A study of chevron type plate design on pressure drop and friction factor of brazed plate heat exchanger

Abstract Brazed plate heat exchanger (BPHE) was analyzed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations by ANSYS Fluent to investigate the chevron‐patterned plates. The influence of geometric parameters, including corrugation pitch, depth, and angle was analyzed. The corrugation pitch was set to 2.5, 5, and 7.5 mm, the corrugation depth was varied at 2, 3, and 4 mm, and the corrugation angle was adjusted to 60°, 65°, and 70°. Under three Reynolds numbers, the results indicate that the lowest pressure drop was achieved when the plate parameters were set to a corrugation angle of 60°, a corrugation depth of 4 mm, and a corrugation pitch of 7.5 mm. In addition, the configuration with a corrugation angle of 60°, a corrugation depth of 2 mm, and a corrugation pitch of 7.5 mm achieves the lowest friction factors. Furthermore, at a fixed flow rate of 0.56 LPM, increasing the corrugation angle from 60° to 70° resulted in a pressure drop 2.36 times higher than that at 60°, increasing the corrugation depth from 2 to 4 mm reduced the pressure drop by up to 74%, while increasing the corrugation pitch from 2.5 to 7.5 mm led to a reduction of approximately 55%. Overall, the influence of geometric parameters on pressure drop was found to decrease in the order of corrugation angle, corrugation depth, and corrugation pitch. This work presents a systematic, pressure‐drop‐oriented comparison of the relative effects under various geometric parameters, offering quantitative guidance for chevron type BPHEs.