Performance of Serpentine Heat Exchangers 980057

In an earlier investigation (Mathur, 1997a; 1997b), the author had developed a simulation program for predicting the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of the automotive heat exchangers. The performance of finned tube condenser and evaporator was simulated and compared with the experimentally obtained data. The simulated performance for both condenser and evaporator was in good agreement with the experimental data.

In this paper, the performance of serpentine condenser and evaporator is simulated by using the computer program developed earlier by the author. None of the original correlations for predicting the heat transfer, pressure drop, void fraction are changed. However, the computational methodology had to be changed as the flow in a serpentine heat exchanger is different than in finned tube heat exchangers. The working fluid used in this investigation is R-134a. The simulated performance is compared with the experimentally obtained data on the calorimeter tests. The simulated and the experimental data are in good agreement. Detailed performance data has been presented in this paper. Hence, the developed program may be used as a tool to optimize the performance of the serpentine heat exchangers (both condensers and evaporators) for a given set of operating parameters.

Work is continuing on predicting the performance of parallel flow condensers and laminate type evaporators by using the developed model.