In order to improve the overall heat transfer capacity (HTC) of the spiral elastic tube (SET) heat exchangers, two heat exchanger schemes were proposed based on the arrangement direction of SETs and deflectors. Using a bi-directional fluid-structure coupling method, the vibration response and HTC of the SET based on two types of heat exchangers were studied: a same-direction deflector SET (SD-SET) heat exchanger and a reverse-direction deflector SET (RD-SET) heat exchanger. In addition, the structure of the RD-SET heat exchanger was optimized. The results show that in SET heat exchangers, the flow-induced vibration can effectively improve the HTC of SET, however, it is not necessarily the case that the larger the vibration amplitude of SET, the better the HTC enhancement effect. Under the conditions of Vin = 0.05–0.65 m/s, the HTC of SET in the SD-SET heat exchanger increased by 62.37 %, 27.04 %, 10.99 %, 5.68 %, and 3.46 % due to vibration, respectively, while the HTC of SET in the RD-SET heat exchanger increased by 3.03 %, 0.22 %, 0.17 %, 0.13 %, and 0.05 % due to vibration, respectively. By comparing the SD-SET heat exchanger with the RD-SET heat exchanger, it is found that the RD-SET heat exchanger has a higher overall HTC. Compared to the SD-SET heat exchanger, the overall HTC of the RD-SET heat exchanger is 3.96 %, 33.28 %, 43.285, 42.31 %, and 36.52 % higher, respectively. In addition, the structure optimization of the RD-SET heat exchanger results in an average increase of 0.49 % in the overall HTC and also extends the fatigue life of the SET, which is important for engineering applications.
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