Compact heat exchangers (CHX) have high thermal efficiency due to large number of miniature channels in their core. To conduct an efficient full-scale global finite element analysis of a CHX, the channeled core of the CHX is proposed to be replaced by a representative solid orthotropic material block of equivalent stiffness. This circumvents the expensive computational demand to capture small-scale intricate details of the channels during the global analysis. Calculation of orthotropic properties for a solid block representative of the deformation of a same size channeled core is a challenging task due to the presence of stress concentrations, size effect, and complex orientation of the channel directions. In this study, a systematic approach to determine orthotropic properties of a CHX core is developed. The elastic orthotropic properties of the core in each of the orthogonal directions is obtained by implementing the techniques of averaging stresses and strains over volume. The size and channel orientation effects on the orthotropic properties are explored and thereby the smallest channeled core size to be considered for property determination are obtained.  Subsequently, a systematic procedure is developed to determine equivalent elastic orthotropic properties for different channel flow orientations. Finally, analysis steps using the elastic orthotropic properties for global analysis and subsequent submodel elastic-perfectly plastic analysis are demonstrated for a small size core to evaluate the application of the proposed procedure using the criteria in ASME Code, Sec III, Div. 5.


Determination of Orthotropic Material Properties Representative of the Compact Heat Exchanger Core for Efficient Global Thermo-Mechanical Analysis

Division / Sponsors: 
Pressure Vessels & Piping (PVP)


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2020/volume/83815

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