Coupling vibration analysis of heat exchanger tube bundles under different stiffness conditions

Abstract A two-dimensional tube bundles fluid–structure coupling model was developed using the CFD approach, with a rigid body motion equation and the Newmark integral method. The numerical simulations were performed to determine the vibration coupling properties between various tube bundles of stiffness. Take the corner square tube bundles with a pitch ratio of 1.28 as the research object. The influence of adjacent tubes with different stiffness on the vibration of the central target tube was analyzed. The research results show that the vibration characteristic of tube bundles is affected by the flow field dominant frequency and the inherent frequency of tube bundles. The vibration of adjacent tube bundles significantly impacts the amplitude and frequency of the central target tube. The equal stiffness and large stiffness tubes upstream or downstream inhibit the vibration displacement of the target tube to some extent. The low-stiffness tubes upstream or downstream significantly enhanced the amplitude of the target tube. The findings can be used to provide a basis for reasonable design and vibration suppression of shell-and-tube heat exchangers.