Performance analysis of finned tube and unbaffled shell-and-tube heat exchangers

This work considers an optimum design problem for the different constraints involved in the designing of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger consisting of longitudinally finned tubes. A Matlab simulation has been employed using the Kern's method of design of extended surface heat exchanger to determine the behavior on varying the values of the constraints and studying the overall behavior of the heat exchanger with their variation for both cases of triangular and square pitch arrangements, along with the values of pressure drop. It was found out that an optimum fin height existed for particular values of shell and tube diameters when the heat transfer rate was the maximum. Moreover it was found out that the optimum fin height increased linearly with the increase in tube outer diameter. Further studies were also performed with the variation of other important heat exchanger design features and their effects were studied on the behavior of overall performance of the shell-and-tube heat exchanger. The results were thereby summarized which would proclaim to the best performance of the heat exchanger and therefore capable of giving a good idea to the designer about the dimensional characteristics to be used for designing of a particular shell and tube heat exchanger. (C) 2007 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.