Influence of tube relative surface area on flow and heat transfer of shell-and-tube heat exchangers

Carries out three-dimensional numerical simulation of shell-and-tube heat exchangers by Fluent software. Analyses the heat transfer performance of different heat exchangers with four kinds of relative surface area. The results show that the larger the relative surface area of the tubes, the better the heat transfer performance of the heat exchanger. When the inlet flow rate of shell side is 0.8 m/s and the temperature is 25 ℃, relative to the conventional circular-tube shell-and-tube heat exchanger, the temperature difference between inlet and outlet of square-tube heat exchanger shell side increases by 24.38%, elliptic-tube heat exchanger by 34.06%, and rectangular-tube heat exchanger by 45.52%.