Investigation of flow and heat transfer characteristics on different heat exchangers of air conditioner

The characteristics of flow and heat transfer of fin and tube heat exchanger for the three-stage and semi-arc structure considering different geometric shell were investigated in this study. A three-dimensional representative thin-section model was established for modeling split air conditioner indoor unit by employing CFX 14.0 in ANSYS. The model was validated by comparing the differences of outlet air volume obtained numerically and experimentally within acceptable limits. The effects of geometric parameters for heat exchanger were investigated through numerical analysis on the outlet air volume and heat transfer performance. It was found that the semi-arc heat exchanger showed more uniform flow field distribution with fewer vortexes. And also it shows better heat transfer performance compared to the three-stage heat exchanger. The heat transfer capacity of the semi-arc model is 7.02% higher than that of three-stage arrangements. On the other hand, the optimized geometric shell structure showed higher performance, resulting in removal of stagnant flow region with more effective heat transfer at the same air volume.