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Aerothermodynamic Design of a Wind Tunnel With Three Test Sections to Test Gas-liquid Heat Exchangers in Various Capacities Using the Computational Fluid Dynamics

Tari, Mohammad | 2016

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 48446 (45)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Aerospace Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Darbandi, Massoud; Ebrahimi, Abbas
  7. Abstract:
  8. Heat exchanger is considered as one of the most widely used equipment in many industries such as the aerospace, oil and gas, and power generation ones. In recent years, computers have made it easier to design and test the performance of heat exchangers. However, these designs should be rechecked in other manners. Wind tunnel, as an important and well-known system, has been widely used to verify and, if necessary, to check the heat exchanger designs and to improve the performance of available heat exchangers. Obviously, the use of non-standard wind tunnels can result in poor experimental results to judge the correct performance of the designed or existing heat exchangers. It is because this may inversely increase the production expenses in the related industries. In this research, we present the aerothermodynamic design of a wind tunnel consisted of three test sections. It is designed to test gas-liquid heat exchangers with various capacities. The design process is accomplished using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool. The wind tunnel layout is designed and its components are chosen considering the common standards, which are routinely utilized in testing the heat exchangers’ performance. Additionally, the typical references, which are normally used to design low-speed wind tunnels, are similarly used whenever they deem necessary. The current wind tunnel is a subsonic, open-circuit, suction type with a length of about 30 m. It is powered by a 70 kW axial fan. The three test sections’ dimensions are 2.4 x 4.8 m, 2.0 x 2.5 m and 1.73 x 1.73 m. The average wind speeds are 4, 6 and 12 m/s from the first test section to the third one, respectively. In order to test the flow quality inside the wind tunnel, three different heat exchanger sizes are modeled and the wind tunnel performance is simulated using the ANSYS Fluent commercial software. The results of current numerical simulations show that the flow is quite uniform at all three designed test sections. In fact, the variation of velocity magnitude is less than 20 percent at any chosen section. Therefore, the current designed wind tunnel can be readily used as a reliable tool to perform standard thermal tests to asses the performance of different types of heat exchangers
  9. Keywords:
  10. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) ; Heat Exchangers ; Wind Tunnel ; Aerothermodynamics ; Numerical Simulation ; Wind Tunnel with Three Test Section

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