Brazed plate heat exchanger on Simscape

I want to modelise an heat-pump on Simscape, using the geometric approach of the heat-exchanger (using System-level Heat-Exchanger so). But in the heat-exchanger block, regardless of whether we work with a two-phase fluid, a thermal fluid or moist air, it seems that we can only model exchangers with tubes and fins.

Someone know if it is possible to model a brazed plate heat exchanger on Simscape ?

Thank you.

Answer 1

[Yifeng Tang]

I would recommend the following combination of options:

The key is to choose "generic" for tube section, so you can set the heat transfer area by the section area and perimeter, and to choose Colburn equation for heat transfer correlation. You may adjust the coefficients, depending on what kind of data you have, to match the heat transfer performance.

[ÖMER]

a question about the required parameters in the block "Wetted perimeter of the pipe cross section for the pressure drop". It is a plate HE and both sides of the plates are wetted, what data should I specify there?

[Yifeng Tang]

You may view the space between two plates as a "tube". The cross section area is then the gap * width of the plate, while the wetted perimeter is 2*(gap+width).

The number of tubes refers to that of each working fluid. So if your plate HE has N plates, each fluid will have N/2 "tubes".

[ALis]

Are there any plans to impelment a brazed plate heat exchanger in SimScape fluids?

[Yifeng Tang]

Check out R2024a pre-release. Yes, a plate heat exchanger is available in this latest release.

[Alif]

is "Total length of each tube" consider to be length plate to ?

[Yifeng Tang]

it's the length in the direction of the flow; usually it's indeed the length of the plate.