Developing a hybrid procedure of one dimensional finite element method and CFD simulation for modeling refrigerant flow mal-distribution in parallel flow condenser

Numerical simulation of multi-pass parallel flow condensers with liquid-vapor separation

“…Table 3 Configurations of the genetic algorithms Table 4 Calculation results of the genetic algorithm stability Table 5 Dimensions of the helical microfin tube Table 6 Dimensions of the slit-louvred fin Table 7 Details of the MPFCs-LS Table 8 Accuracies of the instruments used to measure temperature, refrigerant flow rate, pressure and air flow rate Table 9 Comparison of heat transfer capacity of a condenser between experimental data and predictions using empirical correlations Table 10 Comparison of pressure drop of a condenser between experimental data and predictions using empirical correlations The PFMHX capacity reduction resulting from the port-level flow mal-distribution is 3.66%. Shojaeefard et al [17][18] Tube-segment, ε-NTU method PFMC R134a Yes 1, Implement the hybrid method; 2, Study the effects of tube protrusion depth and inlet tube location on the RFMD. Table 9 Comparison of heat transfer capacity of a condenser between experimental data and predictions using empirical correlations Yu & Koyama [48] Cavallini et al [ Table 10 Comparison of pressure drop of a condenser between experimental data and predictions using empirical correlations…”

“…With the rapid development of computer and software, numerical simulations have been widely used due to their high efficiency and low cost, especially. Table 1 summarizes the numerical models that have been developed in recent six years for the numerical simulations of air-cooled heat exchangers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…This suggests that the heat transfer difference among air at different ports could induce flow mal-distribution in the refrigerant side. Moreover, some more-sophisticated models (Huang et al [3] and Shojaeefard et al [17][18]), so-called computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based co-simulation techniques, combined a detailed header simulation by CFD and one-dimension finite element model to simulate refrigerant flow and heat transfer in flat tubes.…”

Analysis on the refrigerant (R32) flow maldistribution of microchannel heat exchanger under superheat and sub-cool

“…Nielsen et al [38] also stated that the effective thermal performance of heat exchanger decreased as the standard deviation increased. Shojaeefard et al [39] indicated that flow maldistribution increment (increase of standard deviation from 0.51% to 1.77%) results in about 14% increment in pressure drop and 3.9 % decrement in capacity. The effect is due the larger deviation between the lowest and highest velocities in the flow maldistribution profiles with high standard deviation.…”