Novel Heat Exchanger Design Using

Approximation Assisted
Optimization
O. Abdelaziz, V. Aute, Y. Hwang*, R. Radermacher
Center for Environmental Energy Engineering,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Maryland,
College Park, MD, USA
Contents
Introduction
Objectives
Novel Geometries
Approach
Case Studies
Geometrical Uncertainty Impact on HX
Performance
Header Analysis
Conclusions

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Introduction-Past HX Design
The need for compact, light-weight and low-
cost air-to-refrigerant heat exchangers (HXs)
is increasing to enhance the energy
efficiency and to meet new emerging
applications.
Available heat exchanger configurations
have been thoroughly investigated to
optimize their performance. These
investigations rely on published heat transfer
and pressure drop correlations which are
based on experimental data and have been
verified by several researchers.
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Introduction-Current HX Design
However, correlations are not available to
investigate new heat exchanger geometries,
and existing correlations may provide poor
results outside their validity range.
To overcome this challenge, a complete CFD
simulation can be performed for determining
the airside and or refrigerant side thermal
and hydraulic performance of a new
geometry. Such a CFD simulation would be
very time consuming and may require huge
computational resources.
4
Introduction-Future HX Design
In a new simulation technique, for the new
geometries, heat transfer and pressure drop
correlations used by a segment-by-segment
NTU based HX model are replaced by
metamodels.
CFD simulation is used to evaluate the
performance of the individual elements where
the NTU based model is used to evaluate
the performance of the HX as a whole.
A Design of Experiment (DOE) technique is
used to sample points in the design space to
develop a metamodel.
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Introduction-Future HX Design
This step requires the CFD simulations to be
automated in order to be able to simulate a
large number of samples.
The segment-by-segment NTU based
model is then used with a MOGA tool to
investigate the trade-off in performance
variables such as HX volume, air- and ref.-
side pressure drop, material volume, etc.
This technique will greatly reduce the HX
developing time as prototypes of only
promising geometries are selected for
experimental verification.
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Objective
Develop an approximation assisted multi-
objective multi-disciplinary optimization tool
capable of studying newly developed Heat
eXchanger (HX) designs

Use the tool to design Next Generation HX

(NGHX)

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Sample Geometries

8
Candidate Geometry

Selected Geometry NGHX-13

Ease of
manufacturing
Ease of simulation

9
 Problem Definition
Correlations are not available for new heat
exchanger geometries
Integrated optimization: From HX segment
to assembly

Investigate structural integrity

Account for manufacturing uncertainty
Study refrigerant distribution in headers
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APPROACHES

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Approach

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Coupled Solver
PPCFD for NGHX-13 is used
to estimate the overall heat PPCFD
transfer coefficient and

Pair
HTCOverall,
airside pressure drop
CoilDesigner (a segmented - New Designs
NTU solver) is used to
evaluate the overall HX
performance CoilDesigner
Water flow propagation
from tube inlet to outlet
Calculate outlet
Overall HX performance:
conditions and evaluate Volume, Material volume, cost,
objective functions and air and water pressure drop,
heat capacity, ..etc
constraints
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 Approximation Assisted Optimization
Need to minimize time consuming CFD prediction
for novel and complicated HX designs

Analysis &
Optimization

Heat Exchanger Meta-

modeling
DOE

Validation
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Approximation Assisted Optimization
Sampling stage: DOE
Adaptive DOE based on (M)SFCVT method (Aute, 2008)
Meta-model development: Kriging
Use existing responses to predict response at some
unknown point
Provide a standard error for its prediction
Does not require a functional form, Extremely flexible
Meta-model verification: goodness assessment
MOGA minimize fi ( x ) i 1,..., M
x

subject to:
g j (x) 0 j 1,..., J
hk ( x ) 0 k 1,..., K
xlL xl xlU l 1,..., d
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 Offline Metamodeling
HX solver evaluates all performance
parameters, e.g. heat transfer rate,
volume, material, pressure drop, etc
Segment performance (airside HTC
and P) should be estimated for the Metamodels:
entire design space airside HTC
CFD simulations are computationally and P
expensive
Use Approximation to find segment
performance
Segment performance can be used
to obtain HX performance for
different objectives/constraints
depending upon the application
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CASE STUDIES

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 NGHX13 Optimization
min ADP, V
HX

s.t.
Q 1kW
ADP ADPmax
RDP RDPmax
HX [ Nt , Din , Hs, Vs, w, v]

Approximation involved 300 CFD runs for metamodeling plus 250

randomly generated designs for verification!
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 A-Coil Optimization
Material cost per kg as per
Objectives 12/23/08 quotes: Cu =3
Minimize the material cost $/kg, Al = 1.5 $/kg
Minimize the enclosure 30
Feasible solutions
volume Pareto
Baseline
Constraints 25

Airside pressure drop

Material Cost, $

100 Pa 20

Heat load within 5% of

baseline heat load 15

Volume baseline volume

10
(0.0953 m3)

5
0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
Enclosure Volume, m3

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 Comparison with Baseline
Coil HS VS L FPI Volume Cost
No. [] [mm] [mm] [mm] [-] Savings [%] Savings [%]
BL 18.5 20.5 26.5 460 14 0 0
1 40 17.3 17.8 317.4 11 52.1 29.6
2 40 17.3 15.9 373.2 10 53.7 38.9

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GEOMETRICAL UNCERTAINTY
IMPACT ON HX
PERFORMANCE

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Motivation
Small tube dimensions
Non-Uniform
Uniform
Additional manufacturing challenges
Uniform
Spacing
Spacing
Spacing

May lead to wobbling and less control on the vertical

spacing along the tube length
Manufacturing tolerances become significant at
small length scales
Need to account for geometrical
variability as specified by
manufacturing tolerances
(amplitude and distribution)

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 Uncertainty Distribution
20%
18% 21
16% 20
% of HX segments

14% 19
12% 18
10% 17
8% 16
6% 15
4% 14
2% 13
12

Tubes
0%
-40% -20% -10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 20% 40% 11
(VS - VSnominal)/VSnominal * 100%
10
9
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Use Random distribution 7
Assume header manufacturing 6
5
tolerances are within 5% 4
Ensure that the variation from one 3
2
segment to the next does not jump 1
more than 2 bins (i.e. if current 0
segment is at -10% the next segment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
can be either -40, -20, -10, -5, or 0) Segments
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Results

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HEADER ANALYSIS

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 Header Analysis

Increased P can be avoided by increasing the number of

distribution headers
More headers lower P but diminished compactness
Trade-off between P and HX volume
Headers performance affect the overall HX performance:
Additional refrigerant pressure drop
Additional material/volume
Refrigerant maldistribution
There is a trade-off between header performance
(PHeader, refrigerant maldistribution) and volume/material
New header designs for minimizing volume and reducing
maldistribution
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NGHX-13 Headers

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 Header CFD Simulation Results

Design # of Tube LH,i/ MFR

tubes Length, LH,o Stdev
xLD [%]
0 10 2 10 41.6
1 10 2 2 64.3
2 10 5 10 34.7
3 10 5 2 47.8
4 100 2 10 70.3
5 100 2 2 102.8
6 100 5 10 69.4
7 100 5 2 79.7

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 Header CFD Simulation Results
Design Tube LH,i/LH,o MFR Stdev,
Length, x LD [%]
I 5 20 37.4
II 5 10 37.5
III 5 5 40.3
IV 10 20 27.9
V 10 10 28.7
VI 10 5 29.6

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Prototype

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 Preliminary Results
Water Air Tw_in Tw_out Tair_in Tair_out Q Q/Vmaterial Q/VHX, Q/VHX/LMTD,
Flow Rate Velocity [C] [C] [C] [C] [W] [W/cm3material] [W/cm3HX] [W/cm3HX /K]
[g/s] [m/s]

0.99 4.3 32.4 26.4 16.0 22.3 24.6 19.8 3.46 0.34

0.99 2.8 32.5 27.8 16.1 23.5 19.3 15.2 2.66 0.26

0.99 1.5 32.5 29.4 16.2 24.5 12.8 9.53 1.67 0.16

3.11 4.5 34.6 31.7 16.3 23.4 38.8 27.0 4.72 0.36

3.12 2.3 34.8 32.6 16.2 25.1 28.0 17.7 3.10 0.24

3.16 1.4 34.7 33.2 16.3 25.8 20.0 10.8 1.90 0.15

Baseline MCHX 1 kW
25 2.95 34.6 30.6 16.3 27.1 414.5 5.337 1.73 0.161

25 2.95 76.85 66.85 26.85 56.85 1,115.4 14.36 4.66 0.164

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Experimental Setup

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Conclusions
New hybrid model (Automated CFD + -NTU
solver) is suitable for optimization due to the
lower computational cost compared to full CFD
simulations of heat exchangers
Approximation techniques can yield savings of
90% or more in computational time
MOGA reduced the number of function
evaluations greatly when compared to
exhaustive search
O(104) compared O(1017) for NGHX-13
O(103) compared O(106) for A-coil
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Conclusions
Material savings of up to 60% and volume
savings of up to 44% can be achieved with
novel geometries
A-coils optimization resulted in 50% saving
in HX volume and up to 39% in material costs
Modeling HX with design parameters
uncertainty is important for smaller channel
dimensions
Tradeoff between headers size and
performance is crucial in the analysis of
compact HX
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Acknowledgement

We thank ONR and CEEEs ACTA and ISOC

consortium members for their financial
support on this study.

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