Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.
The objective of our investigations is to numerically investigate
the optimal geometry of the thermoplate with respect to
heat transfer of the inside fluid that passes through the channel
as a single phase. In order to achieve this, the geometrical and
process parameters such as the pattern of welding spots, the
distance between the sheets, and the Reynolds number have
been varied. For the simulation, the commercial software
StarCD was used. The numerical experiments show that the
heat transfer potential of the thermoplate having a staggered arrangement
of welding spots is markedly higher than the one of
a common flat channel, particularly at larger Reynolds numbers.
The variations of the geometrical parameters indicate the
welding spot pitch in a streamwise direction to be a pivotal
quantity regarding the heat transfer optimisation.
