Simulation method development for Fin-and-Tube Heat Exchanger with Open-source software

Abstract

In this thesis project, a numerical simulation method for fin-and-tube heat exchanger is developed. All the programs used for any parts of the simulation process are distributed as open source software. This study focuses on the air side convective heat transfer simulations. The simulation phases that were developed are the geometry generation, meshing, solving the fields and post-processing of the computed data. Two different fin shapes were studied. The first fin shape was one with available experimental values to compare with and then another fin shape was selected for its high meshing difficulty. It was found that even though the plain fin has less vorticity in the flow field it changes heat with a better efficiency parameter compared to the x-slit fin because of its smaller tube diameter and more compound design.