Comprehensive performance investigation and optimization of a plate fin heat exchanger with wavy fins

As the pressure drop and pump power increase with the enhancement of heat transfer, it is of great value to investigate the comprehensive performance of the heat exchanger based on common accurate correlations of heat transfer and flow friction. This paper adopts a generalized air-side thermal-hydraulic correlation to study the comprehensive performances of the plate fin heat exchanger with wavy fins. To better understand the fin characteristics, performance indexes under the same flow rate, pressure drop and pump power are employed to estimate the comprehensive flow and heat transfer performances. The nonlinear optimization problem is established in consideration of the multiple independent variables with the maximum effectiveness or the minimum modified entropy generation number as the optimization objective function, which is solved by the genetic algorithm. Comparative analysis is conducted for results obtained from the parametric analysis and heat exchanger optimization, indicating that the objective function of the modified entropy generation number is effective for the design optimization of the comprehensive performance.