A Method to Design Shell-Side Pressure Drop Constrained Tubular Heat Exchangers

In shell and tube heat exchangers, the triple segmental baffle arrangement has been infrequently used, even though the potential of this baffle system for high thermal effectiveness with low pressure drop is generally known. This neglect seems to stem from the lack of published design guidelines on the subject. Lately, however, with the rapid growth in the size of nuclear heat exchangers, the need to develop unconventional baffling pattern has become increasingly important. A method to effectively utilize the triple segmental concept to develop economical designs is presented herein. The solution technique given in this paper is based on a flow model named “Piecewise Continuous Cosine Model.” The solution procedure easily lends itself to detailed analysis to determine safety against flow-induced vibrations.