Porous medium method is an effective simplified approach for the heat exchanger simulation when the numerous tubes and complex structures bring unacceptable computational resources to full-scale simulation. However, for the specific C-shaped heat exchanger, the tube side resistance and flow distribution characteristics that significantly affects the heat transfer and natural circulation performance cannot be obtained by the traditional porous medium method coupled with the one-dimensional node model for tube side. It is urgent to develop a new coupling method that can not only simplify modeling and calculation, but also obtain tube side high-resolution flow heat transfer characteristics. This study presents a novel calculation method which couples the porous medium mesh and the tube side coarse mesh. The coupling method was then applied to a typical C-shaped passive residual heat removal heat exchanger (PRHR HX), which is significant to the stable operation and the mitigation of accident conditions in the nuclear power plant. The coupling calculation method was validated against the full-scaled simulation and data from scaled-down experiment. The average relative error of heat transfer power is 2.1 % under steady state conditions. Under transient conditions, the average absolute error of the fluid temperature and wall temperature are less than 6 K. Then the 3D thermal-hydraulic characteristics of PRHR HX was studied. Owing to a greater gravitational pressure head, the mass flow rates in the extended tubes surpass those in the shorter tubes by a relative deviation of 27.4 %. The upper horizontal tube's heat exchange capacity constitutes approximately 70 % of the total power, leading to enhanced natural circulation. The outlet temperatures from various tubes tend to equalize. The boiling area gradually extended down along the heat transfer tubes. Our work would present an innovative calculation method to the numerical study and design optimization of the C-shaped heat exchanger.
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