Design and installation of test setup for a plate and fin type heat exchanger used as a helicopter engine oil cooler

Engineering applications aim to transfer energy in the most efficient way to prevent energy losses. Efficient energy transfer plays an important role in reducing the use of natural resources. Heat Exchangers are used in today's aircraft to control the heating, cooling and temperature levels of fluids. One of the Heat Exchanger type commonly used in air vehicles is Plate-Fin Type Heat Exchangers. Plate-Fin Type Heat Exchangers are often used in the aviation and automotive industry due to their compactness and high heat dissipation capacity compared to the other Heat Exchangers. In this study, the design, installation and testing of the performance test stand of a Plate-Fin Type Heat Exchanger developed for use in a helicopter engine is focused on. During the design phase, CFD analyses were carried out to ensure that oil heater design is working properly with the oil heated very close to the flash point and the temperatures in the air duct were evenly distributed. An experimental setup was created with the parts manufactured according to CFD analysis. In this study, an experiment setup was established in ANOVA R&D Technologies Laboratory and a Plate-Fin Type Heat Exchanger experiment was conducted. Air side pressure loss tests were carried out with Reynolds numbers varying between 1000 and 2500000. In order to reveal the thermal characteristics of the Plate-Fin Type Heat Exchanger, temperature measurements in the liquid and air side, volumetric flow rate measurements and pressure measurements were made to measuring pressure losses. The correlation obtained from the literature and the values measured in the experimental setup were compared.