Numerical investigation of heat transfer and pressure drop in a plate heat exchanger with Chevron plates

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Hadi Pakdaman

Mohammadreza Alizadeh

Vali Kalantar

10.22067/fum-mech.v25i1.16053

Abstract

In the present study, turbulent flow in channels of a plate heat exchanger with corrugated Chevron plates has been simulated numerically using the commercial CFD package, FLUENT. Unstructured mesh is used for discretizing the computational domain and SIMPLE algorithm is utilized to solve the pressure and velocity equations. There is a wide selection of different plate heat exchangers within the industry; therefore, 3D models of common corrugated Chevron plates with Chevron angles of 45-45 and 60-60 have been simulated to obtain and analyze temperature, pressure, and velocity fields of flow. The results show that geometrical parameters of the plates such as Chevron angle have indisputable effects on flow pattern and heat transfer of the heat exchanger. Finally, the effects of Chevron angle and Reynolds number (4000≤Re≤20000) on friction factor and Nusselt number of the flow were studied and compared with former experimental results. The numerical results show a good agreement with the experimental data. In addition, it was seen that increasing the Chevron angles would lead to increasing the friction factor and Nusselt number simultaneously.

Keywords

Numerical simulation

Plate heat exchanger

Friction factor

Chevron plate

Heat transfer

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