Modelling & numerical investigation of the effectiveness of plate heat exchanger for cooling engine oil using ansys cfx

Abstract

Heat exchangers are used for various industrial application for transfer of enthalpy from hot fluid to cold. One of them is Plate Heat Exchanger which finds its application in evaporating systems. The compactness, high effectiveness and easy maintenance of Plate Heat Exchanger makes it best choice for process industries. The current research investigates the application of Plate Heat Exchanger in cooling of engine oil using techniques of Computational Fluid Dynamics for low, medium and high Reynolds number using ANSYS CFX software. The CAD model is developed using Creo design software and turbulence model used for analysis is RNG k-epsilon which gives good predictions for complex flows involving swirls. The CFD analysis is conducted for different values of Reynolds number. The temperature distribution, effectiveness and overall heat transfer coefficient is determined for different values of Reynolds number.