Fluid-Thermal-Mechanical Coupled Analysis and Optimized Design of Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger with Airfoil Fins of S-CO₂ Brayton Cycle

Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE) with high-efficiency and compact structure has great application prospect in the supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO₂) power systems for the next generation of high-temperature concentrated solar and advanced nuclear energy. However, the high operating temperature and pressure require PCHE to maintain good heat transfer performance, as well as reliable mechanical performance at the same time. It is necessary to carry out the fluid-thermal-mechanical coupled analysis of PCHE for the safe and efficient operation of the S-CO2 cycle. In this paper, a three-dimensional fluid-structure coupled numerical model was established to study the fluid-thermal-mechanical coupled characteristics of PCHE under different airfoil fin arrangements. The stress distribution of the single airfoil fin was studied, and a better airfoil arrangement that comprehensively considers heat transfer characteristics and stress distribution was obtained. Aiming at the high stress caused by the stress concentration at both ends of the airfoil fin, an optimized configuration combining straight channel and airfoil channel was proposed. The results show that the difference between the flow and heat transfer performance of the two optimized structures and the reference structure is only within 1.5%, but the maximum stresses of the two optimized structures are respectively reduced by 69.4% and 70.0% compared with that of the reference structure, which significantly reduces the stress intensity of PCHE. The result provides a new method to develop the airfoil PCHE with uniform stress distribution and good thermo-hydraulic performance.