Study On The Heat-transfer And Resistanee Performance Of Plate-foam Heat Exchangers

Plate-foam heat exchanger is a new type of highly effective and compact heat exchanger. Compared with traditional heat exchangers, the plate-foam heat exchanger has higher heat transfer efficiency, less size and better pressure resistance which will significantly improve the thermal energy efficiency, reduce energy consumption and extend service life. Due to these advantages, plate-foam heat exchanger has wide application prospects in engineering.Taking metal foams as channel structures, the heat transfer areas of plate-foam heat exchangers will be extended. However, due to the highly compact structure, it is difficult to measure the temperature of heat transfer surface by the traditional test methods. The actual flow and heat transfer in these complex passages can not be accurately simulated by using current CFD models and numerical simulation methods.Based on the above issues, the heat transfer and resistance performance of plate-foam heat exchanger has been studied in terms of experimental research and CFD simulation. The major research work is summarized as follows:1) The experimental system based on single-blow transient method was established to obtain the heat transfer coefficient without measure the temperature of heat transfer surface. The corresponding data acquisition and system control programs were coded. Then the stability and accuracy of the test system was verified by analyzing the response characteristics and test errors.2) Several plate-foam heat exchanger samples with different structural parameters were designed. The heat transfer and resistance properties were tested and the corresponding correlations were regressed.3) Based on the porous media model, the geometirc model of plate-foam heat exchangers were built up and the fluid flow and temperature distribution were simulated by using FLUENT.By the corresponding experiments, the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed model and method is verified. Then, the effect of structural parameters on the heat transfer and resistance performances of plate-foam heat exchanters were analyzed.