In general, an engine room of a vehicle includes components for driving such as an engine and various heat exchangers such as a radiator, an intercooler, an evaporator, and a condenser for cooling each component in the vehicle such as an engine or controlling air temperature in the vehicle. The heat exchangers generally have a heat exchange medium distributed therein and exchange heat between the heat exchange medium in the heat exchanger and air outside the heat exchangers to perform cooling or heat radiation. Therefore, to stably operate various heat exchangers in the engine room of the vehicle, external air should be smoothly supplied into the engine room. Hereinafter, as described above, the heat exchangers installed to cool the components of the vehicle or the inside of the vehicle are collectively called a cooling module.
In this case, the radiator 10 is an apparatus for cooling a coolant heated while passing through the engine and includes a pair of first header tanks 11, a first inlet pipe 12 into which the coolant is introduced and a first outlet pipe 13 from which the coolant is discharged; first tubes 14 having both ends fixed to the pair of first header tanks 11 to form a coolant passage; and a first fin 15 inserted between the first tubes 14.
Meanwhile, the condenser 20 is included in a refrigerant cycle of an air conditioning device and is introduced with a refrigerant in a high temperature and high pressure gas state to condense the refrigerant in the gas state into a refrigerant in a liquid state while discharging liquefaction heat by the heat exchange and then discharge the refrigerant in the liquid state.
The condenser 20 includes a pair of second header tanks 21, a second inlet pipe 22 into which the refrigerant is introduced and a second outlet pipe 23 from which the refrigerant is discharged, second tubes 24 having both ends fixed to the pair of second header tanks 21 to form a refrigerant passage, a second fin 25 inserted between the second tubes 24, and a vapor-liquid separator 26 separating a vapor refrigerant and a liquid refrigerant.
In this case, an example of a structure for integrally assembling the radiator 10 with the condenser 20 is illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2.
As illustrated, in the radiator and condenser assembly 1, a fixed part 16 protrudes at the first header tank 11 of the radiator 10, a separate bracket 27 is formed at the second header tank 21 of the condenser 20, and the bracket 27 is fixed to the fixed part 16.
Further, in the radiator and condenser assembly, to increase the fixing force, the case in which two brackets are installed at the pair of first header tanks, respectively, and therefore a total of four brackets are installed is general. As a result, a separate component should be manufactured and assembled and therefore manufacturing costs of the component and additional process and processing costs for fixing the bracket are increased, thereby increasing production costs.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds