Modeling pressure drop of inclined flow through a heat exchanger for aero-engine applications

Abstract

In the present work further numerical predictions for the flow field through a specific type of a heat exchanger, which is planned to be used in the exhaust nozzle of aircraft engines. In order to model the flow field through the heat exchanger, a porous medium model is used based on a simple quadratic relation, which connects the pressure drop with the inlet air velocity in the external part of the heat exchanger. The aim of this work is to check the applicability of the quadratic law in a variety of velocity inlet conditions configured by different angles of attack. The check is performed with CFD and the results are compared with new available experimental data for these inlet conditions. A detailed qualitative analysis shows that although the quadratic law has been derived for a zero angle of attack, it performs very well for alternative non-zero angles. These observations are very helpful since this simple pressure drop law can be used for advanced computations where the whole system of the exhaust nozzle together with the heat exchangers can be modeled within a holistic approach.