Computational heat and fluid flow analysis of an innovative plate for a plate heat exchanger

In this study, heat transfer and fluid flow are numerically investigated for interrupted sinusoidal channels with ANSYS Fluent software under the assumptions of 2D viscous, incompressible, fully developed laminar flow. For this aim, an innovative sinusoidal geometry was created and used. Since the flow was periodically repeated, the periodic boundary condition was used to save computational time. Before the main computations, validations were performed to ensure the accuracy of the solutions. Effects of the sinusoidal wave amplitude, the thickness of the wall, space between interrupted channels, and vertical distances on Nusselt number, friction factor, and thermal enhancement factor were investigated for different Reynolds numbers. Velocity vectors, velocity contours, and temperature contours were also shown. Results from the study shown that this type of channel has increased the Nusselt number and friction factor due to the vortex generation.