Geometrical optimization design of plate-fin heat exchanger using genetic algorithm

A strategy for the optimization design of Plate-Fin Heat exchanger (PFHX) was developed using Genetic Algorithms (GA). For different required designs, weight or effectiveness of a PFHX can be taken as an objective function respectively. Different parameters such as fin pitch and height on each side of PFHX were considered as variables to be optimized by means of GA approach The implement of optimum design consists of two routines, one is GA routine which included binary coding for tournament selection, uniform crossover and one-point mutation. Nicking and elitism were adopted. The other is rating (RAT) routine which is used to evaluated performance of PFHX, and may be performed after decoding individuals to real geometrical sizes. An example from literature was solved with proposed method. The results show that the optimized PFHXs have lighter weight or higher effectiveness than those original cases. For a PFHX with high effectiveness in engineering practice, seeking higher effectiveness is not recommended due to sharply increase of the weight. The optimizing method of PFHX is universal and can be used for various PFHXs with those parameters of fin and layer can be modified into real world problems.