Study on the Effect of Baffle Cut Height on Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers with Conventional Segmental Baffles or Cinquefoil Orifice Mixed-Flow Baffles

Abstract To investigate the influence of baffle cut height on the performance of shell-and-tube heat exchangers, numerical simulations were conducted to analyse the shell-side heat transfer and flow characteristics of conventional segmental baffles and Cinquefoil Orifice Mixed-Flow Baffle (COMFB) under varying cut heights (0.15 D –0.4 D ). The results indicate that when the cut height increases, both the shell-side Nusselt number ( Nu ) and pressure drop (Δ P ) exhibit decreasing trends. However, the comprehensive performance PEC ( Nu / ΔP 1/3 ) of both structures does not change monotonically and gives a peak value at a cut height of about 0.3 D . Comparing the segmental baffle heat exchangers, COMFB heat exchangers behaves quite better with having much higher heat transfer efficiency and PEC and less flow resistance and energy dissipation.