Coupling Project-Based Learning with a Heat Exchanger Test Bench: Pedagogical Methodology, Design and Technical Capabilities

Bridging the gap between theoretical heat exchanger analysis and physical intuition remains a persistent challenge in engineering education, particularly when students are confronted with real-system effects such as pressure losses, measurement uncertainty, and deviations from simplified models. This work addresses this challenge through the coupled development of a pedagogical framework and an experimental platform. A modular heat exchanger test bench was conceived, designed, and constructed by graduate students within a structured project-based learning environment, in which competitive and cooperative phases were combined to emulate real engineering practice. This approach positions the test bench not only as a laboratory tool, but as the outcome of an active learning process that integrates system design, instrumentation, and modeling. The resulting platform enables the comparative study of multiple heat exchanger technologies—including three water-to-water heat exchangers (plate, shell-and-tube, and double-pipe) and one air-to-water fin-and-tube heat exchanger—under parallel, counterflow, and crossflow arrangements across a wide range of operating conditions. Comprehensive instrumentation (temperature, flow rate, and pressure measurements) supports rigorous energy balance analysis, effectiveness evaluation, and hydraulic performance assessment. Beyond undergraduate experimentation, the test bench provides a framework for advanced learning objectives, including uncertainty propagation, ε-NTU analysis, model development, and experimental validation. The confrontation between model predictions and experimental data, including observed discrepancies, is shown to play a central role in developing critical engineering judgment. The proposed approach demonstrates how the integration of project-based learning with a reconfigurable experimental platform can create a sustainable and scalable environment for heat transfer education.