Abstract
In this study, sensitivity analysis and optimization were performed to evaluate the effects of structural parameters on the charging performance of a phase change material (PCM) based multi-tube heat exchanger. The structural parameters included the number of inner tubes (factor A), the ratio of eccentric distance to shell radius (factor B), the angle ratio (factor C) and the thickness of tube wall (factor D), and the objective function was the mean charging rate. The main objective of the present study was to identify the optimum structural parameters for the maximum charging rate enhancement. For a multi-tube heat exchanger with uniformly distributed inner tubes, the influence degree of structural parameters on charging performance was studied using Taguchi method. By variance analysis of the trial results, it found that factor A has a very significant effect on the mean charging rate, factor B has a significant effect, while factor C and factor D have no significant effect. Furthermore, taking the multi-tube heat exchanger with five tubes as a research object, the non-uniform distribution of tube positions was optimized by genetic algorithm. As compared with the case of uniform distribution of inner tubes, the optimal one increased the mean charging rate by 5.21 %.
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