Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Characteristics of Additive Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers

This article describes the task of intensifying heat transfer in heat exchangers for microturbines using additive manufacturing technologies. A review of various types of heat exchangers is done, as well as methods for their manufacturing based on additive technologies are considered. Numbers of shell-and-tube heat exchanger models are proposed with various configurations of tube finning, which are made using selective laser sintering. In order to verify the efficiency of the proposed heat exchangers, an experimental stand and an experimental technique have been developed. Based on the experimental data, dimensionless similarity criteria are calculated - Reynolds and Nusselt's numbers, heat transfer coefficients for the heat transfer process in the models of heat exchangers. From the analysis of the obtained data, a conclusion was drawn about an increase in the heat transfer intensity in 1.5 times by introducing internal fins in prototypes of shell-and-tube heat exchangers.