Thermal CFD study and improvement of table top fridge evaporator by virtual prototyping

The present paper aims to assess and to improve existing design of evaporators for household table top refrigeration appliances using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This category of refrigerators are compact and cheap solutions for domestic appliance. The requirement for low cost solution does not cancel necessity of high effectivity, usually referred as “energy class”. The evaporator is important component of refrigerator heat transport system and to its efficiency. Existing design of evaporator is improved in two directions - as shape of the serpentine and as cross section - constrained by overall cost limit. Two groups of thermal CFD analyses are performed over various design variants. Used virtual prototypes enable to view in detail heat transfer process and to reach an better solution in means of overall price/performance. This study shows the effect of serpentine geometry on evaporator performance as well as demonstrates the benefits of virtual prototyping when targeting optimization and improvement.