Simulation of double pipe heat exchanger and validation with CFD analysis

Abstract

Heat exchangers plays significant role in engineering because they transfer heat between two different flow streams and temperatures. There are various designs of heat exchangers based on construction, size, direction of fluid flows. Amongst, industry has the most prevalent application for double pipe heat exchangers due to its simple and economical design. Proper analysis is required prior to selection of suitable application specific heat exchanger with good performance. In the present work, double pipe counter flow heat exchanger has been considered for the analysis. Simulation of heat exchanger has been done using MATLAB SIMULINK based on the NTU approach. Variation of heat transfer coefficients, heat transfer rate, effectiveness with mass flow rates have been discussed using the simulation results. The same design of the heat exchanger has been analysed with ANSYS CFD. Results obtained from both the models have been validated and the reasons for variations in result have been identified and discussed. Some of inferences obtained with CFD analysis has been discussed.