Abstract
The purpose of this study is to validate a thermal-hydraulic simulation model for a new type of heat exchanger for mass, volume, and coolant/refrigerant charge reduction. The new heat exchanger consists of tubes with diameters in the range of 1 m m and wires in the range of 100 m , woven together to form a 200 × 200 × 80 m m 3 wire cloth heat exchanger. Performance of the heat exchanger has been experimentally evaluated using water as inner and air as outer heat transfer medium. A computational thermal and fluid dynamic model has been implemented in OpenFOAM®. The model allows variation of geometry and operating conditions. The validation of the model is based on one single geometry with an opaque fabric and air-side velocities between 1 and 7 m / s . The simulated and measured pressure drops are found to be in good agreement with a relative difference of less than 16%. For the investigated cases, the effective heat transfer coefficients are in very good agreement (less than 5%) when adapting the contact resistance between tubes and wires. The numerical model describes the fluid flow and heat transfer of the tested heat exchanger with adequate precision and can be used for future wire cloth heat exchanger dimensioning for a variety of applications.
Highlights
In recent decades, heat exchanger design and development focused on various aspects in order to improve heat transfer processes
The thermal-hydraulic performance of the wire cloth heat exchanger is addressed
Simulation results showed reasonable agreement with measured data for pressure drop across the wire cloth with relative differences below 16%
Summary
Heat exchanger design and development focused on various aspects in order to improve heat transfer processes. The improvements are related to (i) pumping or fan power reduction, (ii) volume reduction, and (iii) mass reduction, with an increase in (iv) heat transfer surface area and (v) in heat transfer coefficients. Extended surface plate-fin and tube-fin heat exchangers experienced enhanced miniaturization to achieve the mentioned improvements. A reduction in pressure drop can be achieved by increasing the frontal face area and decreasing the flow length. Volume reduction is presently essential for charge reduction of new and natural refrigerants. Mass reduction is realized by decreasing tube and fin thicknesses down to 100 μm and less. A heat transfer coefficient and surface area increase is achieved
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