A Study of the Flow Patterns Between Two Corrugated Plates With an Egg-Carton Configuration

Abstract

Enhancing mixing in heat exchangers for low Re regimes is vital. A better mixing may be achieved by using corrugated plates. In this work, the flow patterns between corrugated plates with a novel egg-carton geometry were studied. Three-dimensional (3D) numerical models were developed for the steady laminar flow between two corrugated plates having 180 deg or 0 deg phase angles. The Reynolds number (Re ≤ 600) was defined as a function of the average distance between the corrugated plates. The numerical models were strictly developed and corroborated to achieve global convergence, local convergence, and grid-size independence. For both phase angles, it was determined that “close recirculations” decrease in size downstream and finally disappear becoming “open recirculations” due to the flow developing characteristics; the secondary flow regions were found to grow downstream; interestingly, increments on the Reynolds number favor recirculation growth and early flow detachment; the behavior and geometry of the recirculation were in line with previous flow visualization results. The recirculations were determined to be z-symmetric with respect to the channel center only for the 180 deg model. The recirculations in the 0 deg model were smaller and became “open recirculations” earlier than in the 180 deg model. Convex geometries on the transversal direction were found to favor detachment, while concave geometries inhibit it. The capability of the numerical methods to track flow paths in any direction showed a complex three-dimensional flow causing 3D-interaction among secondary flows and the main flow not reported before for these channels and just hinted by previous flow visualization studies.