The objective of this paper is to study the effects of the cooling air mass flow rate and the heat input variation by the simulation and the experiment. An air-cooled $NH_3/H_2O$ absorption chiller is tested in the present study. The nominal cooling capacity of the single effect machine is 17.6 kW (5.0 USRT). The overall conductance (UA) of each component, the cooling capacity, coefficient of performance and each state point are measured with the variation of the cooling air mass flow rate and the heat input. It is found that the COP and cooling capacity increase and then decreases with increasing the heat input. It is also found that the COP and the cooling capacity increase and keep constant with increasing the cooling air mass flow rate. The maximum COP is estimated as 0.51 and the optimum cooling air mass flow rate is $217;m^3/min$ from the present experiment.