Study of the Pressure Drop and Thermal Performance of an Air-Air Heat Exchanger for Aero-engine Application

AbstractIn this paper, a comparison of the pressure drop and thermal performance between an improved air-air heat exchanger and a former one designed for aero-engines applications is performed. In order to model the flow field through the heat exchanger, both computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experiment method were used. For this purpose, a model of the heat exchanger has been constructed and mounted in the test section of a wind tunnel to investigate the pressure drop and heat transfer performance of different heat exchangers by changing the tube geometry. And the exact tube bundle arrangement of the heat exchanger was simulated in CFD. The results are compared with experimental data for the same inlet conditions and were found to be in agreement. The results showed that the pressure drop of the improved heat exchanger reduced by over 10% and heat transfer increased by almost 25%. Thus, both the CFD and the experiment method could be used for the detailed investigation of the flow field and heat transfer performance of the heat exchanger so that useful conclusions of heat exchangers designed for aero-engines could be derived