Design Challenges: Managing Flow Distribution and Vacuum Pressure Drop

Commercial software uses a wealth of incremental data to assess the performance variations throughout a heat exchanger. Simplifying assumptions anchor these incremental data, sometimes leading to inaccuracies with challenging designs. Through four case studies, this course reviews the performance characteristics of challenging designs and discusses guidelines to attain accurate performance predictions. Two cases with high effectiveness are shown to be susceptible to performance shortfalls due to flow maldistribution, while two vacuum cases are examined for performance sensitivity to errors in modeling pressure drop. Novice and experienced heat transfer specialists will improve their understanding of the limits of the underlying research and the importance of judicious engineering assumptions.