Abstract
This paper describes the homogenization of fin layers for structural analysis of heat exchanger cores composed of flat tubes and wavy fins. By considering a wavy fin sandwiched by two plates, a first-order homogenization method is proposed on the assumption that uniform deformation prevails at a distance h^^- away from the fin layer in the stacking direction while the wavy fin has periodicity in the in-layer directions. The bilayer model developed by Tsuda and Ohno (2011) is then used to identify the homogenized fin-layer elastic stiffness D^^〜_<ijkl>^H. This method is applied to outer- and inner-fin layers in an intercooler. It is shown that the effect of h^^- is fairly large with respect to two components of D^^〜_<ijkl>^H but is negligible in fin-homogenization-based analysis of tube-fin structures subjected to compression and bending.
