Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Thermal hydraulic characteristics of cryogenic offset-strip fin heat T

exchangers
⁎
Qingfeng Jianga, , Ming Zhuangb, Zhigang Zhub, Jiubing Shena
a
School of Energy and Power, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang 212003, China
b
Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China

H I GH L IG H T S

• Comprehensive studies were conducted on OSFs with cryogenic gaseous helium.

• Variation tendencies of j and f factors at cryogenic conditions were revealed.
• Fin structures exerted different levels of impact on PFHX’s compactness.
• Some suggestions about selection strategy of fin structures were proposed.

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Plate-fin heat exchangers are essential in large-sized helium liquefiers/refrigerators. However, studies on the
Helium refrigerator general fin performance data and applicable fin selection strategies at low temperatures have rarely been
Plate-fin heat exchanger conducted. In this paper, the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of cryogenic helium flowing through offset-strip
Offset strip fin fins were investigated by experiments and simulations. Through the comparative means, the variation tenden-
Heat transfer
cies of fin surface performance at different temperature conditions were also revealed. The results showed, for j
Pressure drop
factors, the heat transfer performance deteriorated gradually with the decrease of temperature. For f factors, the
values increased slightly at low temperatures, and they intended to increase more dramatically at smaller Re
numbers. Additionally, sensitivity analysis revealed that, for the optimal object of volume quality, the selection
of Re number, fin space and thickness deserved more attention, so that the designed heat exchanger could
achieve sufficient heat transfer in compact space.

1. Introduction
As a type of compact heat exchanger, plate-fin heat exchangers
(PFHEs) are extensively used in many applications to meet the demand
for saving energy and resource. Typical among these are air separation
facilities, natural gas liquefiers, refrigerators, petrochemical plants, etc.
The performance and compactness of PFHEs are critical for modern
large-scale helium liquefaction/refrigeration systems as they have a
significant impact on the coefficient of performance (COP) of re-
frigeration cycle and constitute plenty of space in the cryogenic vacuum
encloser called cold box. To reduce the size and weight of PFHEs,
various enhanced fin geometries [1,2] have been developed: plain,
perforated, offset-strip, louvered, wavy, etc. Among these fins, offset-
strip fins (OSFs) characterized by high thermal efficiency, large heat
transfer area, light weight per unit volume and excellent structural
strength are well suited as heat transfer fins in cryogenic systems. OSFs
have one of the highest heat transfer performances relative to the
friction factor [3], and their substantial heat transfer enhancement is
caused by increased surface area, repeated growth and wake dissipation
of boundary layers over interrupted channels formed by fins.
Many researches have been carried out for the thermal hydraulic
performances of OSFs [4]. For the commonly used tested fluids (i.e. air,
water and oil, etc.), recent achievements in the public literatures gen-
erally included experimental data [1,5–13], empirical correlations
[14–21] and numerical solutions [22–24]. However, Ismail et al. [25]
found that there were limited experimental data available in the open
literatures for the performance of OSFs with different geometries and
for the available plenty of correlations, designers could not select the
most suitable correlation because of too large deviations observed
among these. Additionally, many researchers [21,26,27] pointed out
that the performance changes in OSF channels could not been ignored
between different working medium, and the thermal hydraulic

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jiang_qingfeng@163.com (Q. Jiang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2018.12.122
Received 25 October 2018; Received in revised form 18 December 2018; Accepted 23 December 2018
Available online 24 December 2018
1359-4311/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Q. Jiang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98

Nomenclature U overall heat transfer coefficient, [W m−2K−1]

u velocity, [m s−1]
A total heat transfer area, [m2] V total volume, [m3]
Af the secondary heat transfer area, [m2] Vfree free flow volume, [m3]
Afr minimum flow area, [m2] W pumping power, [W]
As heat transfer area at fluid side, [m2] x cartesian coordinates, [–]
Awet wetted surface area, [m2]
cp specific heat capacity, [J kg−1K−1] Greek symbols
Dh hydraulic diameter, [m]
E fluid pumping power per unit surface area, [W m−2] α heat transfer coefficient at fluid side, [W m−2K−1]
f fanning friction factor, [–] β surface area density, [–]
G mass flux, [kg m−2s−1] δ plate thickness, [m]
gc proportionality constant in Newton’s second law of mo- Γϕ diffusivity variable, [–]
tion, [–] η0 heat transfer surface efficiency, [–]
h fin height, [m] ηf fin efficiency, [–]
j Colburn factor, [–] λ thermal conductivity, [W m−2K−1]
K c ,K e coefficients for pressure loss at the inlet and outlet re- μ dynamic viscosity, [Pa s−1]
spectively, [–] ρ density, [kg m−3]
L heat exchanger core length, [m] σ ratio of free flow area to frontal area, [–]
l interrupted length, [m] ω maximum velocity in the free flow area, [m s−1]
ṁ mass flow rate, [kg s−1] ϕ general-dependent variable, [–]
Nu Nusselt number, [–]
p pressure, [Pa] Subscripts
Pr Prandtl number, [–]
Q̇ heat transfer rate, [W] Al aluminum plate
rf radius of perforations, [m] exp experiment
Re Reynolds number, [–] He helium gas
s fin space, [m] in inlet
sϕ source term, [–] sim simulation
T temperature, [K] m mean
ΔTLMTD logarithmic mean temperature difference, [K] out outlet
t fin thickness, [m] w wall

behaviors under any operating conditions might not keep consistence
with the common air-side characteristics. Especially for cryogenic
fluids, which were not only influenced by the physical properties of
fluids and fin structures, but also by the lower thermal conductivity of
metal material, few performance data were published in the open lit-
erature. Therefore, the commonly used air-side performance data of
OSFs were roughly adopted during the design process of helium cryo-
genic heat exchangers [28,29]. When the fin performance data at air-
side were arbitrarily used in the design process of cryogenic heat ex-
changers, the selection of fin surface and calculation of heat transfer
area would be inaccurate, and in more serious cases, the designed heat
exchangers would fail the requirements. Robertson [30] obtained a set
of thermal performance data for gaseous and liquid nitrogen (LN2) with
different characteristics, by transmitting sub-cooled LN2 at about 77.3 K
through an electrically-heated serrated plate-fin test section. Cao et al.
[31] used a single-stage cryogenic loop to study the heat transfer per-
formance of the customized PFHE with mixed refrigerant including N2,
CH4, C2H4, C3H8 and C4H10 at about 113 K. They found that for the
condensation and boiling heat transfer coefficients, there were large
deviations between the most of the existing correlations and experi-
ments. Yang et al. [32] used CFD simulations to study the heat transfer
behaviors of the OSF channels, which involved different metal mate-
rials as well as different cryogenic medium respectively in the gaseous
and liquid states. The results indicated that for the fin materials with
low thermal conductivity, considerable deteriorations in thermal per-
formances would appear. Besides, experimental investigations with
helium gas cooled to near LN2 temperature (77 K) as working fluid to
measure the performance of assembled aluminum PFHEs were con-
ducted by Doohan et al. [29] and Goyal et al. [33]. Additionally, to
further study the thermal hydraulic performances of helium gas at low
temperatures flowing through the OSF channels, a series of cryogenic
experiments at approximately LN2 temperature were carried out by the
authors [34]. For the experimental investigations about the perfor-
mance of OSF channels under cryogenic operating conditions, there
existed many difficulties to establish the experimental setup and further
summarize the general performance characteristics merely by a few
control experiments. These included the measurement difficulties of
heat transfer coefficients of fin cores with cryogenic fluids, high costs of
constructing specialized cryogenic plants, as well as adequate defenses
to guarantee the high purity and low leakage rate of cryogenic helium
gas.
Although some commercial software such as Aspen MUSETM have
strong ability to estimate the rationality of the channels’ arrangement
and to design the detailed construction of PFHEs for given conditions,
there is still no accurate available fin performance database and ap-
plicable selection strategy of fin structures, during the design process of
helium cryogenic heat exchangers in the open literature. Hence, these
motivate the authors to carry out the study taking cryogenic helium gas
as coolant for the practical condition. The aim of this present study is to
investigate the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of cryo-
genic helium gas in OSF channels by means of experiments and CFD
techniques. The tendency and principle of fin performance variations at
cryogenic temperature conditions will also be revealed and analyzed. In
addition, in order to test the heat exchangers’ comprehensive ability
about sufficient heat transfer in compact space, sensitivity analysis of
four basic geometric parameters and flow state parameters on the ob-
jective functions of volume quality will be carried out. The present
study can be particularly useful to provide essential insight to designers
for the engineering design and selection of cryogenic heat exchangers.

89
Q. Jiang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98

2. Experimental setup
2.1. Configuration of the test apparatus
The structure variables of OSFs included fin height h, fin space s, fin
thickness t and interrupted length Ɩ. For the fin coding, the abbreviation
of Chinese phonetic alphabet “JC” was used as the mark of OSFs. Taking
the fin code 47JC1402-03 as example, h was 4.7 mm, s was 1.4 mm, t
was 0.2 mm and Ɩ was 3 mm. The aluminum OSF cores were shaped by
sheet metal deep drawing forming, and then cut into 300 × 100 mm
(Length × Width) in external dimension. Considering the complexity
and high-cost of cryogenic experiments, the geometrical structures of
the specimens merely included 47JC1402-03, 65JC1403-03 and
95JC1402-03. The test apparatus consisted of a plate-fin channel, two
symmetrical cover plates and side bars. Two specially designed headers,
nozzles and diversion channels were fabricated at both ends of the test
matrix to provide relatively uniform flow distribution. As described in
the Ref. [34], the test apparatus was the sandwich construction con-
sisting of test matrix, copper plates, electrical heater bands and in-
sulated polyurethane foams. Additionally, to reduce the impact of
thermal radiation and gas conduction, the test apparatus was wrapped
with multilayer aluminized polyester films and subsequently installed
in the high vacuum cold box. According to the above thermal insulation
design, the heat balance error could maintain less than 5%.
2.2. Experimental system and test procedure
The test loop, shown schematically in Fig. 1, was constructed to
measure the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of helium gas under
realistic cryogenic operating conditions flowing through the plate-fin
channels. The tested channels could involve various specifications such
as perforated, offset-strip and wavy fin types. The incoming helium gas
was cooled to nearly 77.3 K by the heat exchange with LN2. Subse-
quently, in order to obtain the performance data at different operating
states, rated electric power was input in the film heaters to rise helium
gas by approximately 10 K. When the test parameters remained steady
for a few minutes, the data would be recorded to be used to calculate j
and f factors at different Re numbers. More detailed information could
be found in the previous work [34]. It might be noted that due to the
more awkward handling of temperature measurements under cryogenic
conditions, the average uncertainties of j and f factors were ± 13%
and ± 5.2% respectively, which were a little larger than the un-
certainties of both ± 5% in the steam-to-air tests [1].
material of solid was aluminum and helium gas was adopted as working
fluid where its properties were assumed constant. The governing
equations for solving the fluid flow and heat transfer problems could be
expressed as follows in a uniform format:
∂ (ρϕ) ∂ (ρui ϕ) ∂ (Γϕ ∇ϕ )
+ = + sϕ
∂t ∂x i ∂x i (1)
Because of the strong disturbance caused by fluid passing through
fin arrays, here the low k − ε model [35] with more nodes distributed
in viscous sublayer was employed. In its governing equations, the tur-
bulent diffusion terms included turbulent diffusion and molecular dif-
fusion coefficients. Second-order upwind scheme and SIMPLE veloci-
ty–pressure combined algorithm were chosen to discretize and solve
these equations. When the normalized residuals for the flow and energy
equations were less than 1 × 10 - 6 and 1 × 10 - 7 respectively, the cal-
culation results were thought to have converged. These parallel com-
putations were run on the CentOS 6.7 system, and for each one, four-
node CPU E5-4620 @ 2.20 GHz with 16 cores could be utilized.
The fluid–solid coupling model was meshed with hexahedral
structured grids by the preprocessor GAMBIT v.2.4.6. Mesh refinements
were generated at the near-wall regions for more precisely measuring
the turbulent influences. For the fin code 95JC1402-05, the grid in-
dependence test was carried out by comparing the simulated perfor-
mance results corresponding to different grid distributions, in which the
grid number covered 0.76, 1.22, 1.86, 3.34, 4.04 and 6.01 million based
on different non-dimensional distances y+ between the first interior
node and solid wall. When the grids number increased to 4038 300, the
deviations compared with the best results (6013 390) were less than 1%
for both j and f factors. Therefore, the grid numbers of OSFs in this
study determined by y+ ⩽ 1.5 could ensure the computational accuracy.
3.2. Data reduction
The hydraulic diameter, D h , for OSFs could be defined as the ratio of
the free flow volume, Vfree , to the wet area, Awet ,
4Vfree 4(s − t )(h − t ) l
Dh = =
Awet 2[(s − t ) l + (h − t ) l + (h − t ) t ] + (s − t ) t (2)
The heat balance in the plate-fin channel could be expressed in the

3. Numerical simulation

3.1. Thermohydraulic modeling

As a further extension of the experimental work, the numerical

models could be adopted to provide relatively reliable and accessible
fin performance estimates in various operating conditions.
The computational domain of OSF channel was shown in Fig. 2. It
covered heat transfer fins, cover plates, entrance and exit parts. In order
to make the flow fully developed, the entrance part, exit part were
extended and the ratio of flow length through the fin arrays to hydraulic
diameter was set to more than 60. Considering symmetric boundary
conditions were employed on the surface of separating plates, the plate
thickness was 0.5 mm, half of the thickness of commonly used alu-
minum parting sheet.
The CFD code FLUENT v.15.0 was adopted to simulate the thermal
and flow fields inside the OSF channel. Uniform heat flux was employed
on the bottom surface of the upper and lower separating plates. Periodic
boundary conditions were applied to both sides in the physical model.
The mass flow inlet and pressure outlet conditions were set as boundary
conditions, respectively. Non-slip boundary and impermeability con-
ditions were enforced on the interface between solid and fluid. The Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the testing system.

90
Q. Jiang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98

conductivity of aluminum. The last term was the convective thermal

resistance, where αHe was the average heat transfer coefficient and η0
was the heat transfer surface efficiency which could be expressed by,
(1 − ηf ) Af
η0 = 1 −
As (7)
tanh(ml f ) 2αHe h
where ηf = ml f
,m= and lf = 2
− t.
λf t
The Colburn j factor was a modified Stanton number to take into
account of the moderate variations in the fluid Prandtl number, which
could be defined as,
Nu
j=
Fig. 2. CFD model of the OSF channel (It depicts the computational domain of RePr1/3 (8)
OSFs as well as its boundary conditions).
αHe Dh
Nu =
λHe (9)
form of thermal resistance as follows,
GDh
1 2δAl 1 Re =
= + μ (10)
UA λAl AAl αHe As η0 (3)
During the process of determining the j factor, αHe needed to be
Note that the term on the left indicated the total thermal resistance
calculated iteratively because the unknown parameter, η0 , was depen-
between the heated wall and bulk fluid. The total heat transfer coeffi-
dent on αHe .
cient, U , was calculated from the ratio of the heat transfer rate, Q̇ , to the
The pressure drop, Δp , could be expressed by Fanning friction f
total surface area, A , and logarithmic mean temperature difference,
factor:
ΔTLMTD :

Q̇ Dh ⎛ 2Δp
U= f= ⎜ − K c − K e ⎞⎟
AΔTLMTD (4) 4L ⎝ ρω2 ⎠ (11)

where K c and K e were coefficients for pressure loss at the inlet and
Q̇ = mc
̇ p (Tout − Tin ) (5)
outlet of the heat exchangers, which could be obtained by the geometric
(Tw − Tin ) − (Tw − Tout ) parameters and from the graph given by Kay and London [1]. w was the
ΔTLMTD = maximum velocity in the free flow area, Afr , of plate-fin channel,
ln[(Tw − Tin )/(Tw − Tout )] (6)

The first term of the right-hand side meant the thermal resistance of G
ω=
aluminum cover plates with thickness δAl , where λAl was the thermal Afr ρ (12)

Fig. 3. Simulated results for the fin code 95JC1402-03 at low temperatures.

91
Q. Jiang et al.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Model verification
In accordance with the experimental study on the performance of
cryogenic helium gas in OSF channels, the incoming helium gas at
approximately LN2 temperature was adopted as the working fluid and
uniform heat flux was employed on the bottom surface to simulate the
operating conditions of electrical heating. The temperature and velocity
distribution contours of the fluid flowing through the fin code
95JC1402-03 were described in Fig. 3 when the Re number reached
1000. From Fig. 3(a) and (b), the cold helium gas was heated accom-
panied by a rise in temperature along the flow length. Additionally, as
the metal solid heat conduction was in the ascendant, it could be ob-
viously seen that the temperature on the heat transfer surfaces invol-
ving primary and secondary surfaces represented higher than the bulk
fluid, and the temperature varied violently along with the height of fins.
As shown in Fig. 3(c), the detailed information about the fluid flowage,
the arisen position of eddy and the distribution of flow boundary layers
could be observed. In order to evaluate the accuracy of simulation re-
n 2
sults, the Root Mean Squared Errors ⎛RMSEs = ⎜
∑i = 1 [(xsim − x exp) / x exp ] ⎞
⎟
n
⎝ ⎠
of j and f values for OSFs were tabulated in Table 1. The RMSEs between
the simulated results and experimental data were 10.03% and 21.22%,
respectively for j and f factors. Furthermore, as illustrated in Table 2,
many available predicted correlations were calculated to examine their
prediction accuracies. The comparison results between the predicted
and experimental data of the fin code 47JC1402-03 were depicted in
Fig. 4. Therefore, considering the uncertainties of the experimental data
and the actual manufacturing errors, the numerical method was sui-
table to reliably predict the heat transfer and friction performance of
OSFs with cryogenic helium gas flowing through the channels.
4.2. Thermal hydraulic characteristics of helium gas at low temperatures
Fig. 5 depicted the changes of temperature-dependent helium phy-
sical properties derived from REFPROP V9.0 and the variation curves of
metal thermal conductivities against temperature from NIST Material
Properties database. On one hand, in the range from the helium li-
quefaction temperature to the room temperature, the helium physical
properties consisted of density, specific heat, thermal conductivity and
viscosity especially below 120 K changed dramatically, which would
cause some differences in fin surface performance compared with the
common steam-to-air tests. On the other hand, for the recuperative heat
exchanger, the thermal conductivities of the fin and separating plate
materials had significant influences on the heat transfer performance.
In comparison with the listed metal materials such as stainless steel
316, aluminum 3003 and 5083 for fabricating brazed PFHEs due to
their excellent brazing-ability, the aluminum alloy AL-3003 had a good
thermal conductivity in all temperature regions, which was commonly
used in cryogenic applications. However, the thermal conductivity of
AL-3003 decreased dramatically as temperature decreased below LN2
temperature, which would have an appreciable impact on the heat
transfer ability between cold and hot fluids.
The heat transfer and pressure drop performance differences in
plate-fin channels were firstly revealed by means of contrast experi-
ments respectively at close to nitrogen liquefaction and room tem-
peratures. Fig. 6 described the performance variations as well as the
error bars of j and f factors vs. Re numbers for the fin code 47JC1402-
03. The differences observed in the range of Re numbers measured at
different operating temperatures could be attributed to lower viscosity
and higher flow rate. It could be found that due to lower metal thermal
conductivity and higher Pr number at cryogenic temperatures, the
measured j values had a tendency to become smaller at low tempera-
tures. Besides, for the f factors with relative short error bars, the values
represented a little larger at low temperatures. This was because when
92
Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98
the correction in fluid density changes, pressure loss at the inlet and
outlet were ignored, the formula of f factor could be simplified as,
2
Dh 2ΔpAfr
f= ρ
4L G 2 (13)
It could be seen from this equation that though the pressure drops
through the channel at low temperatures represented much lower, the
measured f values would increase accompanied by the increase of gas
density.
In order to further investigate the heat transfer and pressure drop
characteristics of helium gas in different temperature ranges flowing
through OSF channels, a series of CFD simulations were studied for the
same fin code 47JC1402-03 in different working conditions including at
room temperature, nitrogen and hydrogen liquefaction temperature.
Operating parameters that were kept constant for the present study
were shown in Table 3. It could be observed from Fig. 7 that for the j
factors, with the decrease of temperature, the heat transfer performance
at LH2 temperature deteriorated pronouncedly. This was because when
the working temperature decreased, the increase of Pr number resulted
in a decrease in the calculated j values, and at the same time, the heat
transfer performance of recuperative heat exchanger was weakened due
to the reduction of metal thermal conductivity. Besides, for the f factors,
the calculated f values at low temperatures increased slightly, and the f
values intended to increase more dramatically when Re numbers were
getting smaller. This might be attributed to the acquisition of the f
factors was not only related to the measured pressure loss, but also to
the Re number and fluid properties including viscosity and density.
Therefore, it was evident that in the precision design of cryogenic
PFHEs, which needed to reduce the design margin to enhance the heat
transfer and reduce the flow drag simultaneously, the differences of
thermal hydraulic performance could not be ignored when employing
the fin surface performance data obtained from different test tem-
peratures.
4.3. Sensitivity analysis
The geometrical structure parameters of OSFs had profound influ-
ences on heat exchanger performance at the same flow state. Based on
the simulated results with helium gas at 77 K flowing through the OSF
channel, the effects of fin geometric variables on objective functions
were investigated in this section. The levels of the fin structure para-
meters were listed in Table 4. For optimal objective functions, a variety
of performance evaluation criteria had been proposed in which one
typical method was the surface flow area goodness comparisons in-
volving j/ f , Nu/ f and j/ f 1/3 ratio. However, the design requirements of
PFHEs in helium refrigerators were characterized by sufficient heat
transfer in a compact space. The heat transfer rate Q̇ and pumping
power W due to flow friction on one fluid side were
Q̇ = η0 αA (Tw − Tm) = η0 αβV (Tw − Tm) (14)
W = EA = EβV (15)
where β was the surface area density or compactness (β = 4σ / Dh ). The
heat transfer rate per unit temperature difference and core volume
could be represented by η0 αβ , and the friction power expenditure per
unit core volume could be expressed by Eβ . Hence, from the perspective
Table 1
Performance comparisons for the experimental and simulated data.
Fin codes Deviations
j f
47JC1402-03 9.17% 15.12%
65JC1403-03 11.76% 21.85%
95JC1402-03 8.92% 25.39%
Q. Jiang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98

Table 2
RMSEs of j and f factors for CFD simulations and various correlations.
Prediction models Range of application RMSEs (%)

j f

CFD simulation / 10.03 21.22

Dubrovsky and Vasiliev [9] 0.65 ⩽ l/ Dh ⩽ 3.24 16.55 28.42
0.058 ⩽ t / Dh ⩽ 0.113
h/ s = 7: 1
500 ⩽ Re⩽10000
2(s − t )(h − t )
Dh =
s + h − 2t
Mochizuki et al. [10] h/ Dh = 3.48 32.67 30.06
s / Dh = 0.696
t / Dh = 0.0696
0.522 ⩽ l/ Dh ⩽ 5.22
2(s − t )(h − t )
Dh =
s + h − 2t
Joshi and Webb [14] Re⩽Re∗ and Re⩾Re∗ + 1000 18.77 45.58
1.23 t 0.58 −0.5 −1
Re∗ = 257π ( ) ()
l
s−t l
Dh ⎡t
⎢ ⎣
+ 1.328 ⎛ ⎞
Re
⎝ lDh ⎠ ⎦
⎤
⎥
2l (h − t )(s − 2t )
Dh =
l (h − t ) + l (s − t ) + t (h − t )
Wieting [16] 0.7 ⩽ l/ Dh ⩽ 5.6 21.19 37.04
0.162 ⩽ s / h ⩽ 1.196
0.03 ⩽ t / Dh ⩽ 0.166
0.65 ⩽ Dh ⩽ 3.41
2(s − t )(h − t )
Dh =
s + h − 2t
Kim et al. [18] 100 ⩽ Re⩽6000 27.18 36.70
0⩽Blockage ratio⩽35\%
0.72 ⩽ Pr ⩽ 50
Manglik and Bergles [21] 120 ⩽ Re ⩽ 10000 20.96 30.21

of minimum volume requirements, the core volume goodness factor μ3f Re3 μ3f Re3 4σ μ3 4σ
Eβ = 3
β= 3
= f Re3
comparisons made by the plots of η0 αβ vs. Eβ could be used to measure 2
2gc ρ Dh 2
2gc ρ Dh Dh 2gc ρ2 Dh4 (17)
the fin performance comprehensively to obtain the optimal fin surface.
For a given set of fin surfaces, η0 αβ and Eβ could also be derived from From Eq. (14), η0 αβ was inversely proportional to volume V for a
Eq. (8)–(10) and Eq. (13) respectively as follows, given Q̇ and (Tw − Tm) . Therefore, for a given Eβ in the heat exchanger,
the fin surface with higher curve of η0 αβ vs. Eβ represented high quality
cp μ j Re 4σ cp μ j Re cp μ 4σ
η0 αβ = η0 β = η0 = η j Re surface. That was to say, for a given design requirements of heat load
Pr 2/3 Dh Dh Pr 2/3 Dh Pr 2/3 0 Dh2 (16) and pumping power, the heat exchanger with using higher quality
surfaces could occupy smaller space.
In this section, for two kinds of fin codes 95JC1402-03 and

Fig. 4. Comparisons of predicted and experimental results for j and f factors using the fin 47JC1402-03.

93
Q. Jiang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98

Fig. 5. The variation curves of the temperature-dependent physical properties.

Fig. 6. Comparisons of the performance data for the fin code 47JC1402-03 Fig. 7. Thermal-hydraulic performances for the fin code 47JC1402-03 under
under room and cryogenic conditions. different operating conditions.

47JC2003-05, by varying the value of the selected fin geometric para- Table 4

The factor and level of the structure parameters of the OSFs (mm).
meter, the sensitivity of the objective function with respect to the
parameter could be discussed. No. Parameter

Fin height, h Fin space, s Fin thickness, t Interrupted length, l

4.3.1. Effect of the fin height 1 3.2 1.2 0.1 2
Heat exchange between hot and cold fluids was transferred by pri- 2 4.7 1.4 0.2 3
mary and secondary heat transfer surfaces. Primary heat transfer sur- 3 6.5 1.7 0.3 5
face was consisted of bare separating plates and fin bases directly 4 9.5 2 0.4 8
5 12 3.5 0.5 12
brazed to plates, while for secondary heat transfer surface, fin efficiency
and surface area in the height direction played important roles. To
evaluate the effect of the fin height on the volume quality of OSF
requirements. However, during the manufacture process of vacuum
channels, sensitivity analysis under different flow states with Re num-
brazing the OSFs with small fin height, welding slag was inclined to
bers of 200, 300, 500, 800, 1400, 2000, 2500, 4000, 6000 and 8000
form at welded seams and therefore block the channel. Thus, the se-
respectively had been performed. As depicted in Fig. 8, the state points
lection of the fin height should also be combined with the quality and
corresponding to different Re numbers were distributed with the in-
yield of production in actual manufacturing practice.
crease of Eβ . It could be seen that though all of the j and f factors
increased as the fin height increased from 3.2 mm to 12 mm, the fin
surface with smaller fin height could improve the volume quality and 4.3.2. Effect of the fin frequency
make the heat exchanger more compact at the rated heat transfer The effect of the fin frequency on the volume quality was

Table 3
Work conditions at different calculated points.
Group No. Tin (K) Tw (K) pin (bar) ρ (kg/m3) cp (J/kg K) λ (W/ m K) μ (Pa s) Pr

1 300 310 12 1.9151 5192.2 0.15679 1.9968e-5 0.661

2 77 85 6 3.7103 5208.9 0.06245 8.3776e-6 0.699
3 20 30 2 4.8179 5306.4 0.02640 3.6214e-6 0.728

94
Q. Jiang et al.
Fig. 8. Effect of fin height on the volume quality of the OSFs.
investigated and presented in Fig. 9. With the increase in the fin den-
sity, the OSF channel would have efficient heat transfer performance
and superior ability of achieving sufficient heat transfer in a compact
space. This was because as the fin space decreased, on one hand, the fin
density per unit length in the channel increased accompanied by the
increase of secondary heat transfer area, and the heat transfer ability
would be greatly enhanced with the increase of pressure loss. On the
other hand, the minimum free flow area would decrease accordingly,
which leaded to the increase of η0 αβ and Eβ by adopting high-density
fin structure on the premise of the same mass flow rate. However,
frequency of fins per unit length was usually constrained by manu-
facturing capability. It became extremely difficult to punch high-den-
sity fins due to the difficulty of stretching and forming the metal sheet,
and the processing errors such as fins tearing, wrinkling and excessive
thinning during fin molding.
4.3.3. Effect of the fin thickness
Fig. 10 showed the effect of the fin thickness on the volume quality.
The results indicated that the influence became complicated and for
some fin constructions, the trend of η0 αβ didn’t present a monotonic
correspondence with Eβ . Overall, as the fin thickness increased, the free
flow area at the inlet decreased and therefore resulted in higher
pumping power per unit volume at the same mass flow rate. In detail,
Fig. 9. Effect of fin space on the volume quality of the OSFs.
95
Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98
for both two types of OSFs, at the high Re region (Re > 4000 ), adopting
the fin structure with larger thickness was more likely to damage the
flow stability and enhance the heat transfer when the fin thickness was
between 0.2 mm and 0.5 mm, so that more sufficient heat transfer could
be achieved in the compact space. However, the fin structure with the
thickness of 0.1 mm had better performance than the one of 0.2 mm,
which meant that by employing this fin structure, the same heat
transfer coefficient could be achieved under the condition of lower
pumping power per unit volume. At the low Re region (Re < 2000 ), the
variation presented a completely different trend from the change at the
high Re region. With the decrease of mass flow rate, employing the fin
structure with thinner thickness could achieve sufficient heat transfer in
a more compact space. However, at the transition region
(2000 ⩽ Re ⩽ 4000 ), for the fin structure with extremely thick and thin
thickness, the curve trend of η0 αβ vs. Eβ was no longer monotonic, and
though the pump power per unit volume increased accompanied by the
increase of inlet flow rate, the heat transfer capacity was weakened.
Additionally, the fin structure with 0.1 mm thickness still had excellent
comprehensive performance. In the process of manufacturing, the
thinner fin structure was more difficult to be processed, and it was easy
to cause non-conformities such as fin tear. In addition, due to the OSFs
played the major supporting role between the separating plates, the fin
thickness played an important role in maintaining the structural
Q. Jiang et al.
Fig. 10. Effect of fin thickness on the volume quality of the OSFs.
strength of vacuum-brazed heat exchanger core. Therefore, in the ex-
isting stamping technics, the fin structure with 0.1 mm thickness was
seldom fabricated, but it could be easily manufactured by the advanced
processing technology such as diffusion-bonded superplastic material
molding. Briefly, the selection of the fin thickness was a complicated
work, which not only needed to consider the performance requirements
and structural strength constraints of heat exchanger, but also required
to choose the optimal scheme according to the specific flow state of
fluid in the channel.
4.3.4. Effect of the interrupted length
The effect of the interrupted length on the volume quality was
presented in Fig. 11. It showed that the curves almost coincided with
each other, which indicated that the interrupted length had little in-
fluences on the volume quality of heat exchanger. When Eβ was less
than 1 × 107 W/m3, as the interrupted length decreased, the disturbance
of fluid flowing through the staggered fin aggravated, and the boundary
layer thickness decreased, which resulted in the increase of pressure
loss and the enhancement of heat transfer capacity. As depicted in the
Fig. 11, the fin structure with narrow interrupted length enabled the
heat exchanger to achieve sufficient heat transfer in a compact space.
However, when Eβ was larger than 1 × 107 W/m3, with the increase of
fluid flow rate, random pulsating motions resulting from the
Fig. 11. Effect of interrupted length on the volume quality of the OSFs.
96
Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98
superposition of different scale eddies strengthened, so as to a part of
the performance reinforcement caused by the disturbance of OSFs were
offset. It could be observed that at extremely high fluid flow rate, the fin
structure with wide interrupted length was more appropriate to be
employed.
4.3.5. Main effects of the factors on the performance
Generally, the above four geometric parameters and flow state
parameters had different levels of impact on the volume quality of heat
exchanger. In the actual design process of heat exchanger, the common
practice was to ignore some non-significant factors, and adjust one or
several factors that have significant effects on the main effect to im-
plement heat exchanger optimization. The main effects plots of fin
height, fin space, fin thickness, interrupted length and Re number on
the volume goodness factors (η0 αβ / Eβ ) were depicted in Fig. 12. The
dots in the figure were the mean data of response variables of each
factor at each level, while the intermediate reference line was the total
mean of response data. When the main effect of a factor was more
significant, it meant that the response of the factor’s level was very far
from the total mean value. It could be seen from Fig. 12 that the impact
levels of Re number, fin space and fin thickness were most significant,
while the influence of interrupted length was weakest. Therefore, for
design optimization aiming at the volume quality of heat exchanger, the
Q. Jiang et al.
Fig. 12. The mean response data about volume goodness factors of each factor level.
selection of Re number, fin space and fin thickness should be paid more
attention.
For comparison, the main effects plots of four geometric factors and
Re number on the JF circulation area goodness factors ( j/ f 1/3 ) were also
analyzed and presented in Fig. 13. Although the influence of Re number
was still very significant, the impact degrees of fin thickness and in-
terrupted length on JF response value were enhanced, while the effect
of fin space was weakened. It could be enlightened that for different
performance evaluation criteria, different factors always had different
levels of significance on the main effect of response, so it was necessary
to optimize the heat exchanger performance by the selection of fin
structures and passage arrangement according to specific design re-
quirements.
5. Conclusions
A comprehensive study was conducted to investigate the thermal-
hydraulic characteristics of cryogenic helium flowing through OSFs.
Fig. 13. The mean response data about JF factors of each factor level.
97
Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98
The experimental results showed, most of the existing correlations
could not accurately predict the performance data under cryogenic
conditions. In view of this, by combining similar fin structures and
operating conditions, CFD simulations predicted more precisely with
RMSEs of 10.03% and 21.22%, respectively for j and f factors. Notably,
as temperature dropped, j factors deteriorated gradually due to the
increase of Pr number and reduction of metal thermal conductivity.
Additionally, sensitivity analysis about the volume quality with respect
to fin geometric parameters were discussed. This discussion also in-
corporated the technical limitations of fin manufacture. For design
optimization aiming at the volume quality, the results implied that the
selection of Re number, fin space and thickness deserved more atten-
tion. This study provided useful information for general estimation of
optimum fin structures for cryogenic heat exchanger.
Acknowledgements
The test platform was supported by Institute of Plasma Physics,
Q. Jiang et al.
Chinese Academy of Sciences, for which the authors express thanks.
References
[1] W.M. Kays, A.L. London, Compact Heat Exchangers, third ed., McGraw-Hill, New
York, 1984.
[2] M. Khoshvaght-Aliabadi, F. Hormozi, A. Zamzamian, Role of channel shape on
performance of plate-fin heat exchangers: experimental assessment, Int. J. Therm.
Sci. 79 (2014) 183–193.
[3] R.K. Shah, D.P. Sekulić, Fundamentals of Heat Exchanger Design, Wiley, Hoboken
(NJ), 2003.
[4] X. Zheng, Z. Qi, A comprehensive review of offset strip fin and its applications,
Appl. Therm. Eng. 139 (2018) 61–75.
[5] H. Peng, X. Ling, Neural networks analysis of thermal characteristics on plate-fin
heat exchangers with limited experimental data, Appl. Therm. Eng. 29 (2009)
2251–2256.
[6] J. Dong, J. Chen, Z. Chen, Y. Zhou, Air-side thermal hydraulic performance of offset
strip fin aluminum heat exchangers, Appl. Therm. Eng. 27 (2007) 306–313.
[7] M. Khoshvaght-Aliabadi, O. Sartipzadeh, S. Pazdar, M. Sahamiyan, Experimental
and parametric studies on a miniature heat sink with offset-strip pins and Al2O3/
water nanofluids, Appl. Therm. Eng. 111 (2017) 1342–1352.
[8] N.C. Dejong, A.M. Jacobi, An experimental study of flow and heat transfer in par-
allel-plate arrays: local, row-by-row and surface average behavior, Int. J. Heat Mass
Transf. 40 (1997) 1365–1378.
[9] E.V. Dubrovsky, V.Y. Vasiliev, Enhancement of convective heat transfer in rectan-
gular ducts of interrupted surfaces, Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 31 (1988) 807–818.
[10] S. Mochizuki, Y. Yagi, W.J. Yang, Transport phenomena in stacks of interrupted
parallel-plate surfaces, Exp. Heat Transf. 1 (1987) 127–140.
[11] J. Shen, T. Guo, Y. Tian, Z. Xing, Design and experimental study of an air source
heat pump for drying with dual modes of single stage and cascade cycle, Appl.
Therm. Eng. 129 (2018) 280–289.
[12] J. Du, Z.Q. Qian, Z.Y. Dai, Experimental study and numerical simulation of flow and
heat transfer performance on an offset plate-fin heat exchanger, Heat Mass Transf.
52 (2016) 1791–1806.
[13] M. Khoshvaght-Aliabadi, F. Hormozi, A. Zamzamian, Experimental analysis of
thermal–hydraulic performance of copper–water nanofluid flow in different plate-
fin channels, Exp. Therm. Fluid Sci. 52 (2014) 248–258.
[14] H.M. Joshi, R.L. Webb, Heat transfer and friction in offset strip-fin heat exchanger,
Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 30 (1987) 69–84.
[15] S.V. Manson, Correlations of heat-transfer data and of friction data for interrupted
plane fins staggered in successive rows, Tech. Rep. Arch. Image Library 7 (1950)
1405–1408.
[16] A.R. Wieting, Empirical correlations for heat transfer and flow friction character-
istics of rectangular offset-fin plate-fin heat exchangers, ASME J. Heat Transf. 97
(1975) 488–490.
[17] Y. Yang, Y. Li, General prediction of the thermal hydraulic performance for plate-fin
heat exchanger with offset strip fins, Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 78 (2014) 860–870.
[18] M.S. Kim, J. Lee, S.J. Yook, K.S. Lee, Correlations and optimization of a heat
98
Applied Thermal Engineering 150 (2019) 88–98
exchanger with offset-strip fins, Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 54 (2011) 2073–2079.
[19] L. Guo, F. Qin, J. Chen, Z. Chen, Lubricant side thermal–hydraulic characteristics of
steel offset strip fins with different flow angles, Appl. Therm. Eng. 28 (2008)
907–914.
[20] H. Yin, R. Ooka, Shape optimization of water-to-water plate-fin heat exchanger
using computational fluid dynamics and genetic algorithm, Appl. Therm. Eng. 80
(2015) 310–318.
[21] R.M. Manglik, A.E. Bergles, Heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for the
rectangular offset strip fin compact heat exchanger, Exp. Therm. Fluid Sci. 10
(1995) 171–180.
[22] Y.S. Muzychka, M.M. Yovanovich, Modeling the f and j characteristics for trans-
verse flow through an offset strip fin at low Reynolds number, J. Enhan. Heat
Transf. 8 (2001) 243–259.
[23] A. Saidi, B. Sundén, A numerical investigation of heat transfer enhancement in
offset strip fin heat exchangers in self-sustained oscillatory flows, Int. J. Numer.
Method H. 11 (2001) 699–717.
[24] Y. Zhu, Y. Li, Three-dimensional numerical simulation on the laminar flow and heat
transfer in four basic fins of plate-fin heat exchangers, ASME J. Heat Transf. 130
(2008) 1617–1620.
[25] L.S. Ismail, R. Velraj, C. Ranganayakulu, Studies on pumping power in terms of
pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of compact plate-fin heat ex-
changers—a review, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 14 (2010) 478–485.
[26] S. Hu, K.E. Herold, Prandtl number effect on offset fin heat exchanger performance:
experimental results, Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 38 (1995) 1053–1061.
[27] S. Hu, K.E. Herold, Prandtl number effect on offset fin heat exchanger performance:
predictive model for heat transfer and pressure drop, Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 38
(1995) 1043–1051.
[28] M. Goyal, A. Chakravarty, M.D. Atrey, Two dimensional model for multistream
plate fin heat exchangers, Cryogenics 61 (2014) 70–78.
[29] R.S. Doohan, P.K. Kush, G. Maheshwari, Exergy based optimization and experi-
mental evaluation of plate fin heat exchanger, Appl. Therm. Eng. 102 (2016) 80–90.
[30] J.M. Robertson, Boiling heat transfer with liquid nitrogen in brazed-aluminum
plate-fin heat exchangers, in: National Heat Transfer Conference, AIChE Sympos.
Ser., San Diego pp. 151–164; 1979.
[31] L. Cao, J. Liu, R. Li, et al., Experimental study on the mixed refrigerant heat transfer
performance in a plate-fin heat exchanger during a single-stage cryogenic cycle,
Appl. Therm. Eng. 93 (2016) 1074–1090.
[32] Y. Yang, Y. Li, B. Si, J. Zheng, Heat transfer performances of cryogenic fluids in
offset strip fin-channels considering the effect of fin efficiency, Int. J. Heat Mass
Transf. 114 (2017) 1114–1125.
[33] M. Goyal, A. Chakravarty, M.D. Atrey, Experimental investigations and validation
of two dimensional model for multistream plate fin heat exchangers, Cryogenics 82
(2017) 83–91.
[34] Q. Jiang, M. Zhuang, Q. Zhang, et al., Experimental study on the thermal hydraulic
performance of plate-fin heat exchangers for cryogenic applications, Cryogenics 91
(2018) 58–67.
[35] R. Abid, Assessment of two-equation turbulence models for predicting transitional
flows, Int. J. Eng. Sci. 31 (1993) 831–840.