Optimal Shape of a Heat Exchanger with Staggered Fins Using CFD and SLP method
Hyo Jae Lim, Park Kyoun Oh and Kyoungwoo Park
The shape of plate heat exchanger with staggered fin arrays is optimized numerically by minimizing the pressure loss and maximizing the heat transfer rate. For this, the integration of CFD and mathematical optimization is performed. A periodically fully-developed flow and heat transfer with constant wall temperature are assumed and they are solved using a finite volume method. The optimization is carried out by using a sequential linear programming (SLP) method and a weighting method is adopted for solving the multi-objective problem. In this study, the recommendable optimal solution for heat exchanger design is the case for w1 = 0.7 and w1 = 0.3. In this case, the optimal values of the design variables are S = 4.5 mm, P = 7.0 mm, D1 = 0.49 mm, and D2 = 3.03 mm, and the pressure loss the heat transfer rate are reduced by 17.2 %, and 0.4%, respectively, compared to those of the initial geometry.