Thermo-fluid dynamic design optimization of a concentric tube heat exchanger

Abstract

This study proposes a shape optimization approach for the cross-sectional shape of the inner pipe of a counterflow concentric tube heat exchanger. The cross-sectional shape of the inner pipe is expressed by an algebraic expression with a small number of parameters, and their heat transfer performance is evaluated by a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver. The optimization is conducted by the Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) assisted by the Kriging surrogate model, and the NSGA-II finds the optimal cross-sectional shape with many protrusions around the perimeter of the inner channel to improve the heat transfer performance. In this study, heat transfer performance is evaluated from the temperature drop at the outlet of the high-temperature fluid. The present optimization finds the optimal channel with many protrusions, which achieves lower outlet temperature than a circular channel even with the same heat transfer surface area. This result indicates that the number of protrusions plays important roles which contribute not only to increase heat transfer area but also to improve heat transfer performance.