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ABSTRACT
Chevron plate type heat exchangers have widely been studied through experimental analysis; however, less computational work has been reported on these types of heat exchangers due to the complexity of their interior configuration with corrugated plates. This study has applied computational thermal and fluid dynamics methods to simulate single-phase flow in three brazed plate corrugated heat exchangers. The heat exchangers have plates with different chevron angles. The three heat exchangers simulated are: 60°/60°, 27°/60°, and 27°/27°. For this purpose, a commercially available CFD software package (Fluent) has been utilized and simulations for different temperature and velocity boundary conditions have been performed. In the numerical simulations, the k-ω SST turbulence model has been used. The resulting outlet temperatures have been found as well as the heat transfer rates between the fluids in the heat exchanger. The heat transfer rates obtained from the simulations are reported and compared for the three different chevron angles. The CFD model established in this study can be used for a variety of design conditions and practical applications, such as investigation of nanofluids in complex geometries.
INTRODUCTION
This study presents the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of single-phase flow in Plate Heat Exchangers (PHE), which is an essential part of a larger effort that will investigate the effects of nanofluids for HVAC&R applications, specifically in heat exchanger design. Before modeling the nanofluids in PHEs, however, it is necessary to establish a CFD simulation for the base fluid in these heat exchangers and compare the CFD results with experimental data for verification of the computational model. For this purpose, three brazed type PHEs with corrugation angles of 60°/60°, 27°/60° and 27°/27° have been modeled using a combination of three commercially available software packages: Pro/Engineer for solid modeling, Gambit for mesh generation, and Fluent for CFD simulation. The heat exchanger consists of three channels, where hot water flows through the middle channel and cold water flows through the two side channels in a counter-current flow configuration. The interior geometrical configurations of PHEs are quite complex due to the three-dimensional micro/mini-channels that are formed by the neighboring corrugated plates. There are limited studies reported in open literature for the CFD simulation of single-phase flow in corrugated parallel plates, and most of the reported...