Numerical Modelling and Simulation for Flow Maldistribution in Microtube Strip (MTS) Heat Exchanger

Microtube Strip (MTS) heat exchanger is a laminar flow heat exchanger that consist of several numbers of small modules connected to each other in parallel. MTS heat exchanger proves to have higher efficiency and at the same time smaller than conventional turbulence flow heat exchanger. Hence, it is very suitable to be used as a cooling medium to remove the extra heat generated by F1 car engine. However, one of the problems in MTS heat exchanger is flow maldistribution whereby there is unequal distribution of fluid flow inside the heat exchanger which is due to poor header configuration. Thus, the objective of this project is to investigate the effect of different header configuration on flow maldistribution severity in MTS heat exchanger. For this project, two headers had been chosen for fluid flow simulation which is semi cylindrical header and pyramidal header. In order to simulate the fluid flow in both of the headers, CFD FLUENT had been used based on finite volume method. During the simulation, velocity distribution and temperature distribution data on outlet tubes had been obtained. The relative and absolute flow maldistribution parameter for both of the headers had been calculated by using the velocity distribution data while validation had been performed by comparing the temperature distribution data from simulation with the temperature data from experiment. As a conclusion, semi cylindrical header is 70 while for pyramidal header is 60. Hence, pyramidal header is relatively better than semi cylindrical header in term of reducing the severity of flow maldistribution. The reason is because of the geometry for pyramidal header had resulted a flow with less maldistribution compared to semi cylindrical header.