Thermal Periodic Boundary Conditions for Automatic Design Process of Cross Corrugated Channels

An automatic methodology for the design process of a small gas turbine recuperator is presented. The different software tools are selected in order to be managed by means of a design-optimization platform, according to the concept of Multi Disciplinary Optimization (MDO). The methodology has been developed integrating a geometrical parametric model of the heat transfer surfaces, built inside an industrial CAD, a three dimensional meshing tool, a CFD solver. Final objectives of the research will be an optimization process designed to maximize the heat exchange rate and to minimize fluid dynamics losses. The paper deals with the parameterization technique and the numerical model, two methods for dealing with thermal boundary conditions in periodic domains are presented. The classical uniform temperature boundary conditions for periodic flows has been implemented in a commercial code. A new method that avoids the imposition of unrealistic boundary conditions on the interface wall of a counter current heat exchanger is presented.