Performance calculation and configuration optimization of annular radiator by heat transfer unit simulation and a multi-objective genetic algorithm

Author(s):  
Zhe Xu ◽  
Yingqing Guo ◽  
Huarui Yang ◽  
Haotian Mao ◽  
Zongling Yu ◽  
...  

A performance calculation method based on heat transfer unit (HTU) simulation is proposed to calculate heat transfer capacity and air-side pressure drop of Annular radiator (AR), which can avoid the problem of a huge amount of grids, and at the same time, ensure the calculation accuracy. Calculation results are compared with experimental data, and the average errors of heat transfer capacity and air-side pressure drop are 11.5%, and 5.9%, respectively, which effectively validates the effectiveness and the reliability of this method. Besides, based on HTU simulation knowledge database, a configuration optimization method of AR using Non-dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is introduced. Number of fins in circumferential direction, number of fins in axial direction, and fin height are chosen as design parameters, and two conflicting optimization objectives include heat transfer capacity maximization and air-side pressure drop minimization. Three optimal structures of AR are obtained, and the optimal results indicate that the heat transfer capacity of the optimal configurations increases by 34.31% on average compared with the original one, while the air-side pressure drop decreases by 24.00% on average, which indicates that this method is feasible and valid and can provide significant guidance for structural design of AR.

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhe Xu ◽  
Yingqing Guo ◽  
Huarui Yang ◽  
Haotian Mao ◽  
Zongling Yu ◽  
...  

In order to calculate heat transfer capacity and air-side pressure drop of an annular radiator (AR), one performance calculation method was proposed combining heat transfer unit (HTU) simulation and plate-and-fin heat exchanger (PFHX) performance calculation formulas. This method can obtain performance data with no need for meshing AR as a whole, which can be convenient and time-saving, as grid number is reduced in this way. It demonstrates the feasibility of this performance calculation method for engineering applications. In addition, based on the performance calculation method, one configuration optimization method for AR using nondominated sorted genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was also proposed. Fin height (FH) and number of fins in circumferential direction (NFCD) were optimized to maximize heat transfer capacity and minimize air-side pressure drop. Three optimal configurations were obtained from the Pareto optimal points. The heat transfer capacity of the optimal configurations increased by 22.65% on average compared with the original configuration, while the air-side pressure drop decreased by 33.99% on average. It indicates that this configuration optimization method is valid and can provide a significant guidance for AR design.


Author(s):  
Kizhakke Kodakkattu Saijal ◽  
Thondiyil Danish

A shell and tube heat exchanger with staggered baffles (STHX-ST) is designed by integrating the features of both segmental and helical baffles, which produces a helical flow in the shell side. This work studies the effect of different parameters on the performance of the STHX-ST through numerical analysis. Shell inner diameter, tube outer diameter, baffle cut, baffle spacing, and baffle orientation angle are the design parameters. Multi-objective optimization using genetic algorithm (GA) is carried out to maximize the heat transfer rate while minimizing the pressure drop. The objective functions for optimization are approximated using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The training data for ANNs are simulated from CFD analysis as per the Taguchi orthogonal test table. The optimal solution obtained from the Pareto front has a maximum heat transfer of 154555 W for a minimum pressure drop of 88083.86 Pa.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (suppl.2) ◽  
pp. 375-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sepehr Sanaye ◽  
Davood Modarrespoor

Cost and effectiveness are two important factors of heat pipe heat exchanger (HPHE) design. The total cost includes the investment cost for buying equipment (heat exchanger surface area) and operating cost for energy expenditures (related to fan power). The HPHE was thermally modeled using e-NTU method to estimate the overall heat transfer coefficient for the bank of finned tubes as well as estimating pressure drop. Fast and elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) with continuous and discrete variables was applied to obtain the maximum effectiveness and the minimum total cost as two objective functions. Pipe diameter, pipe length, numbers of pipes per row, number of rows, fin pitch and fin length ratio were considered as six design parameters. The results of optimal designs were a set of multiple optimum solutions, called ?Pareto optimal solutions?. The comparison of the optimum values of total cost and effectiveness, variation of optimum values of design parameters as well as estimating the payback period were also reported for various inlet fresh air volume flow rates.


Author(s):  
Rong Yu ◽  
Andrew D. Sommers ◽  
Nicole C. Okamoto ◽  
Koushik Upadhyayula

In this study, we have explored the effectiveness of heat exchangers constructed using anisotropic, micro-patterned aluminum fins to more completely drain the condensate that forms on the heat transfer surface during normal operation with the aim of improving the thermal-hydraulic performance of the heat exchanger. This study presents and critically evaluates the efficacy of full-scale heat exchangers constructed from these micro-grooved surfaces by measuring dry/wet air-side pressure drop and dry/wet air-side heat transfer data. The new fin surface design was shown to decrease the core pressure drop of the heat exchanger during wet operation from 9.3% to 52.7%. Furthermore, these prototype fin surfaces were shown to have a negligible effect on the heat transfer coefficient under both dry and wet conditions while at the same time reducing the wet airside pressure drop thereby decreasing fan power consumption. That is to say, this novel fin surface design has shown the ability, through improved condensate management, to enhance the thermal-hydraulic performance of plain-fin-and-tube heat exchangers used in air-conditioning applications. This paper also presents data pertaining to the durability of the alkyl silane coating.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 1255
Author(s):  
Liping Zeng ◽  
Xing Liu ◽  
Quan Zhang ◽  
Jun Yi ◽  
Xiaohua Li ◽  
...  

This paper mainly studies the heat transfer performance of backplane micro-channel heat pipes by establishing a steady-state numerical model. Compared with the experimental data, the heat transfer characteristics under different structure parameters and operating parameters were studied, and the change of heat transfer coefficient inside the system, the air outlet temperature of the back plate and the influence of different environmental factors on the heat transfer performance of the system were analyzed. The results show that the overall error between simulation results and experimental data is less than 10%. In the range of the optimal filling rate (FR = 64.40%–73.60%), the outlet temperature at the lowest point and the highest point of the evaporation section is 22.46 °C and 19.60 °C, the temperature difference does not exceed 3 °C, and the distribution gradient in vertical height is small and the air outlet temperature is uniform. The heat transfer coefficient between the evaporator and the condenser is larger than the heat transfer coefficient under the conditions of low and high liquid charge rate. It increases gradually along the flow direction, and decreases gradually with the flow rate of the condenser. When the width of the flat tube of the evaporator increases from 20 mm to 28 mm, the internal pressure drop of the evaporator decreases by 45.83% and the heat exchange increases by 18.34%. When the number of evaporator slices increases from 16 to 24, the heat transfer increases first and then decreases, with an overall decrease of 2.86% and an increase of 87.67% in the internal pressure drop of the evaporator. The inclination angle of the corrugation changes from 30° to 60°, and the heat transfer capacity and pressure drop increase. After the inclination angle is greater than 60°, the heat transfer capacity and resistance decrease. The results are of great significance to system optimization design and engineering practical application.


Author(s):  
Yu Shi ◽  
Rolf D. Reitz

In a previous study (Shi, Y., and Reitz, R. D., 2008, “Assessment of Optimization Methodologies to Study the Effects of Bowl Geometry, Spray Targeting and Swirl Ratio for a Heavy-Duty Diesel Engine Operated at High-Load,” SAE Paper No. 2008-01-0949), nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA II) (Deb, K., Pratap, A., Agarwal, S., and Meyarivan, T., 2002, “A Fast and Elitist Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm: NSGA-II,” IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput., 6, pp. 182–197) performed better than other popular multiobjective genetic algorithms (MOGAs) in engine optimization that sought optimal combinations of the piston bowl geometry, spray targeting, and swirl ratio. NSGA II is further studied in this paper using different niching strategies that are applied to the objective space and design space, which diversify the optimal objectives and design parameters, accordingly. Convergence and diversity metrics are defined to assess the performance of NSGA II using different niching strategies. It was found that use of design niching achieved more diversified results with respect to design parameters, as expected. Regression was then conducted on the design data sets that were obtained from the optimizations with two niching strategies. Four regression methods, including K-nearest neighbors (KNs), kriging (KR), neural networks (NNs), and radial basis functions (RBFs), were compared. The results showed that the data set obtained from optimization with objective niching provided a more fitted learning space for the regression methods. KNs and KR outperformed the other two methods with respect to prediction accuracy. Furthermore, a log transformation to the objective space improved the prediction accuracy for the KN, KR, and NN methods, except the RBF method. The results indicate that it is appropriate to use a regression tool to partly replace the actual CFD evaluation tool in engine optimization designs using the genetic algorithm. This hybrid mode saves computational resources (processors) without losing optimal accuracy. A design of experiment (DoE) method (the optimal Latin hypercube method) was also used to generate a data set for the regression processes. However, the predicted results were much less reliable than the results that were learned using the dynamically increasing data sets from the NSGA II generations. Applying the dynamical learning strategy during the optimization processes allows computationally expensive CFD evaluations to be partly replaced by evaluations using the regression techniques. The present study demonstrates the feasibility of applying the hybrid mode to engine optimization problems, and the conclusions can also extend to other optimization studies (numerical or experimental) that feature time-consuming evaluations and have highly nonlinear objective spaces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Yue Cao ◽  
Jun Zhan ◽  
Jianxin Zhou ◽  
Fengqi Si

This paper presents an investigation on the optimum design for a plate-fin heat exchanger (PFHE) of a gas and supercritical carbon dioxide combined cycle which uses thermal oil as intermediate heat-transfer fluid. This may promote the heat transfer from low heat-flux exhaust to a high heat-flux supercritical carbon dioxide stream. The number of fin layers, plate width and geometrical parameters of fins on both sides of PFHE are selected as variables to be optimized by a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II), which is a multi-objective genetic algorithm. For the confliction of heat transfer area and pressure drop on the exhaust side, which are the objective indexes, the result of NSGA-II is a Pareto frontier. The technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approach is applied to choose the optimum solution from the Pareto frontier. Finally, further simulation is performed to analyze the effect of each parameter to objective indexes and confirm the rationality of optimization results.


Author(s):  
Michael Bichnevicius ◽  
David Saltzman ◽  
Stephen Lynch

Abstract Additive manufacturing (AM) enables improved heat exchanger (HX) designs where performance is based on the achievable geometry. However, consequences of the AM process that affect HX performance such as increased surface roughness, dimensional tolerance issues, and defects like cracks may vary among identically designed AM parts due to AM machine settings. This paper experimentally compares the thermal and hydraulic performance of three AM HXs built using a traditionally manufactured, stamped aluminum oil cooler design. The AM HXs exhibited significantly higher air-side pressure drop and higher heat transfer rate than the traditional HX in large part due to increased AM surface roughness. Among AM HXs, one AM HX had notably higher heat transfer rate and air-side pressure drop due to poor print quality on the thin air-side fin features. The fin thickness among AM HXs also varied by about 15%, and there were only slight differences in surface roughness. This study indicates that functional HXs built using AM vary in performance even when the same digital model is used to print them and that AM HXs as a group can perform considerably differently than their traditional counterparts.


Author(s):  
Zeguan Dong ◽  
Jianghui Zhang ◽  
Zhen Li ◽  
Yan He ◽  
David J. Kukulka ◽  
...  

Abstract Single-phase and flow condensation experiments were performed using refrigerant R410A in the outer annular region of horizontal enhanced tube with different enhanced surfaces at a saturation temperature of 45°C in the range of mass flux 44.43–102.23kg/(m2s). The vapor quality ranges from 0.8 to 0.2. The outer diameters of the tubes are all 19.05mm, but the inner diameters are slightly different due to different surface structures. The surface structures of the three enhanced tubes are fins(EHT1 tube), toothed structures (EHT2 tube) and fine cavities(EHT3 tube) of different sizes and densities. Among them, the EHT3 tube has internal threads. Wilson diagram method was used to determine the enhancement ratio of the water side heat transfer coefficient of EHT3 tube. It was found that the pressure drop increased with the increase of mass flux, while the heat transfer coefficient showed different trends, and the smooth tube was always the lowest of the four tubes. A comprehensive evaluation factor α combining heat transfer enhancement factor (EF) and pressure drop penalty factor (PF) was defined, in which EHT2 tube (1.38–1.75) was the largest, with strong heat transfer capacity and small pressure drop, so the condensing heat transfer capacity of EHT2 tube was the best.


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