Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Seyed Esmail Razavi ¹
• Tohid Adibi ²

¹ University of Tabriz

² University of Bonab

Abstract

Heat exchangers are a major component of many heat-related systems, and improving their heat transfer efficiency is a significant engineering challenge. Though the problems of geometric optimization and vibration-assisted mechanisms have been widely discussed, little has been done to examine the impact of partly elastic intermediate walls and oscillatory behavior in counter-flow configurations. This paper numerically simulates the fluid flow and heat transfer in a counter-flow plate heat exchanger with partially elastic intermediate walls with a fully coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) methodology. The thermal and hydrodynamic performance of an elastic wall location, oscillation mode, frequency, and amplitude are analyzed. They indicate that the proposed configurations are highly effective in promoting heat transfer, where the increase in Nusselt number is between 23% and 83% in the optimal mid-uniform oscillation scenario. When the oscillation frequency changes to 3 Hz, the Nusselt number is increased by as much as 48 percent, indicating that oscillating elastic walls have a great potential in enhancing heat transfer. Considering the importance of the overall thermo-hydraulic performance (PEC), the performance evaluation criterion was also calculated, confirming that the optimal configurations provide a net performance benefit, with PEC values exceeding 1.0 and reaching up to 1.29.

Keywords

• heat exchanger
• Counterflow
• oscillating elastic plate
• oscillating number
• cold temperature
• cold outlet