COMPARATI VE STUDY OF DIFFERENT CFD MODELS TO EVALUATE HEAT TRANSFER AND FLOW PARAMETERS IN STHE

Computational fluid dynamics ( CFD ) simulations can be very useful to investigate heat transfer and visualize the temperature fields & fluid flow characteristics of shell and tube heat exchanger. A shell and tube heat exchanger is modeled to find the heat transfer parameters. The heat e xchanger contains tubes inside with baffle arrangement. The flow and temperature fields are resolved using CFD package (ANSYS FLUENT). The experimental investigation has been also performed for comparison purpose. The CFD turbulence models considered for investigation are k - epsilon, SST, Eddy Viscosity and Laminar model. Laminar flow is consider for understanding the significance of turbulence in the flow field. The boundary conditions taken for the computational domain are derived out of the experimental investigation results. Transient analysis has been performed for the physical time scale of 1800 seconds. Unstructured meshing method is used to create mesh on the domain. It has been find out that k - epsilon model came out to be the best model to predict the flow parameters, heat transfer coefficient and behavior of present case of STHE.Reasonable agreement is found between the simulation and experimental data.