function of packaging considerations. There may have been some other design consideration that dictated the radiator connections in the NSX.As an observation, if you are going to use it for more than a few seconds at a time 600 hp kind of puts you way outside the design window for the existing NSX heat transfer surfaces. As noted, ducting to increase air flow through the radiator would have been a more obvious first step for me. If you are going to experiment with radiators with more cooling capacity I might be inclined to think about electrically operated coolant pump(s) because turbocharged engines can produce more power and heat at lower RPM than an NA engine. You might also want to consider supplementary oil cooling with all the potential nasty negatives (oops, I meant complications) that brings with it.
Yeah, I am tending to agree with Zoom that you are over selling the natural convection bit. There are / were some engine designs that relied on natural convection; but, those designs are pretty far south of the 21st century. I would also observe that there are a number of modern cars that use cross flow radiators where convection inside the heat transfer tubes has absolutely no effect. Heat transfer in modern engines relies on nucleate boiling in the engine and a strong flow of coolant to scrub those bubbles off the cooling passage surfaces. I expect that strong forced flow pretty much negates any convection effect in the radiator. If the NSX radiator is internally symmetrical on the inlet and outlet sides you can have at it if you feel the need to express yourself. However, you might want to make sure that there is nothing in the radiator internals that would impair the operation of the radiator if you reverse the direction of flow. The only down side is that it may look odd and you have complicated getting hoses in the future.
I expect that the radiator inlet and outlet in a forced flow system is more a function of packaging considerations. There may have been some other design consideration that dictated the radiator connections in the NSX.
As an observation, if you are going to use it for more than a few seconds at a time 600 hp kind of puts you way outside the design window for the existing NSX heat transfer surfaces. As noted, ducting to increase air flow through the radiator would have been a more obvious first step for me. If you are going to experiment with radiators with more cooling capacity I might be inclined to think about electrically operated coolant pump(s) because turbocharged engines can produce more power and heat at lower RPM than an NA engine. You might also want to consider supplementary oil cooling with all the potential nasty negatives (oops, I meant complications) that brings with it.
