Prediction of Heat Transfer Rates for Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers by

Artificial Neural Networks Approach

Qiuwang WANG Gongnan XIE Ming ZENG Laiqin LUO
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Shaanxi, Xian
710049, China


This work used artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the heat transfer rates of shell-and-tube heat
exchangers with segmental baffles or continuous helical baffles, based on limited experimental data. The Back
Propagation (BP) algorithm was used in training the networks. Different network configurations were also
studied. The deviation between the predicted results and experimental data was less than 2%. Comparison with
correlation for prediction shows ANN superiority. It is recommended that ANN can be easily used to predict the
performances of thermal systems in engineering applications, especially to model heat exchangers for heat
transfer analysis.

Keywords: heat transfer rate, Artificial Neural Network, shell-and-tube heat exchanger, back propagation
CLC number: TK124 Document code: A Article ID: 1003-2169(2006)03-0257-06

Introduction

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been
developed for about two decades, and now widely used
in various application areas such as pattern recognition,
system identification, dynamic control and so on. ANN
offers a new way to simulate non-linear, or uncertain, or
unknown complex system without requiring any explicit
knowledge about input/output relationship. ANN has
more attractive advantages that, it can approximate any
continuous or nonlinear function by using certain
network configuration, can be used to learn complex
nonlinear relationship from a set of associated
input/output vectors, can be implemented to dynamically
simulate and control unknown or uncertain process. The
Computational Intelligence (CI) technique, e.g. ANNs,
Genetic Algorithms (GAs), Fuzzy Logic (FL), has been
successfully applied in many scientific researches and
engineering practices. In recent years, ANNs have been
used in thermal systems for heat transfer analysis,
performance prediction and dynamic control. For
example, Thibault et al. [1] used a neural network (NN)
for heat transfer data analysis, Jambunathan et al. [2]
evaluated heat transfer coefficients from experimental
data by using a NN, Bittanti et al. [3] used a NN to
identify and control heat exchanger, Yang and Sen [4,5]
reviewed works in dynamic modeling and controlling of
heat exchangers using ANNs and GAs, Diaz et al. [6-10]
did lots of works in steady/dynamic simulation and
control of heat exchangers using ANNs, Parcheco-Vega
et al. [11-14] also did many works in analysis for
fin-tube heat exchanger with limited experimental data
using soft computing and global regression, Islamoglu et
al. [15,16] predicted heat rate for the wire-on-tube heat
exchanger and made heat transfer analysis for air flow in
corrugated channels. Other researches about heat
exchangers control by means of ANNs were reported in
references [17-19]. From aforementioned successful
applications, it is shown that ANNs are well suitable to
thermal analysis in engineering systems, especially in
heat exchangers.
In many experimental studies and engineering
applications of thermal science, researchers and
engineers expect to reduce experimental data into one or
more simple and compact dimensionless heat transfer
correlations. The disadvantages of the correlation
methods are that heat transfer coefficients strongly
depend on their definitions and temperature difference,
and inevitably need iterative method to obtain
correlations when fluid properties are dependent on fluid
temperature [20]. However, ANN does not need
definition of correlations and iterative method, only
needs input/output samples for training a special neural
network, in turn, obtaining output results as test samples
Received: March 13, 2006
Qiuwang WANG: Professor

J. of Thermal Science Vol.15, No.3

Nomenclature Q
e
Experimental heat transfer rate (W)
D
c
Diameter of center tube (mm) Q
p
Predicted heat transfer rate by ANN (W)
Er Relative error Re
w
number in water-side
M Number of sets of data for train Re
o
Reynolds number in oil-side
N Number of sets of data for test rms Root-mean-squares error
N
b
Number of baffle S
b
Baffle pitch (mm)
N
t
Number of tube T
w,in
Inlet temperature in water-side (K)
Pr Prandtl number T
o,in
Inlet temperature in oil-side (K)
258 Journal of Thermal Science, Vol.15, No.3, 2006
fed into trained network. In the above-mentioned
literature, most works were done in thermal analysis for
fin-tube heat exchangers, while for shell-and-tube heat
exchangers there were few in open literature. For this
reason, the objective of this paper is to apply ANN to
predict heat transfer rates of shell-and-tube heat
exchangers by using experimental data based on back
propagation algorithm, and different network
configurations were studied, in addition, the predicted
results by ANN were compared with those by
correlations.

Physical model and experimental data

The three shell-and-tube heat exchangers were
experimentally tested by Peng [21]. A detailed description
of designed experimental system and manufactured heat
exchangers can be found in reference [21]. One is heat
exchanger with segmental baffles (hereafter, the heat
exchanger is called HX1), as shown in Fig.1 (a), the other
two are heat exchangers with continuous helical baffles,
as shown in Fig.1 (b). The difference between the latter
two heat exchangers is that inlet-outlet flow manner of
fluid in shell-sides, of which the structure of the one is
middle-in-middle-out (called HX2) and the structure of
the other is side-in-side-out (called HX3).
The heat exchangers are 1-2 type, with hot oil flows in
shell-side and cold water flows in tube-side. Except for
different baffles located in shell-sides, the obvious
difference between HX1 and HX2, HX3 is that the latter
two have blocked center tubes while the former has not, as
shown in Fig.1. There are other differences in geometric
parameters such as, total tube number N
t
, total baffle
number N
b
, baffle pitch S
b
and diameter of center tube D
c
.
Experiments were performed in the Reynolds
number ranging from 300 to 7000 in the shell-side, 3000





















Fig.1 Shell-and-tube heat exchangers
(Made in software SMARTDRAW)


4000 in the tube-side. Heat transfer rate varied from
20 kW to 50 kW. 39 sets of experimental data were
obtained in reference [21]. Trained data of geometric
parameters and Reynolds number are listed in Table.1.
Note that for sake of brief list each set of experimental
dynamic data was only written in Re
o
. Detailed
information can be found in next section. It should be
noted that the diameter of center tube in HX1 is zero
since there is no center tube. Tested data were listed in
Table.2, in which each heat exchanger has two, three and
four data samples respectively.
Table.1 Experimental data for training the network (unit: mm)
Type S
b
N
b
D
c
N
t
Re
o

HX1 70 7 0 176 296 525 697 821 1102 1253 1399 1486 1693 1825
HX2 48 9 48 158 1148 1413 3121 4365 4979 5669 5843 6702 6996
HX3 48 9 48 158 571 745 981 1950 2591 2565 3045 3507 4949 5536 7018
Note: D
c
=0 in HX1 since it has no center tube.



Qiuwang WANG et al. Prediction of Heat Transfer Rates for Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers by Artificial Neural Networks Approach 259
Neural network configuration

ANNs comprise of a great number of interconnected
neurons. Fig.2 illustrates a typical network configuration
such an ANN consisting of a series of layers, each with a
number of nodes. The node (circle point in Fig.2)
sometimes called neuron is the basic processor of neural
network. Each connection between two nodes with a real
value is called weight. Nodes are gathered together into
column called layer. For each node, there exists an
activation and a bias associated it. Among the various
types of ANNs, the feedforward or multilayer perception
neural network is widely used in engineering
applications. The input information is propagated
forward through the network. As shown in Fig.2, the first
and last layers are called input layers and output layer
with eight nodes and one node respectively, while the
others in the middle are called hidden layers. The
configuration in Fig.2 has two hidden layers with six and
five nodes respectively.














Fig.2 Neural network configuration used for
modeling heat exchanger
(Made in software SMARTDRAW)

The Back Propagation (BP) algorithm is widely used
to train the network. The main idea of this algorithm is to
minimize an error function by steepest descent method to
add small changes in the direction of minimization. It
simply consists of back-propagating output errors to the
network by modifying the weight matrices. More
descriptions of BP algorithm can be found in references
[1,5]. The drawback of BP algorithm is that it may get
stuck in a local minimum and it needs a long time to arrive
at convergence. Varying the learning rate dynamically or
using momentum terms can improve the convergence
speed. The mathematical background, the procedures for
training and testing the ANN, and the description of BP
algorithm can be found in the references [22,23].
For the heat exchangers at hand, eight independent
parameters were fed into the input layer of the network
(as shown in Fig.2): Reynolds numbers, inlet
temperature in each sides Re
w
, Re
o
,T
w,in
, T
o,in
, total tube
number N
t
, center tube diameter D
c
, baffle number N
b
,
baffle pitch S
b.
The main reason for selection these input
variables is that, heat transfer rate is affected by inlet
mass flow rate, temperature on each side, and structure
of heat exchanger core due to the aforementioned
differences among the three exchangers. The effects of
tube and baffle arrangements can be considered as that of
hydraulic diameter, which was included in Reynolds
number. The output layer contains a parameter, heat
transfer rate Q
p
, as the objective of the present study.
A total of 39 sets of data were run in the network, of
which M=30 sets of experimental data, as listed in
Table.1, were applied to train the network, while the rest
N=9 data, as listed in Table.2, were used to test the
network. Note that 77% of the experimental data were
used for training the network. In Table.1 and Table.2, a
set of input variables such as Re
w
, Re
o
, T
w, in
, T
o,in
, were
briefly expressed in Re
o
, meaning that a Re
o
refer to a set
of dynamic parameters. The selection of test data from
each heat exchanger may be somewhat arbitrary,
however these data are based on approximate uniform
variation of Re
o
from 300 to 7000 and based on total
number of data from each heat exchanger.

Results and discussions

As aforementioned, drawback of BP algorithm is
that it may get stuck in a local minimum, therefore the
learning rate was being changed during the training
process of the network. As this result, the learning rate
was finally set to 0.4 based on previous tested
experiences [7-13]. The training of the neural network
was terminated when the maximum number of training
cycles was reached. Note that the selection of the number
is a trail process in which it may be changed if the
performance of the network during the training is not
good enough. In the present study, after a series of trail
tests the number of training cycles was chosen 200,000,
Table.2 Experimental data for testing the network
Re
o

378
a
912
a
1371
c
1978
b
2610
b
3480
b
4251
c
5761
c
6625
c

Note: superscripts a, b and c refer data from HX1, HX2 and HX3 respectively.


260 Journal of Thermal Science, Vol.15, No.3, 2006
where the maximum relative error between the output of
the network and the target output was less than 2.0%.
The relative error was defined by
Er=(Q
e
-Q
p
)/Q
e
(1)
where Q
p
is the predicted results, output of ANN, the Q
e

is the experimental data, target output. Note that all of
the input/output pairs were normalized in the (0.15, 0.85)
range [7-13].
During the training the network, the performance of
the network was evaluated by calculating the
root-mean-square (rms) values of the output errors

2
1
1
e p M
e
i
Q Q
rms
M Q =

=


(2)
As an example, the errors during training 8-6-5-1
network configuration, with two hidden layers with 6
and 5 nodes respectively, were shown in Fig.3 (a).
Training was carried out to 200,000 cycles in the present
st udy, based on t rai l experi ence. It can be seen






























Fig.3 Training error for configuration 8-6-5-1 ANN
(Made in software ORIGIN)
that the maximum error asymptotes at about 100,000
cycles, while the rms error is reached at 80,000 cycles.
At the end of training process, the relative errors for
training data were shown in Fig.3 (b). Most of all are
within 1% region, and the maximum relative error is
about 1.7%.
To observe the effects of network configuration,
eleven different ANN configurations were studied, as
shown in Table.2. R and are defined by
1 1
1 1
e N N
i
P
i i
Q
R R
N N Q = =
= =

(3)
2
1
( )
N
i
i
R R
N

=
(4)
R reflects the average accuracy of the prediction
while reflects the scatter of the prediction. Both
quantities are important for an assessment of the relative
success of the ANN analysis [5]. For three layers, when
the number of hidden node is increased to 6, R is much
closer to unity, while R begins to be far from unity when
the number is increased from 7. This indicates that
adding more hidden node may not improve the predicted
results. From Table.3, the configurations with four layers
have more accuracy of prediction than those with five
layers. It is also noted that adding more hidden layers
may not make the prediction better. Thus, in this case,
configuration 8-6-5-1 is selected for testing, with
R=1.002959 and=0.02117, and the maximum relative
error is less than 1.7%.
In this study, the predicted heat transfer rates
obtained by configuration 8-6-5-1 ANN, and those by
dimensionless correlations from Peng [21], were
compared. The results are shown in Fig.4. For most of
the data, the ANN error is within 2% while the
correlation error is within 8%. This shows that ANN is
superior to correlation for prediction.














Fig.4 Comparison of 8-6-5-1 ANN and correlation for
shell-an-tube heat exchangers
(Made in software ORIGIN)


Qiuwang WANG et al. Prediction of Heat Transfer Rates for Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers by Artificial Neural Networks Approach 261
Prediction of heat exchanger performance is one of
the important objectives to a designer or engineer so as
to understand the performance before perform the
experimental investigations. There are many approaches
to predict the performance. As usual, for example, the
data information obtained by experiment can be
compressed as compact form in correlation such as
Nusselts number vs. Reynolds number and Prandtl
numbers, Nu=f (Re, Pr), sometimes including geometric
factors. However, there exist some assumptions in
deriving the correlation, which generally are not quite
valid for real problem. For example, most researchers
often consider that the heat transfer coefficient along the
wall is constant, the temperature of the wall between the
hot and cold side is constant, and the fluid properties are
independent on fluid temperature. These assumptions do
not hold for an actual heat exchanger. As shown in above
figure, the precision of ANN is much better than that of
simplified correlation. It can be seen that we can directly
obtain the heat transfer rates from the input information
through the network, instead of using them to get Nusselt
number from correlations and in turn indirectly obtaining
the heat transfer rates. The ANN approach is useful and
convenient for engineers or researchers to predict the
performance of a given heat exchanger with limited
experimental data, without needing an accurate and
detailed mathematical formulation, and without
correlating the information into compact form. Once the
ANN was trained, the weights and biases from the
network, which corresponding to a practical heat
exchanger, can be transferred to engineers or researchers
who are going to use the tested data for prediction.

Conclusions

In the present study, the ANN is applied to predict
heat transfer rates for shell-and-tube heat exchangers.
BP algorithm is used to train the network. The results
show that the predicted heat transfer rates by ANN
approach are much closer to experimental data,
indicating that ANN technique is more suitable in the
prediction of heat transfer rates than empirical
correlations. It is recommended that ANNs can be
applied to simulate thermal systems, especially for
engineers to model heat exchangers in engineering
applications.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Higher Academy
Young Teacher Foundation Project of Fok Ying-Tung
Education Foundation (Grant No. 91056) and Program
for New Century Excellent Talents in University of
China (Grant No. NCET-04-0938).

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Table.3 Comparison of errors by different ANN configurations
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Configuration
max(Er) (%) rms (%) R
8-3-1
2.0391
0.8446
1.006639 0.04752
8-4-1
2.0333
0.753
1.004873 0.03467
8-5-1
1.7868
0.6886
1.005505 0.04161
8-6-1
1.2911
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0.995436 0.03145
8-7-1
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262 Journal of Thermal Science, Vol.15, No.3, 2006
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