Abstract
Numerical study using ANSYS Fluent is conducted to investigate the effects of louver angle on pressure drop and heat transfer of a heat exchanger. Flow simulations are conducted on 3D modeling of multi stacks louvered fins at three different parameters of louver angles which are 22.0o, 25.5o and 29.0o with Reynolds number ranging from 200 to 1000. These Reynolds numbers are based on louver pitch and fin pitch. The flow temperature is set at 300K which is the room temperature, while temperature of louver fin is set at 400K. The results show that Reynolds number based on fin pitch 2.02 mm and louver angle of 22.0o generate higher performance of heat exchanger compared to louver pitch of 1.40 mm and the other louver angles. Therefore, configuration of Reynolds number based on fin pitch 2.02 mm and louver angle 22.0o is preferred to be adopted in the design process of heat exchanger.
Highlights
Nowadays, compact heat exchangers are widely used in automotive radiator, oil cooler, refrigeration and residential air conditioning application
Half of them were obtained based on louver pitch which was set at 1.4 mm and the other half were based on fin pitch which was set at 2.02 mm
It is noticed that there is higher pressure drop occurred at Reynolds number based on louver pitch 1.40 mm (Model D, Model E and Model F) compared to fin pitch 2.02 mm (Model A, Model B and Model C)
Summary
Compact heat exchangers are widely used in automotive radiator, oil cooler, refrigeration and residential air conditioning application. As suggested by Lawson, reducing the size of a compact heat exchanger is important to reduce fuel consumption besides giving better performance [1]. By reducing the size of heat exchanger, it will reduce the weight and the pressure drop caused by larger surface contact area against the air flow. Louvered fins are often used in automotive application because of their continuous fins design that channel air flow better to reduce the resistance of air flow. All of these above mentioned advantages are making it important to have a compact and lightweight heat exchanger [2, 3, 4]
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