shell and tube heat exchanger with staggered baffles, Paper Numerical Validation, CFD SImulation by ANSYS Fluent

The present problem simulates the water flow inside a shell and tube heat exchanger with staggered baffles by ANSYS Fluent software.

The simulation is based on a reference article, “Numerical analysis and optimization on the shell-side performance of shell and tube heat exchanger with staggered baffles,” and its results are compared and validated with the results in the article.

The geometry is designed in Design Modeler and consists of several hot tubes and staggered baffles and is meshed in ANSYS meshing software. The mesh type used for this geometry is unstructured, and the element number is 8031842.

Staggered Baffles Methodology

In this project, the water with temperature-dependent properties will enter the computational domain with an initial temperature of 293K and a velocity of 3.19m/s (referring to 4kg/s mass flow rate) and passes through staggered baffles and over the heated tubes with a temperature equal to 353K.

Staggered Baffles Conclusion

At the end of this simulation, the present work results are compared and validated with results obtained by the paper. The diagram of Figure 18 was used for this purpose, which shows the changes in pressure drop over different mass flow rates for different staggered angles (beta).

We have also validated the results for beta angle=60 degrees and mass flow rate = 4 Kg/s.