Visteon Global Technolgoies, Inc.

Fumio Shimizu

Yuichi Furukawa

Yuji Yamamoto

Hirohiko Watanabe

Thaddeus J Waskiewicz

Hiroyasu Shimanuki

Qun Liu

Arif Mujib Khan

A refrigerant tube for a heat exchanger, comprising: a generally flat tube,having generally flat upper and lower walls,; a plurality of reinforcing walls,connected between the upper and lower walls,, the reinforcing walls extending along and generally parallel with a longitudinal axis A&mdash;A of the tube and being spaced apart from one another by a predetermined distance; and a plurality of communication holes,distributed along the length of each reinforcing wall,, thereby defining a plurality of discrete wall portions,along each reinforcing wall,, each of the discrete wall portions,being disposed between adjacent communication holes,and having an upstream edge,and a downstream edge,thereof, the communication holes,and discrete wall portions,having lengths L,and L,, respectively, as measured along the longitudinal axis A&mdash;A, the communication holes,being spaced apart along each reinforcing wall,by a pitch P. Each communication hole,in each reinforcing wall is disposed between the upstream and downstream edges,of a laterally adjacent discrete wall portion,of each adjacent reinforcing wall, such that a wall overlap ratio Wr, defined as &lsqb;P&minus;2L,&rsqb;/P, is greater than 0, and preferably 0.4&lE;Wr&lE;0.6.

Refrigerant tube for a heat exchanger

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Oyama, Japan

Fumio Shimizu