Creep of brazed plate-fin structures in high temperature compact heat exchangers

In recent years, the need for high temperature heat exchangers to improve the efficiency of power and chemical conversion systems has been growing. However, the creep design of the high temperature compact heat exchangers has been a primary concern because the working temperature can be well above the creep limit of the materials. To establish the high temperature design criterion for compact heat exchangers, creep behavior of the plate-fin structures and brazed joints are investigated in this paper. The time-dependent deformation and bending stress of the plate-fin structures are obtained analytically by simplifying the fins to elastic springs. The creep damage evolution inside the brazed joint is studied by coupling the finite element method with a damage constitutive equation. The significant effect of creep property mismatch in the brazed joint on the creep strength is demonstrated. © Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2009.