GenHEX: A new heat exchanger design framework

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Thermal management is considered a main challenge when attempting to further increase the efficiency of gas-turbine engines or during the development of future aircraft engine concept including fuel cell, hybrid electric or unconventional cycle engines such as the composite cycle engine. Heat exchanger selection is notoriously difficult, especially in aviation when weight and volume are of great importance and should be included already during the early design stages. This paper aim to further convince the usefulness of the GenHEX method and present how it can be used to estimate heat exchanger performance without having to select a heat exchanger family of configuration. This is achieved through the generalization of all/any heat exchanger matrix geometry to the lowest possible resolution which still allow for estimation of the aerothermal performance and design guidance when attempting to translate the generalized geometrical parameters to actual matrix geometries. Although the GenHEX method has been validated against state-of-the-art heat exchangers and has already been implemented into engine cycle simulations for the development of future aircraft propulsion It is of great interest to broaden the usage to further benchmark the method against existing and installed heat exchangers to further improve the performance estimation metrics while providing a easy-to-use means for selecting application suitable heat exchangers.