GALERKIN METHOD FOR TWO-PASS CROSSFLOW HEAT EXCHANGER PROBLEM

Abstract

The Galerkin method is applied to solve the two-pass crossflow heat exchanger problem in the case of neither fluid mixed throughout. Four variants of flow arrangements differing in identical and/or inverted order of coupling the passes in an overall counter-current scheme are considered. The passes are not necessarily equal with respect to the number of heat transfer units. The power of the method presented can be seen in the fact that the exchanger effectiveness can be predicted with less than 0. 1 % error even in the case of the first order approximation. The convergence toward the exact results by carrying out the computations to higher order terms is demonstrated. Four significant figures effectiveness tables based on the first order approximation are given for each type of flow arrangement for N//t//u up to 10.