Thermal flow simulation can be used to study the fluid flow and heat transfer for a wide variety of engineering equipment. Flow simulations with the advent of computer architectures with superfast processing capabilities are rapidly emerging as an attractive alternative to conventional thermal flow analysis which is either too restrictive or expensive. In thermodynamic applications, increase of thermal efficiency of heat exchangers (i.e. radiators, cooling towers, condensers, intercoolers) is essential for compact design and improving whole cycle efficiency thus improving economic viability of the system. This paper outlines the process taken to optimize the geometry of conventional heat exchanger. Models were drawn into Solidworks and a computational domain was created. Solidworks Thermal Simulation was used to iterate toward a converged solution with the goal of obtaining a better efficiency of the heat exchanger. The results are analyzed and compared between two differently designed heat exchangers to find out the improvements. These practices were detailed in hopes that further research would use the ground work laid out in this paper to redesign existing heat exchangers.
Thermal-Flow Analysis of a Simple LTD (Low-Temperature-Differential) Heat Engine
