EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AND CFD SIMULATION OF CROSS FLOW MICROCHANNEL HEAT EXCHANGER

Abstract

In this study, a cross flow microchannel heat exchanger has been manufactured out of standard sizes using aluminum material. The plate dimensions of heat exchangers have been 50x50x3 (mm(3)) that composed of two plates in cross flow arrangement. All evaluated geometries have been consisted of square microchannels with 490 mu m width and 490 mu m depth. An appropriate experimental facility has been established to perform the fluid flow and heat experiments. Moreover, heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics in microchannels have been simulated by ANSYS Fluent V15 Computer Program and experimental results have been compared with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results. Results showed that experimental heat transfer data was a very good agreement between data obtained by CFD simulation. However, the numeric pressure drop values have not been compatible with experimental ones.