 Overview
SPIRITECH offers a full range of heat exchanger services throughout the design, analysis, and experimental testing processes. Our expertise with the heat transfer mechanisms present in today's advanced heat exchangers covers a wide range of working fluids, temperatures, and pressures. Experience, combined with internally developed proprietary analytical tools, helps to expedite and optimize the heat exchanger design process. Our streamlined analytical techniques help to reduce design iterations and testing, resulting in affordable, high performing, and robust heat exchanger designs.
HEXDesign™
The analytical tool HEXDesign™ provides the user with the means to investigate potential candidate technologies and heat transfer mechanisms that can lead to improvements in heat exchanger volumetric efficiency over current technology while reducing the time frame from concept to finished product.
Traditionally, empirical methods have been utilized for the analysis and design of state-of-the-art heat exchangers. As a negative consequence, lengthy and comprehensive characterization efforts have thus been necessary in order to optimize advanced heat transfer devices. HEXDesign™, a physics-based Heat Exchanger analytical tool designed for rapid steady-state thermal analysis and optimization of advanced heat exchangers, was developed to address this problem. Through application of fundamental physical equations and relationships, heat exchanger characterization and scaling laws have been incorporated into the model. Documented convection correlations have also been included within HEXDesign™ to provide accurate scaling for geometry, configuration, installation effects, materials, working fluids, structural impacts, and manufacturing considerations.
A New Approach to Heat Exchanger Design, Analysis, and Optimization
HEXDesign™ Validation
A demonstration of the tool was performed in the design and post-data analysis of an advanced heat exchanger for the purpose of validating the analytical models. Heat transfer predictions produced by HEXDesign™ were compared to Kays and London performance data which indicated close agreement with respect to correlation-derived convective heat transfer coefficients. The results of the tool validation confirmed that the correlations used within HEXDesign™ to quantify HTC along heat transfer surfaces may be employed to provide predictions for, and to capture trends of, HEX performance, both of which are valuable to the thermal management industry for trade studies, initial sizing, and integrated system analyses. For improved accuracy, empirically-derived f and J curves can be provided by the user, when available.
|
