Numerical study on shell-side flow and heat transfer of spiral-wound heat exchanger under sloshing working conditions

Highlights: • Local flow and heat transfer of shell side under sloshing conditions were studied numerically. • The deviations between simulations and experimental data were generally within ±10%. • The fluctuation of two-phase flow decreased with the increasing vapor quality. • The effects of pitching and heaving were more significant than that of rolling. • The effect of sloshing amplitude was greater than that of sloshing period. - Abstract: Spiral-wound heat exchanger (SWHE) is under sloshing working conditions when it is used on floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG), which can remarkably influence the efficiency of liquefaction and the stability of operation. In this paper, a numerical method for realizing the sloshing of SWHE shell side with different degrees of freedom (DOFs) was successfully proposed based on ANSYS software. The sloshing simulations were carried out, and the effects of sloshing motions on the shell-side flow and heat transfer characteristics were analyzed. By comparing, the uncertainty of simulation result was within ±10%. As a result, the shell-side flow and heat transfer characteristics were obviously influenced by sloshing motions and showed periodicity. The effects of pitching and heaving were more significant than that of rolling, and the effect of sloshing period was smaller than that of sloshing amplitude. At the same time, the fluctuations' regularity of two-phase flow and heat transfer characteristics decreased with the increasing vapor quality.