Cross-Flow Heat Exchanger
Application ID: 173
This model solves the fluid flow and heat transfer in a micro heat exchanger made of stainless steel. These types of heat exchangers are found in lab-on-chip devices in biotechnology and micro reactors, for example for micro fuel cells. The model takes heat transferred through both convection and conduction into account.
A square cross-section is used for the fluid channels instead of circular cross-sections, often used in micro heat exchangers. The heat exchanger is of cross-flow configuration and can consist of about 20 unit cells. Because the unit cells are almost identical except for edge effects in the outer cells, you can restrict the model to a single unit cell.
The presentation file describes different solution approaches and their numerical performances for the model and belongs to a blog post about the advantages of one-way coupling in multiphysics models.
This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
- COMSOL Multiphysics® and
- either the Battery Design Module, CFD Module, Chemical Reaction Engineering Module, Corrosion Module, Electrochemistry Module, Electrodeposition Module, Fuel Cell & Electrolyzer Module, Heat Transfer Module, Microfluidics Module, Plasma Module, Polymer Flow Module, Porous Media Flow Module, or Subsurface Flow Module
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Specification Chart and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.