Numerical Modeling of Chevron Plate Heat Exchangers for Thermal Management Applications

Abstract

Plate-fin heat exchangers are widely used in industries especially aerospace, cryogenics, food and chemical process industries where high heat flux surface area per unit volume is of prime importance. These heat exchangers consists of series of corrugated plates (herringbone or chevron), separated by gasket sealing. Chevron angled plates are one of the most commonly used type of geometry. The complex design of chevron plate heat exchanger, induces high turbulence and flow reversals causing high heat transfer through the plates. This paper discusses about the computational fluid dynamics simulations conducted over a simplified geometry of Chevron Plate Heat Exchanger to understand the formulation of vortices at different Reynold’s number for various aspect ratios. A single phase laminar flow with periodic boundary condition is used for analysis of the fluid behavior in a unit pattern of the corrugation geometry. Based on different flow and geometric conditions, varying amounts of swirl-flows are observed and different behavior of shear stress and heat transfer plot along the length of the plate is observed. At higher Reynolds numbers (Re), the re-circulations and mixing by the induced vortices causes significant rise of heat flux, with marginal increase in friction factor.

Numerical Study of Flow Maldistribution in Multi-Plate Heat Exchangers Based on Robust 2D Model

“…Moreover, it makes the investigation of a wide range of parameter space and the geometrical modifications of a heat exchanger impossible. The current available research, which uses 3D numerical calculations, is limited to a single pair of plates [20] or focused on a precise detail of a 3D flow feature [21]. Opposite to this, if full geometry is being considered, 2D numerical calculations are still exploited [22].…”