CFD Analysis on the Periodic Element of a Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger

A typical printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is composed of a large number of flow channels with lateral corrugations. In an effort to investigate fundamental thermo-fluid characteristics of a PCHE with corrugated channels, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses were previously made in. One pair of flow channels (i.e., cold and hot channels) with the entire flow path was considered for the computational domain in the previous studies. Although only one pair of flow channels with coarse meshes was used, computational loads were found to be very high to simulate the entire flow path of the PCHE. Fortunately a recent study has shown that a simplified CFD methodology with a stream wise periodic assumption (called periodic CFD analysis) is feasible for a CFD evaluation of the thermo-fluid performance of compact heat exchangers. Since the periodic CFD analysis focuses on the periodic element of a flow channel, the required computing resources are dramatically reduced. In the present paper, the periodic CFD analysis has been applied to the periodic element of the PCHE. The results are compared with those of the full elements which have an entire flow path. Based on the periodic approach the effects of the corrugation parameters on the thermo-fluid performance of the PCHE are investigated