AAA Drafting Blog

A SolidWorks designer talks about stuff related to CAD and mechanical design

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Modelling a shell and tube heat exchanger

Over the past few weeks I have spending time creating a shell and tube heat exchanger model in solidworks. This model is being created for a shell and tube heat exchanger manufacturer who needs engineering drawings to be created automatically from specification sheets. It's been a challengeing project, but one that has the potential to be great time and money saver for the client. The shell and tube heat exchanger is a complicated product, with loads of tubing, looping back and forth throughout the framework. I have been able to get the model to create a whole shell and tube heat exchanger by just entering the number of rows and columns of tubes and by entering data about the fintubes and inlet and outlet headers. The model creates the fintube assembly which in turn drives a frame model and models for the return and terminal end covers and cladding. The model can suitably create a wide range of sizes of shell and tube heat exchanger. Beyond a certain point aditional models have to be created to handle sizes of shell and tube heat exchanger. You just cant keep increasing frame sizes, eventually you may need different geometry due to strength and weight considerations. Check my website www.aaadrafting.com/heat_exchanger.html for more.

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