Abstract Novel aero engine concepts often incorporate thermal management systems, exhaust gas recuperation or intercooling. For these concepts, heat exchangers are crucial components. Plate-fin heat exchangers have the advantage of high compactness and versatile integration possibilities. In the conceptual design of complex thermodynamic systems, such as thermal management systems or flight gas turbines, not only the performance (heat transfer, pressure loss) of the incorporated heat exchanger is important, but also the heat exchanger’s mass, as well as its mechanical integrity and durability. Structural mechanics is commonly neglected in conceptual design studies of heat exchangers. The presented work proposes a methodology for the assessment of both the performance and the mechanical conceptual design of plate-fin heat exchangers with plain fins. The considered mechanical failure modes are static yielding/fracture, low cycle fatigue, high cycle fatigue, creep and corrosion. Both disciplines (incl. mass calculation) are coupled in order to enable a well-balanced design. The impact of operation and design parameters on the respective critical structural failure mode is discussed. Indications for the choice of geometrical parameters are derived. These investigations demonstrate the relevance of considering both, fluid-thermodynamics as well as structural mechanics, for an efficient and reliable conceptual design of heat exchangers - especially in advanced application fields as in aircraft design, in which the heat exchanger’s lightweight design and reliability is of high importance.
Fuhrmann et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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