Large-eddy simulation of turbulent flows around a fin-tube heat exchanger enclosed by a compartment

The main objective of the present study is to analyze heat transfer and flow characteristics of a heat exchanger in an industrial application using high-fidelity simulation techniques. Large-eddy simulations (LES) were performed to investigate the turbulent flows around a fin-tube heat exchanger enclosed by a compartment. The complex geometry of the compartment poses a difficulty in a simulation as the local Re number is about two orders of different magnitude, and generates various scales of the 3-D vortices and complex flow patterns. Careful tests with both grid resolution and turbulent inflow boundary condition were performed in order to compare our results to the measured data from a MRV experiment as well as the results from RANS simulations. From interaction of the flow structures such as the 3-D vortices, a few interesting flow phenomena were observed which are different from a plain fin-tube heat exchanger, such as helical flows and a jet stream observed behind the fin-tube region. Also, performance of the heat exchanger was analyzed using the data from plain fin-tube heat exchangers. Based on this analysis, a numerical technique for heat exchanger was devised and tested to show a possibility of reducing the computational cost significantly, using a porous media model.