A study on the performance of the finned tube heat exchanger affected by the frosting using CFD tool

전산해석을 이용한 착상이 핀튜브 열교환기 성능에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

We conducted a study by computational simulation about the effects of frost thickness on the pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics as whole heat exchanger configuration changes. In order to perform the analysis for validation, we assumed that frost properties have constant values and the frost layers that are formed on the fin and tube surfaces are uniform. In order to find the constant thermal conductivity of frost layer, a variety of frost thermal conductivities are performed in our work and compared with the results by Lee et al. [4] and Yang et al. [5] proposed many experimental data about the 2-rows and 2-columns finned tube heat exchanger. The numerical results agreed well with the experimental data when frost conductivity is 0.07W/mK. After the validation had performed, we applied this procedure to the finned tube heat exchanger of domestic refrigeration and investigated the thermo-hydraulic characteristic of the heat exchanger affected by frost thickness according to the inlet velocities and temperatures of air considering the configuration change such as fin pitch.