| Overview
In order to demonstrate the fluid stream and convection heat transfer modeling capabilities of RadTherm, a coil-in-tube cross flow heat exchanger was simulated. The heat exchanger has hot engine oil (126°C at the inlet) flowing in the inner coil at 1.5 liter/min and water (90°C at the inlet) flowing in the larger cylinder at 10 liter/min.
Mesh Geometry
The heat exchanger surfaces were created in Rhino3D and meshed with ANSA. The mesh was exported into RadTherm. The model was parted out into eight components, including fluids. Boundary conditions for materials, surface conditions and flow rates were defined.
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| The Fluid Stream part type was used to define the fluid inside the coiled tube (used engine oil). On the exterior of the coiled tube the working fluid was standard water. The fluid stream part type automatically maps fluid streams along the length of the tube and computes volume,
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flow rate, and convection coefficient for each section of the tube. Seventy-two fluid nodes were created to represent the oil in the system.
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| Mesh Geometry for the heat exchanger system (click to enlarge). |
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Mesh Geometry with Fluid Stream Part thermal nodes shown (click to enlarge). |
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RadTherm Simulation Thermal Results
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The numerical solution from RadTherm was computed quickly, converging in 339 iterations to a tolerance of 4.5e-005°C and SS residual of 0.0056 W.
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| Side View of Thermal Results (click to enlarge) Color scale range is 90.7°C to 105.1°C. |
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End View of Thermal Results (click to enlarge). Color scale range is 90.7°C to 105.1°C. |
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| Distribution of oil temperatures along length of heat exchanger tube (click to enlarge). |
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End view of heat exchanger thermal results (click to enlarge). |
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