NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF DROP SHAPED DIMENSIONS ON HEAT EXCHANGER PERFORMANCE

Abstract

This research presents the results of numerical study of heat transfer and pressure drop behavior in a compact heat exchanger (CHE) designed with drop-shaped pin fins. The heat exchanger used for thisresearch consists of a rectangular duct fitted with different drop-shaped pin fins dimensions with the same heat transfer wetted surface area.A three dimensional finite volume based numerical model using ANSYS FLUENT 14.5 has been conducted to select the optimum pin fin dimension considering maximum heattransfer and minimum pressure drop across the heat exchanger. The total four cases that tested having pin tails length to drop diameter L/D of 1.75, 1.5, 1.25 and 1. The numerical results indicated that the case which had the ratio L/D of 1.75 achieved the best performance of pressure drop for the same heat transfer coefficient.