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The bar and plate design 


For years the bar and plate design has been the standard for charge air coolers, oil coolers, and radiators. However, due to the nature of its construction, the bar and plate design has a tendency to fail when put under the continuous pressures that industrial and heavy duty applications require. To resolve these issues, we have developed a new design we call “C-Bar” that significantly improves upon the old bar and plate design.

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Why buy a C Bar Design?


The bar and plate design gets its name from the construction of its tubes. Tubes are created by sandwiching two square bars in between two plates and brazing the pieces together. If you look closely, you can see the seam along the tubes edge on any unit constructed using the bar and plate design. Like any other metal fabrication, the weakness comes from the joints where the metal pieces come together. The melting point of the brazing material used to bind the plate and bars is lower than the metals themselves. This is important because it means in the high stress environment that most industrial and heavy duty equipment has to perform in, this joining material can become soft. Between the heat and pressure these joints endure, they steadily weaken and eventually fail and begin leaking. With the design creating four seam joints along the edge of each tube, it leaves countless points of failure in the equipment. Of course, once a cooler begins leaking it can result in increased operating cost from loss of fuel efficiency and expensive damage to the equipment. 




More Durable


We recognized that industrial applications and heavy-duty equipment require a stronger, more durable cooler. To accomplish this, we designed our C-Bar charge air coolers, oil coolers, and radiators to use an extruded tube. Since each tube in the cooler is extruded from a solid piece of metal, there are no seam joints to fail. This eliminates the majority of the points of failure inherent in the equivalent bar and plate tube.


 


Our Tanks & Cores


In addition to the extruded tube, the tanks for our C-Bar coolers are TIG welded directly to the core. Since welding fuses the metal together, the tank and core become a single unit able to withstand additional pressure. Also, the interior of the tanks is rounded to provide the strongest structure possible for the tanks. You may be aware that square corners have a tendency to “balloon” and round out when under pressure. Using a tank with a rounded interior means that this ballooning, and subsequent metal fatigue, is avoided.

What you get with one of our C-Bar designed charge air coolers, oil coolers, or radiators is a unit that is designed to stand up in the most extreme applications. It is able to withstand more pressure and heat than any bar and plate unit out there. When extreme performance and durability is what you need, turn to C, G, & J Inc – Heat Transfer Experts.

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