CFD analysis of tube-fin 'no-frost' evaporators

• Autor(a) principal: Barbosa, Jr,Jader R
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Hermes,Christian J. L, Melo,Cláudio
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1678-58782010000400006
• topic: CFD; evaporator; household refrigeration; heat transfer enhancement

The purpose of this paper is to assess some aspects of the design of evaporators for household refrigeration appliances using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The evaporators under study are tube-fin 'no-frost' heat exchangers with forced convection on the air-side and a staggered tube configuration. The calculation methodology was verified against experimental data for the heat transfer rate, thermal conductance and pressure drop obtained for two evaporators with different geometries. The average errors of the heat transfer rate, thermal conductance and pressure drop were 10%, 3% and 11%, respectively. The CFD model was then used to assess the influence of geometric parameters such as the presence and position of the electrical heater coil relative to the tubes, the fin configuration and the width of the by-pass clearance between the outer edge of the fins and the tube bank for conditions typical of the design of household refrigeration appliances