Research on the heat transfer and flow characteristics of fin-tube exchanger under low pressure environment

Abstract

Our society has rapidly developed in recent years, with high lands being increasingly utilized; leading to a greater application of the heat exchanger due to the need to deal with low pressure environments of the higher altitudes. Accordingly, the variables affecting the heat exchanger’s performance under low pressure environments have attracted much needed attention. This paper focuses on an experiment where a low-pressure wind tunnel test-bed was established to test the heat transfer and flow characteristics of a plate-fin heat exchanger. This paper then compares and analyzes the experimental data to look at what determines changes in the heat exchanger’s characteristics under low pressure environments. Finally, this paper examines the results which indicate that the heat exchanger’s performance is closely affected by low pressure environments in that the degree of heat transfer is very much dependent on changes in the cooling medium properties, boundary layer as well as the synergy between velocity and temperature fields, all of which are variables present with changing pressures in an environment. This paper will simultaneously discuss the methods of theoretical analysis and simulation, which were used to explore the mechanism of how low-pressure settings worked on the heat transfer and flow characteristics of heat exchangers.