VAT Based Modeling of Heat Exchanger and Obtaining Closure From CFD Solution

Abstract

VAT is used to rigorously cast the point-wise conservation of energy, momentum and mass equations into a form that represents the thermal and hydraulic properties of heat exchanger channel morphology. At the lower level, the media is described by a representative elementary volume (REV). Closure terms in the VAT equations are related to a local friction factor and a heat transfer coefficient of the REV. The terms in the closure expressions are complex and relating experimental data to the closure terms resulting from Volume Averaging Theory (VAT) is difficult. In this work we use CFD to obtain detailed solutions to flow through an element of a heat exchanger and use these results to evaluate the closure terms needed for a fast running VAT based code. The VAT based code can then be used to solve the heat transfer characteristics of the higher level heat exchanger. A comparison is then made of the CFD closure and experimental data rescaled by VAT scaling. The objective is to show how heat exchangers can be modeled as porous media based on Volume Averaging Theory and how CFD can be used in place of a detailed, often formidable, experimental effort.