A numerical study of flow distribution effect on a parallel flow heat exchanger

The effect of flow distribution on thermal and flow performance of a parall el flow heat exchanger has been numerically investigated, The flow distribu tion has been altered by varying the geometrical parameters that included t he locations of the separators, and the inlet/outlet of the heat exchanger. Flow nonuniformities along paths of the heat exchanger, which were believe d to be dominantly influential to the thermal performance, have been observ ed to eventually optimize the design of the heat exchanger. The optimizatio n has been accomplished by minimizing the flow nonuniformity that served as an object function when the Newton's searching method was applied. It was found that the heat transfer of the optimized model increased approximately 7.6%, and the pressure drop decreased 4.7%, compared to those of the base model of the heat exchanger.