Numerical research on vibration and heat transfer performance of a conical spiral elastic bundle heat exchanger with baffles

Abstract

To improve the comprehensive heat transfer performance of elastic tube bundle heat exchangers, four heat exchanger schemes were proposed based on a conical spiral elastic tube bundle heat exchanger, in combination with an arrangement of pulsating baffles and heat transfer elements. The four heat exchanger schemes include two without baffle, one with the same direction baffles and one with opposite direction baffles. Using a calculation method of bidirectional fluid-solid coupling, the influences of the vibration and heat transfer performance for the four exchanger schemes at various Reynolds numbers were studied. The results display that the two schemes with baffles can enhance the regularity of the fluid movement and the hierarchy of the temperature field distribution. The average amplitudes of the conical spiral elastic tube bundles in the four heat exchanger schemes are increased by 107%, 117%, 1785%, and 1935%, respectively, when the Reynolds number is increased in the range of 1000–9000. The performance evaluation criteria of conical spiral elastic tube bundles in the four heat exchanger schemes are increased by 1.89%, 2.68%, 5.71%, and 5.84%, respectively. The schemes with the pulsating baffle installed in heat exchangers can improve the heat transfer performance. Especially, the installation direction of the baffle will affect the comprehensive heat transfer performance of heat exchangers, which has important significance in engineering application.