LAPSE:2025.0154
Published Article
LAPSE:2025.0154
Dimple Shape Design to Enhance Heat Transfer in Plate Heat Exchangers
June 27, 2025
Abstract
This article studies four dimple shapes: spherical, smoothed-spherical, normal distribution, and error distribution and how they enhance heat transfer on a plate within a plate heat exchanger using computational fluid dynamics. The dimple that showed the greatest efficiency of heat transfer was the normal distribution dimple, giving a temperature increase of 7.5 times of the smoothed-spherical and 15% more than the error distribution dimple shape. This was primarily due to the large increase in the turbulent kinetic energy caused by the eddies created upon the flow over the normal distribution shape. With the normal distribution shape being found to be the most effective in enhancing heat transfer, a layout of multiple normal distribution dimples based on the stage of flow development was also studied. It was found that a fully developed flow resulted in 9.5% more efficiency than half developed flow and 31% more efficient than placing dimples directly next to each other.
This article studies four dimple shapes: spherical, smoothed-spherical, normal distribution, and error distribution and how they enhance heat transfer on a plate within a plate heat exchanger using computational fluid dynamics. The dimple that showed the greatest efficiency of heat transfer was the normal distribution dimple, giving a temperature increase of 7.5 times of the smoothed-spherical and 15% more than the error distribution dimple shape. This was primarily due to the large increase in the turbulent kinetic energy caused by the eddies created upon the flow over the normal distribution shape. With the normal distribution shape being found to be the most effective in enhancing heat transfer, a layout of multiple normal distribution dimples based on the stage of flow development was also studied. It was found that a fully developed flow resulted in 9.5% more efficiency than half developed flow and 31% more efficient than placing dimples directly next to each other.
Record ID
Keywords
Ansys Fluent, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Dimple, Heat transfer enhancement, Plate Heat Exchangers
Subject
Suggested Citation
Stolycia MJ, Liu L. Dimple Shape Design to Enhance Heat Transfer in Plate Heat Exchangers. Systems and Control Transactions 4:20-25 (2025) https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.146371
Author Affiliations
Stolycia MJ: School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UK
Liu L: School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UK
Liu L: School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UK
Journal Name
Systems and Control Transactions
Volume
4
First Page
20
Last Page
25
Year
2025
Publication Date
2025-07-01
Version Comments
Original Submission
Other Meta
PII: 0020-0025-1126-SCT-4-2025, Publication Type: Journal Article
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LAPSE:2025.0154
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https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.146371
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Jun 27, 2025
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Links to Related Works
References Cited
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