Thermal Analysis of Wire-Screen Regenerator Matrix Using CFD

Abstract

Wire screen meshes or screen matrix have been widely used in aviation, chemical reaction, refrigeration, food processing, heat dissipation, aerospace, electronics, combustion, cryogenics and other applications. These are used as heat exchanger material due to higher surface area density resulting in higher heat dissipation. The CFD code used to study the fluid flow over wire screen is FLUENT. The initial study has been limited to 2-D analysis of flow over wires in one wire, four wires and nine wires in an inline arrangement. The angle of minimum Nusselt number has been plotted against Reynolds number for same geometry to find a correlation for low Re (0.015-15) and to better understand the flow over wires, Nusselt number has also been plotted w.r.t. circumferential angle. The analysis has been further extended to 3D analysis of 200 and 400 wire screen meshes to observe the change in pressure drop with Re.