A numerical and experimental study of chevron, corrugated-plate heat exchangers

In this work, the widely used chevron corrugated-plate heat exchanger was simulated, and the three-dimensional temperature, pressure, and velocity fields were obtained. From the temperature field we can see that in the first zone, the temperature gradient increases gradually and get the maximum; in the central of the flow, the temperature gradient becomes smaller again. The highest temperature appears around the upper port, while the lowest temperature appears in the cold fluid inflow around the lower port. From the pressure field, we can see that the fluid pressure is gradually reduced along the flow direction. From the flow field, no matter the fluid inflows or outflows the port, there is a marked “dead zone” departed from the corrugated side of the port, where the fluid flow rate is very low. The fluid flows along the side of the port and appears a minorʹs “bias” (uneven-distributed) phenomenon. Meanwhile, it can be seen that a large number of contact points are distributed in the chevron corrugated-plate heat exchanger. In addition, the simulated results are compared with the experimental values and found that trends of the outside temperature are consistent with those of pressure drop, and experimental values were similar to those of simulated values.