CFD simulation of a shell and tube heat exchanger

Abstract

In this numerical work, CFD simulation of a Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger is performed using the commercial software ANSYS Fluent. The CFD model is made to grab all the physical phenomena such as heat transfer rating, temperature, velocity and pressure distributions within the computational domain. A sufficiently high detailed geometry and fine mesh characteristics are adopted taking into account the computation resources and time, yet satisfactory enough to show that the numerical model can be validated using the results obtained from the calculations based on the heat transfer formulas, correlations, tables and graphs. This gives researches working in Heat Exchanger area the opportunity to design their systems using CFD, without depending on a prototype that needs to be tested before the actual product is marketed. Normally, a new type of heat exchanger with specific shell and tube dimensions and number of tubes has to be manufactured using general a heat exchanger calculation approach that will most of the time require the revision of the preliminary design.