Aluminum Strip for Charge Air Cooler Fin

Aluminum strip for charge air cooler fin refers to the type of aluminium tape used as a raw material for charge air cooler fins. The strip is usually between 0.1mm and 0.4mm thick. Its width can be 12.5mm (known as narrow fins) or 16mm (wide fins), but cooler manufacturers can customize specifications in accordance with their designs. Generally speaking, pure aluminum strip 1060, 1070 or 1100 is adopted, but 3003 or 4343 may also be selected to meet special requirements about corrosion resistance. In case of requirement for highly strong corrosion resistance, copper or stainless steel strips is used to take place of aluminium belts.

Aluminum strip has been selected as a regular material for charge air cooler fins because it has the biggest integrated advantages over copper and stainless steel. As the key component for coolers, fins must be able to conduct heat efficiently to realize an ideal cooling effect. The heat conductivity values of copper, aluminium and iron are respectively 401, 237 and 80 W/mK. In other words, the heat conductivity of aluminium strip is half of copper yet three times of iron. Sometimes water is added to the air fed into the air cooling system to save energy, therefore, cooling fins must have good corrosion resistance. Generally speaking, aluminum performs better than iron yet worse than copper and stainless steel. Based on the information above, the best candidate should have been copper and aluminum tapes have no advantage at all. Then why isn’t it the case? The key lies in weight and cost. In spite of excellent corrosion resistance and heat conductivity, copper is times of denser and dearer than aluminum, which means you have to pay times of money for copper of the same size, because it’s heavier. Further more, lighter materials help to reduce whole weight of the cooler. These are the reasons why aluminum strip serves as the ideal raw material for charge air cooler fins.