Date of Award

4-2011

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. HoSung Lee

Second Advisor

Dr. Christopher Cho

Third Advisor

Dr. Muralidhar Ghantasala

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The need for more effective heat exchangers is becoming more necessary these days. At the same time, the size of the heat exchanger also plays a big role. Therefore, in many applications the compact plate heat exchanger is used where high effectiveness and small size are required. As a result, it is a necessary to study and understand the performance of compact plate heat exchangers. More specifically, the performance of heat transfer, represented by the Colburn factor j, and friction factor f, must be deeply studied and understood.

A mathematical model has been built to express f and j factors based on existing correlations. Also, experimental results have been obtained and compared with the analytical model. It was found that Martin's correlation of finding friction and Colburn factors are not in agreement with the experimental results for a compact heat exchanger. Therefore, the findings show that compactness has an effect on performance, and that the j and f factors should be modified in the future to reflect this.

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