The 8th Vehicle Thermal Management Systems Conference and Exhibition is being held at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham, UK from 20 to 24 May 2007. 

This event, which is held every two years (alternating between USA and UK) is jointly organised by SAE International and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. 

TMCCL is one of the 20 or so companies who are exhibiting at the VTMS 8 conference, and I will be presenting a paper at the conference on the 21st May entitled “FILLERCALC”.  My paper examines the relationship between the amount of cladding on a header plate and the size of the tube to header fillets produced during the brazing process. It develops a simple formula to predict the optimum cladding thickness.  

The paper was first presented at the AFC Holcroft-Thermalliance seminar in Detroit in October 2006 and was very well received. 

The presentation at VTMS 8 will include details of product improvements at one customer who heard the Detroit presentation and has used “FILLERCALC” to improve the appearance and performance of his tube to header joints by reducing the braze cladding from 10% on 2 sides down to 5% on 1 side.