Thermal-Hydraulic and Structural Analysis of Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger with Zigzag Flow Channel and Elliptical Cross Section for Molten Salt and sCO2 Applications

To deal with the high stress intensity at the channel tips of the semi-circular channel printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE), the three-dimensional (3D) one-way coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis has been conducted to study the thermal-hydraulic and mechanical performance of the zigzag channel PCHE with an additional elliptical channel for molten salt/ sCO2 application as the intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) in sCO2 Brayton cycle for Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). From the multi-linear isotropic hardening model results, the maximum stress intensity decreases with the increasing elliptical radius and could be reduced up to 63% at the elliptical radius of 0.8 mm, while the heat transfer performance is worsened in term of the heat transfer coefficient, and the hydraulic performance is improved slightly in term of the Fanning friction factor.