An Experimental Investigation of Factors that Affect the Accuracy of Heat Transfer Resistances Obtained from Heat Exchanger Data

Heat exchanger design correlations are usually obtained from experiments performed on prototype heat exchangers. The data consist of total or overall thermal resistances which are usually separated into individual thermal resistances by appropriate manipulation.

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the factors that affect the accuracy of the individual thermal resistances obtained from overall heat exchanger measurements. All experiments were performed such that one thermal resistance was varied while the other thermal resistances were kept nearly constant. The analysis that followed consisted of determining both the fixed and variable thermal resistances, together with their uncertainties.